Ken Jennings Talks Trivia
Ken Jennings Exclusive Interview With Book Help Web
Ken Jennings catapulted to fame as the winner of the longest streak of Jeopardy! games ever. He quickly became a pop culture icon appearing on talk and news shows.
The millions that he won on Jeopardy! let him retire from his job as a computer programmer and pursue other interests — one of them being writing. This past fall, he released his first book, an entertaining, delightfully funny book on trivia. It delves into the history of trivia, the major practitioners of it, and the various subcultures of trivia. Oh, and he also talked about his Jeopardy! experience.
While on the book tour promoting his book, Ken Jennings, in his usual wry and humorous manner, shared with Book Help Web why he's written what he has and what is up next for him.
Book Help Web: I described your book as one that is annoying to anyone who happens to be near the reader. This is because it simply begs to have portions read aloud and because I was constantly bursting into laughter at your delightful, wry humor. Did you consciously choose a humorous tone for this book or is it something that happened naturally?
Ken Jennings: This was my thought process: it's going to be an uphill battle anyway, convincing America that a book about trivia culture is going to be interesting or accessible. If unsuspecting readers are going to pay $24.95 for a nerdy topic like that, the least I can do to show my gratitude is throw them some jokes.
Book Help Web: What would you most like people to get out of Brainiac?
Ken Jennings: Two things. First, the idea that trivia isn't trivial, in any way. To call it "trivia" is to give in to the language of the oppressor, to admit that being a well-informed, culturally literate person is a worthless achievement. It's not. There's value in trivia. Trivia is often a social link between people; it's fun enough to make knowledge seem a little cooler and sexier than normal; if nothing else, it may win you millions on a major syndicated quiz show.
And second, I'd like to convince people that they *are* trivia geeks, whether they think of themselves that way or not. Nowadays, trivia is everywhere (magazine sidebars, baseball scoreboards, pre-movie slideshows, radio call-in contests...) and virtually everyone is an encyclopedic expert on their own particular beloved pop-cultural hobby-horses, whether it's James Bond or Desperate Housewives or the Red Sox or Stephen Sondheim. Trivia isn't the province of just an elite cadre of nerds anymore. Now it's practically a national pastime.
Book Help Web: Given your immense talent at writing, what made you become a computer programmer?
Ken Jennings: I got into computer programming for the glamour and the women.
Well, no. I was in English major in college who switched over to computers after I started thinking about how unlikely it was that I'd ever be able to make a living with my English degree. (Sample joke: What's the difference between a large pepperoni pizza and an English major? At least the pizza can feed a family of four.) I feel oddly blessed to have had a second chance, a decade later, to get back into writing. For one thing, I was a lousy computer programmer.
Book Help Web: What post-Jeopardy appearance has been the most memorable?
Ken Jennings: My Sesame Street skit, hands down. I extolled the importance of eating lots of fresh fruit, alongside Grover and a talking pineapple Muppet. I also got to meet Big Bird, poke my head up through Oscar's trash can and peruse the groceries in Mr. Hooper's Store. That day, I could have died happy.
Book Help Web: What did you most enjoy about writing a book? What was the least enjoyable?
Ken Jennings: Most enjoyable: crisscrossing America watching trivia nuts at play, at quiz bowl tournaments in Chicago, in the pubs of Boston, in the paneled basements of Stevens Point, Wisconsin. It was almost therapeutic, talking to people who all shared my freakishly trivia-centric childhood. Worst part: on the book tour, watching TV and radio personalities misspelling the title of the book in scripts and schedules and Teleprompters and graphics. It's Brainiac. It's not Braniac. It's not Brianiac. I'm just not that into either bran or Brian.
Book Help Web: Do you have plans to write another book?
Ken Jennings: Absolutely. Part of the curse of loving trivia is that you find yourself interested in virtually everything, so there's no shortage of other quirky nonfiction topics I'd like to dive into. Human memory fascinates me, for example — I always get asked about my memory, I don't understand the first thing about it, and I think there might be a book in it. But first, having written a book *about* trivia, I think I'd like to write a book *of* trivia. I need to get all the nutty factoids I accumulated while writing Brainiac out of my system, so I can stop annoying my wife and friends with it.
Book Help Web: Was there an experience you had while researching Brainiac that didn't fit into the book, but you'd like to share?
Ken Jennings: Here's something cool I discovered that didn't make the book: after the word "trivia" was coined in the late 1960s, it became a favorite game of Hollywood has-beens like Mickey Rooney, Donald O'Connor, and Mel Torme. These guys, washed-up trivia answers themselves, helped keep trivia trucking during the dark days of the 1970s.
An earlier draft also had a long digression about the fleabag Culver City motel where I stayed whilst taping Jeopardy. I stayed there at first because it (a) was like a block from the studio, and (b) had an ancient marquee that trumpeted "Color TV! Phones!" which I loved. And I was just superstitious enough to keep staying there for months, even after I had a few million in the bank and could have afforded a slightly better hotel.
Book Help Web: You're on a book tour. What has been the most interesting question you've been asked and what was your answer?
At an event in Southern California last week, I was asked to rank myself among other Mormon celebrities. Off the top of my head, my answer was:
1. Steve Young
2. Donny and Marie Osmond
3. Jon "Napoleon Dynamite" Heder
4. Aaron Eckhart
5. Ken Jennings
6. Dale Murphy
Book Help Web: Is there a trivia question which has stumped you and you haven't been able to find the answer yet?
Ken Jennings: Nothing leaps to mind here, sorry.
Book Help Web: What was the most surprising thing you learned while doing your research?
Ken Jennings: Trivia is a lot more venerable a fad than I ever would have suspected. We think of it as an '80s creation, maybe, but the very trivia boom in the U.S. happened in the 1920s. There was a series of best-selling books called Ask Me Another, in which readers would pit their trivia skills against popular Jazz Age public intellectuals like Dorothy Parker or Robert Benchley.
I like the idea of this secret history of trivia, where the whole Algonquin Round Table is sitting around distractedly playing quiz games. And, speaking of secret history, no less than Jonathan "Gulliver's Travels" Swift was one of the editors of The Atheneum Mercury, this 17th-century London newspaper that answered reader questions, many of which sound just like the questions from syndicated trivia-answering columns of today.
Book Help Web: You wrote very eloquently about how trivia and general knowledge is something that connects us in an increasingly fragmented and specialized world. What sorts of events or media do you think do an especially good job of building these connections?
Ken Jennings: When it comes to various kinds of quiz games, I usually judge the "canonicity" of trivia by its social utility: will knowing this fact help me in the real world at all? Might it come up in casual conversation at a dinner party, business meeting, or first date? By that measure, Jeopardy!'s trivia is incredibly successful. The show has always required knowledge that *seems* erudite, but can be grasped easily by a complete layperson in the subject. Some of the college quiz bowl events I describe in Brainiac, on the other hand, pride themselves on the abstruse, graduate-level knowledge they require. The Madagascan creation myth and the Hampson-Linde refrigeration cycle don't come up at too many cocktail parties in my experience, but, for these guys, that's part of the fun.
Book Help Web: Did your friend Earl enjoy the book? How about the other people mentioned in it? What has been their reaction?
Ken Jennings: Earl, who tried out with me for Jeopardy! but has yet to make it onto the show, took pains to point out that he was joking on page 211 when he suggested that we split my winnings even-Steven, so I tried to downplay that awkward moment in the final draft. But he's a fan of the book. Actually, dozens of the people described in Brainiac have told me they enjoyed reading it, and — given that trivia buffs are a notoriously nitpicky bunch — there have been very few quibbles. Even Rick Rosner, the superintelligent bouncer/nude model/cosmologist who sued Who Wants To Be a Millionaire, and who comes off as a total oddball in Brainiac, sent me a nice note complimenting me on his appearance.
Book Help Web: What question have you been expecting in your interviews, appearances, and tour that you haven't been asked yet? What answer would you give?
Ken Jennings: My son Dylan, who appears in Brainiac, is named after Bob Dylan, but nobody ever asks me what my favorite Dylan album is.
It's John Wesley Harding.
