Trivial Pursuit - the pros and cons of cultural literacy

National Review, Nov 8, 1999 by David Klinghoffer

Mr. Klinghoffer, an NR senior editor, is author of The Lord Will Gather Me In: My Journey to Jewish Orthodoxy.

You can be sure you're not in New York City anymore when you receive Christian testimony from the cable guy. There are certain things everybody in the city of 7 million stories knows you just don't do, certain stories that don't get told, and this-the story of how your cable guy found Jesus Christ-is one of them. A recent transplant to Seattle, I had arranged to have my house wired; and the technician-young, friendly, with a grunge-type goatee beard-had noticed my yarmulke. He said, "Shalom! That's a Jewish word, right? We were talking about that in our Bible class." The cable guy then told me some about his own spiritual quest, his nondenominational church, how he didn't enter into a relationship with Christ till recently.

We chatted a little, at which point, apropos of I'm not sure what, he remarked that he had been watching the Discovery Channel the previous night. And he said, "I saw this really amazing interview where this guy was talking about abortion, really coming down hard on it. I was like, whoa! This guy's serious. I think he was some kind of saint, maybe. St. Paul? Could that be right?"

St. Paul being interviewed about abortion on the Discovery Channel? "Or maybe he was a pope. Some kind of pope, or saint. Is there a pope called Paul?"

Well, I said, the current Roman Catholic Pope is called John Paul. "That's right! John Paul." When the cable guy not only gives you Christian testimony but is unfamiliar with the Pope, you really, really know you're not in New York.

One doesn't see a place clearly till he's not there anymore. I used to be a New Yorker. Now that I've left the Upper West Side for the Northwest Coast, the thing about my new city that strikes me again and again is how liberating it is not to have to know stuff. Call it the joy of ignorance. The stuff you have to know in New York includes not just facts about people, places, and things, but about the rigid code of conduct that governs life in the city. In New York, a cable guy who tells you about Jesus would be unthinkable. The fact that one doesn't talk about religion to strangers, probably even to friends, is as well known as the fact that John Paul II is the name of the Pope.

It's characteristic of New York that when Hillary Clinton declared her interest in running for senator, New Yorkers who doubted the appropriateness of her candidacy tended to express their doubt by observing that she didn't even know basic facts about the state. Crystallizing the skepticism even of many liberals, Pete Hamill contributed a "Back Page" piece to The New Yorker. It was a joke "New York Aptitude Test" to be given to all aspiring public-office holders, the queries including: "Who is Dr. Zizmor?" "Where is the Barney's warehouse sale held?" "On what newsstands can you get the Village Voice earliest?" You could imagine plenty of readers nodding to themselves, wondering if Mrs. Clinton could indeed explain what CBGB stands for.

A carpetbagging political candidate who hasn't learned the local geography would receive a media lashing anywhere in the Union. But in New York, the accumulation of facts small and large counts for more than it does just about anywhere else. It is the Manhattanite's supreme index of sophistication.

It's not that way in Seattle, which isn't exactly a backwater. Take for instance Ken, a friend of mine here who's no dummy. In fact he is a Yale graduate. But his acquaintance with pop culture, or lack of acquaintance, is something to behold. Recently over meals, when the topic has turned to movies, he has asked not only, "Who's Glenn Close?" but "Who's Michelle Pfeiffer?" When talk wound around to vacations, he asked, "What's a Winnebago?"

I first encountered the New York sophistication that's born of knowing trivia when I was a college freshman at Brown. On vacation and visiting Manhattan, I happened to run into a girl I'd known from my high school in suburban Southern California. She was a freshman at Columbia, and I was bowled over by her suddenly acquired savoir-faire. This consisted of dropping names I'd never heard of, mostly figures in the art world. Not that she knew these people personally-Merce Cunningham, Keith Haring, Jean-Michel Basquiat, Cindy Sherman, and on and on-or that she had anything much to say about their work. She just knew their names, which I didn't. Having never encountered anyone like this before, I was instantly smitten with her. One day a few weeks later, after returning to campus in Providence, Rhode Island, I came across a group of high-school seniors being given a tour of the college by a student guide. The guide was gesturing grandly toward the city's skyline of one-and-a-half skyscrapers and boasting that "Providence has everything New York does, just in smaller quantities!" Cringing and humiliated, I thought, Yeah, everything but girls who know who Cindy Sherman is.

Some conservatives have insisted that knowing certain facts is not merely a sign of sophistication, but actually constitutes the heart of a good education. This was more or less the thesis advanced by educator E. D. Hirsch Jr. in his 1987 book, Cultural Literacy. But is Hirsch right? Around the time his book came out, I was driving an Oldsmobile with Rhode Island plates. At a gas station on Long Island, I was startled when the attendant, a high-school kid, looked at my plates, mentally scratched his head, and asked, "Huh, Rhode Island. Is that . . . a state?" Rhode Island sits, of course, just across Block Island Sound from the eastern tip of Long Island.