The Encyclopaedia Philomena
Philomena Cunk
Two Roads hardcover £12.99
**** (4 stars) review by Steven Hampton
This practically definitive, if not quite definitively practical, volume is a guide to learning. An encyclopaedia that’s just like the so-handy kind of condensed package of sundry items and supremely fascinating information that we used to have at home when I was a kid. It is an all-purpose repository of superior knowledge, not unlike that single-volume reference Enquire Within. That was a weighty book, but this is a rather lighter text. You see, it’s so fashionably lite, it might leave you feeling light-headed with glee... the glee of eccentric absurdism that is.
From ‘Adam & Eve’ to ‘zombies’, Cunk On Everything covers the sum total of vital human knowledge to date. It has all you could want to know, but are too witless to ask. Perhaps innocence, not ignorance, is the New Bliss. If you have heard of Occam’s razor, here is a scalpel of stupidity, dissecting human reality. It charges forward with a head full of steam and there’s just no point in arguing or feeling any sense of exasperation at the book’s various spelling errors, because they’re all clearly intentional.
Sincerely, going on about historical Britain, Cunk tells it like it never was: The ‘BayWatch Tapestry’ is “one of the few photographs made of string”, and (of course!) “if the Anglo-Saxons had been on Twitter today, it would be exactly like it already is.” On the subject of ‘animals’, Cunk declares that only ducks, insects, snails, and tigers are important, while the Art world is defined by the likes of Michael Angelo and Tony Hart. Meanwhile: “Ballet is like dancing, but you don’t do it yourself, someone else does it.”
Monty Python, in all of the comedy troupe’s media guises from TV or movies, to stage, recordings, and picture books, have long since defined the best of British humour, with a subtle combination of intellectualism and the infantile, or the profound in contrast with the puerile. Cunk’s article on ‘books’ notes how the reading social media on our smart phones is better, probably, and The Phone Book offers the best of both worlds. Confused? You will be, when the copious non sequiturs kick in, and they boggle your mind as practical inventions are written off as discoveries. ‘Police’ were discovered, but ‘Legs’ were invented. ‘Evolutionary psychology’ is capable of explaining “why people have children” - and it’s “to become so tired that death isn’t such a big surprise”.
Why do Buddhists make such a fuss about ‘knowing yourself’ when you can find out by simply filling in a questionnaire? History is defined by references to ‘black and white photo times’ when many media-related things were “the Internet of their day”, as if an exciting modernity was crushed by a wave of humdrum stuff. There’s also frequent recourse to stream-of-unconsciousness narratives disguised as irreverent humour, with nothing worthy to say about important subjects and far too much comment about trivia. Thankfully, Cunk wisely devotes more pages to ‘the human mind’ than to ‘hiccups’.
During the 1980s, ice cream was by revolutionised Viennetta, which is “what ice cream would look like on its wedding day”, or perhaps it’s what the Taj Mahal is made of? It’s unfortunate that Jesus can’t even be mentioned here without off-beat and scattershot allusions to Danny Dyer, but they probably deserve each other, just as nightmares follows newspapers. Shakespeare gets a whopping whole nine pages, explaining how he invented theatre and perfected English, just in time to save many poor people from boredom in those olden days of yore and forsooth.
While writing about television, Cunk opines that phones “used to be a thing for communicating with people.” Now, as new phones get bigger (to match the size of TV sets?), they are “for looking at and ignoring people.” Radical criticism and wild interpretations of unaccountably popular TV continues with an assertive assertion that Top Gear was actually Last Of The Summer Wine rebooted. When considering ‘truth’, Cunk confesses that “I might have been made up by someone for a laugh.” Like many meta-fictional conclusions “it’s a comforting thought.”
