Q: What does this review of a book called Prisoner of Trebekistan tell us?
This is a terrific book. It looks like it’s about Jeopardy and it says it’s about Jeopardy and it’s called Prisoner of Trebekistan but guess what? It’s actually about finding out how to do something really hard that you really don’t know how to do. And how that changes your life forever.
You learn how to study for Jeopardy — or anything, really — so for that alone, it’s worth having. I taught college English for ten years, which is why I think all college freshmen ought to have this book. It teaches you how to learn and it shows you that the point of learning is the way that new knowledge enlarges your world and changes you, not the knowledge itself. Don’t you wish you’d known that when you were eighteen? I wish I’d known that this clearly last week.
It’s a very funny memoir with a plot, or several, and high stakes: the author’s entire life. It’s a story about figuring things out. It’s about failure. Repeated, abject, public failure. It’s about how new knowledge changes the things you see every day. It makes you burst out laughing and frighten the cat. It’s a page-turner you can’t put down, especially if, like me, you have never followed Jeopardy and you don’t know what happens in the end. Even if you do know how it comes out, you’ll be completely fascinated by this look behind the scenes of the show.
And, in the course of the book, the author outlines the Eightfold Path to Enlightened Jeopardy, which turns out accidentally to be a wise and funny guide to a happier and weirder and far more interesting life.
That’s pretty impressive.
My favorite part is how the author learned more and more and more arcane and far-flung facts to play Jeopardy and how that completely changed the world for him. I’ve never seen a more convincing argument for learning everything you possibly can. You get out of your own skull, outside your limited experience, and discover how much more interesting and complex and wonderful the world is.
You get to the end of the book so excited that you want to jump out of your chair, call all your friends, hug everyone, quit wasting time, and go see the whole world–you want to do every important thing right now!
What a terrific book!
I saw this thing on a bookstore table, registered the fact that it was about Jeopardy! and automatically assumed it was some tawdry inside-dope kind of book — some axe-grinding revenge memoir or something. Instead, it sounds like a book I’d seriously want to read.
I tried to get on Jeopardy! as a contestant about eight years ago and the experience was fun in a mildly surrealistic way.
Even though Merv Griffin had already sold his interest in the show to King World, the audition was held in one of the conference rooms of what was then Griffin’s casino in Atlantic City. I stood with about fifty other people in a hallway lined with blown-up photos of Merv hobnobbing on his old talk show with the likes of Dinah Shore and Joey Bishop — names that would probably have tested the memory-capacity of even the most case-hardened Jeopardy buffs.
The first round was a written test — pretty straightforward questions on a variety of topics. We were then told to go down to the casino floor and wait for the list of names to be read off for the second round. I guess we were supposed to generate a little extra cash for the operation, but I hate gambling and casinos in general so I stood around sipping an overpriced Coca-Cola until I heard my name called off on the list.
The next round came a week later, in an even bigger conference room with a TV set. The voice of Alex Trebek filled the room, reading off answers as they flashed on the screen. The idea was to test our speed at working within the show’s answers-first-then-questions format.
I didn’t make the second cut, and since they didn’t reveal which answers I got wrong I don’t know if I blew it on the Famous Volcanos category or Foods That Start With Q. The next stage, I understand, would have been a dry-run version of the show designed to weed out people who might freeze up when required to think under bright lights and show-biz conditions.
Jeopardy! is the only TV game show I’d want to appear on, and I thought I had a decent shot at it. Whenever I watch it at the gym or the doctors office, I usually win a bundle of imaginary dollars.
Ah well. Maybe another time. Until then, it sounds like reading Prisoner of Trebekistan will be a good substitute.
STEVENHARTSITE 