What's Nostalgia Got To Do With It? —
People Pay Good Money For This Sort Of Thing
Vol. I, Issue II - Oct. 2010

Thus, we have believed it important to have an encyclopedia which could be consulted on all matters concerning the arts and sciences and which would serve as much to guide those who have the courage to work for the instruction of others as to enlighten those who are only teaching themselves. ~Diderot, Preliminary Discourse

The encyclopedia salesman died in 2007. Throughout the Internet, a story about Scott "Willie" Lohman, a parodic play off of Arthur Miler's Willie Lohman, traveled like a virus through cyberspace, eulogizing that he had taken his last steps for Encyclopedia Britannica. Wikipedia's wireless routes had finally solved one of the hardest mathematical conundrums—"the traveling salesman problem"—one the most studied problems in computational mathematics. With the death of the last salesman, mathematicians solved the paradox: there was no perfect profitable route for a salesman to disseminate knowledge. Indeed, the best, most direct and shortest route found its solution in cyberspace, with its simulated space and digital knowledge. Wikipedia published the solution.

Willie's death occurred despite both World Book Encyclopedia and Encyclopedia Britannica, the two largest employers of encyclopedia salesman, neither denied nor confirmed that they had given up on its traveling sales division. For decades the encyclopedia salesman was the main vehicle in which portable knowledge circulated through the US. With book in hand, he traveled up to a 2000 square mile area selling information to an emerging middle class. The birth of the encyclopedia salesman is not known, though his mercantile ancestors found their origins in the 1840's, when the American industrial revolution rose. The salesman was the hand that reached out to rural America, the first domestic exporter/ importer. By the 1930's there were over 300,000 salesmen, though some say the numbers were in the millions. But the encyclopedia salesman was a breed all in to himself. He did not peddle cosmetics, vacuums, snake oil, or other goods of capitalist desire that would help define the character of the American middle class. The encyclopedia salesman sold the promise of uplift through portable knowledge. Britannica's mission: to have a set of encyclopedia in every home in the US and eventually the world. By the early 80's, 40 percent of American households found a spot in their homes for hundreds of pounds of books. There is no entry in the on-line Britannica or Wikipedia or World Book that covers the history of the encyclopedia salesman. What will be known? Perhaps a digital footnote noting that this is the moment, the point some historian from some future date will write: this is the instant when America ended its fascination with print knowledge. Willie Lohman died on a humid day in June, 2007.

* * *

I don’t remember his name. I don't remember exactly what he looked like. I do know that he wore a suit in August. I do know that he was the only salesman in one of the most populated Latino counties in Los Angeles, the San Fernando Valley. I do know that he was Mexican. The rest I will try to recall.

His car was a clean, brown Pinto. Though his car well kept, he did not drive it house to house, an act that would not be strange in LA. No our salesman parked his Pinto nearly a mile away. Every morning he would depart from his car and walk a carefully planned out route; every step perfectly planned out. Like all good salesman of his time, the night before he entered a new neighborhood, he mapped out the exact route, marking meticulously the shortest and most direct path. When first seeing him from a distance, you would think he was lost or confused, or perhaps you might think he was a neighbor who was searching for a long lost memory or a home he once called upon during his youth. He would not go door to door; rather he zigzagged through the streets, sometimes only visiting one house per block. Every morning he would grab four volumes of the World Book Encyclopedia, A, E, MN, and O and follow his route, a journey he had now planned out for nearly 10 years.

He came to our green stucco house when I was 10. Our fifth rental that stood separate from a small apartment complex of people I never knew. When the salesman knocked, I knew who he was. I had seen him for over a week, weaving his way through the neighborhood, waving to every person who approached or drove by him. He passed our house four times before he knocked. Every time I was alone. The day my mother was home, he knocked. My mom answered the door, as if she had planned this day, her steps brisk and assured of his visit. She let him in. He did not begin selling his encyclopedia, rather he asked if I liked my school: "You attend Toluca Lake Elementary, don’t you?" His voice absent of any hint Spanish, as monotone as the brown suite he wore. "Yes," I said, "but...but," my mother interrupts, "he skipped a grade you know." He looks at her. He found his way in, the focus of his sales pitch in sight—me. He continues to ask me questions about my school, what I liked about it and the subjects I found interesting. With each answer he would refer to his books, highlight my knowledge with his meticulously documented encyclopedia. They were beautiful. Faux brown leather and gold leaf edges, thick paper that slid like plastic silk over my forefinger. "A library at your fingertips," he repeated like a slogan over and over.

My mother bought the full set and the supplemental volumes, which, he assured us, would come quarterly. 200 lbs and a footprint of 5 feet took up valuable real-estate in our 800 square apartment for nearly a decade. This was the largest purchase my mother ever made. We paid in monthly installments; it took five years to pay for them. By then, however, I had lost interest. Despite the supplemental volumes, the organized knowledge in my encyclopedia slowly escaped the bindings. Despite their physical enormity, they simply could not keep up with pace of knowledge: every moment a new anecdote; every day a new fact; every year a revision of history would tarnish the gold leaf of the pages. I think somewhere around here, I still have A, E, MN, and O.

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