Somewhere, A. J. Jacobs Is Smiling

Usually, when I see a headline about "The Joy of Knowing Nothing," I figure I'm about to learn one more time that John Banner was actually Jewish and had to flee Austria after the Anschluss. (It's gotta be that, because who writes about Millard Fillmore anymore?) But, no: Alex Beam just wants to let Boston Globe readers know he's not impressed by the emerging literature of omnididactism. Beam can be forgiven for trying to make this "microgenre" sound fresher than it actually is, as when he floats the remark that "David Denby enrolled in two of Columbia's vaunted core curriculum programs to re-immerse himself in the Great Books a few years ago." (Try nine.) But he's certainly managed to get himself removed from Joe Queenan's Christmas card list by sticking up for Globe colleague Katherine Powers, a.k.a. (in Queenan Country) "the jackass... who always gives my books bad reviews." The "sod off" rejoinder may get Beam a note from Ask Beth to play nice, but what's really got to hurt is the slamdunking of Queenan's "pathetic sales numbers" for his latest book. Which, one imagines, are due to the fact that no reviewer in the United States has been willing to touch it--the only press it's gotten lately isn't even a review, just a friendly note letting folks in Kentucky's Henderson County know the public library got a copy they can borrow.

Correction: As an observant reader helped me understand, Google News searches only go back so far. Queenan Country did of course get reviewed last year, when it came out.