Once you know that Tom Nissley, the author of “A Reader’s Book of Days,” just out from Norton, was an eight-time “Jeopardy” champion, things fall into place. A tall, tweedy-looking guy, though not actually wearing tweeds, with something hawklike about the eyes, Nissley, who lives in Seattle, took only a year to research and write this four-hundred-plus-page volume, which is crammed with incidents from the lives of writers and fictional characters. On Monday night, downstairs at the McNally Jackson bookstore, Nissley m.c.’ed a round of Literary Jeopardy. But first he read his entry for November 11th, a somewhat hapless day in literature: Kurt Vonnegut is born; the character Leonard Bast, of E. M. Forster’s “Howards End,” dies in an avalanche of books; James Baldwin meets (and later insults) Richard Wright in Paris; and Fred Exley, the narrator of Frederick Exley’s “A Fan’s Notes,” “suffers what he takes to be a heart attack but what a nurse at the nearby hospital informs him are the pains of ‘drinking too much.’” Nissley also screened a brief video showing mounds of books being swallowed whole by a single volume, and he gave the audience a taste of his exquisite index, which features tantalizing long entries on such writerly topics as day jobs, marriage, mothers, Melville, sports, and suicide. Catherine of Siena perches between Willa Cather and the “Cat in the Hat,” and William Faulkner nestles between fathers and Farrah Fawcett.
Three teams were assembled: one of editors (Lorin Stein, the editor of The Paris Review, and Edwin Frank, the editor of NYRB Classics), one of critics (Ruth Franklin, of The New Republic, and Eric Banks, the former editor of Bookforum and now the director of the Institute for the Humanities at N.Y.U.), and one of audience members, chosen from among volunteers who could answer the question “What was Lolita’s real name?” (Dolores! Dolores Haze.) This winnowing strategy produced a ringer: the host’s archnemesis on “Jeopardy,” Roger Craig. You can watch on YouTube as he trounces the competition.
“So you all know how it works,” Nissley said. The Jeopardy template somewhat overlapped the screen, but the contestants, each team equipped with a distinctive-sounding buzzer, were still able to take in the clues and spit out the answers before Nissley could finish reading them aloud. The categories were: “When They Were Young,” “Before & After,” “Wolf Wolfe Wolff Woolf,” “Awesome People Hanging Out Together,” and “Fill in the Blanks.” As for Alex Trebek’s famous directive to “please phrase your response in the form of a question,” Nissley said, “I’m not going to be hard-ass about that.”
“Wolf Wolfe Wolff Woolf” was the most popular category, probably because it was so much fun to say: “I’ll take ‘Wolf Wolfe Wolff Woolf’ for four hundred, Tom.” The contestants were formidably well read. Ruth Franklin knew the author of “Never Cry Wolf” (Farley Mowat; May 23rd). Eric Banks named the writer of whom Virginia Woolf said “she stinks like—well, a civet cat that had taken to street walking” (Katherine Mansfield; February 11th). And Lorin Stein improved on the name of Judy Blume’s sixth-grade heroine with “Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret Fuller” (March 8th).
The hardest category was “Before & After,” in which an acrostic-style clue offered a mashup that required a two-part answer in which the last word of the first half was the first word of the last half. Got that? Neither did the contestants. “Watergate whistleblowing author of ‘Blind Ambition’ who, in Kerouac’s original ‘On the Road’ scroll, still went by the name of his real-life inspiration, Neal Cassady.” Silence as the contestants chewed it over. It was Roger Craig who finally got it: John Dean Moriarty.
“A book that begins when its hero awakens bound to the ground with scores of tiny, armed men advancing across his torso and ends when Lars Eighner and his dog find an apartment in Austin, Texas.” Eric Banks got that: Gulliver’s Travels with Lizbeth.
“Ira Levin’s devil spawn that was the bestselling parenting guide for decades.” Roger Craig sputtered out “Rosemary’s Baby and Child Care.”
“Rosemary Clooney hit co-written by William Saroyan that won a Pulitzer Prize for N. Scott Momaday.” No buzzer sounded, so Nissley turned the question over to the audience. From one side came “House Made of Dawn” and from the other “Come On’a My House.” “Yes!” Nissley announced. “Come On-a My House Made of Dawn.” And he threw in an extra helping of trivia: Saroyan’s cousin and collaborator on the song went on to create Alvin and the Chipmunks (June 6).
The score at the end of the first round was Editors 2,600, Audience 1,400, Critics 2,300. “Aren’t you going to ask us what we do?” Eric Banks asked as the categories were refreshed. The book nerds were salivating over the new categories—“Happy & Unhappy Families,” “Before, During & After,” “Harsh Words, Hoaxes & Put-Ons,” “Fill in the Blanks”—but, unfortunately, time was almost up, and the host cut straight to Final Jeopardy. The clue was “This P. D. Eastman I Can Read classic ends with a giant party at the top of a tree. (Please punctuate correctly!)” While the teams consulted for their Final Jeopardy answer, the audience hummed the theme song: Doot doot doot doot, doot doot doo, Doot doot doot doot DOOT, doo-doo-doo-doo-doo, Doot doot doot doot, doot doot doo, DOOT da-doot doot doot, doot, [beeeeeeep].
The Audience team tried “See Spot Run,” but that wasn’t right. Ruth Franklin, of the Critics, was sure she had it, and shouted out to her daughter, Phoebe, in the audience: “Go Dog, Go!” punctuated thus, with a comma after “dog” and an exclamation point at the end. Nissley would not allow it. The Editors tried “Are You My Mother?,” which was wrong. The correct answer, Nissley said, was “Go, Dog. Go!” It was a trick question. Nobody expects a period in a book title, much less the comma preceding direct address. But there were no complaints, except from Phoebe, who groaned, “Mom, I told you!”
All three teams had wagered all—why not? There were no dollar signs in front of the numbers—and since no team gave the correct, correctly punctuated answer, the final score was 0-0-0, a three-way tie for last.
How A Reader's Book of Days Was Made from WW Norton on Vimeo.
