What is a Memory Man ?

September 13, 2013 9:00 AM

From "The remains of the day"by Kazuo Ishiguro.- In one regreattable case,which I myself witnesses, it had become an established sport in the house for guests to ring for the buttler and put to him random questions of the order of,say, who had won the Derby in such and such a year, rahter as one might to a Memory Man at the music hall.- What is "a Memory Man" ?
posted by mizukko to Writing & Language (7 answers total)

Best answer: It's a musical hall/vaudeville performer with photographic memory (or really good grasp of trivia serving as functionally the same thing.) The 39 Steps features a character who does that.
posted by griphus at 9:03 AM on September 13, 2013 [7 favorites]

Leslie Welch would be one example.
posted by pipeski at 9:04 AM on September 13, 2013

Memory men (or "memory acts") committed to memory wide swathes of information and trivia, then answered random questions from audiences to prove their feats of memory. Leslie Welch, also known as "walking encyclopedia," was one such performer.
posted by Elsa at 9:04 AM on September 13, 2013

Pretty much what it says on the label.

A guy would come out on the stage, and members of the audience would attempt to stump him with random trivia questions.
posted by Ruthless Bunny at 9:04 AM on September 13, 2013

The 39 Steps has a famous Memory Man scene.
Jimmy Bottle was the inspiration.
posted by Ideefixe at 9:12 AM on September 13, 2013

Just to clear something up because I know you ask a lot of questions about English idioms and the like -- this is not a common English-language thing anymore. It is something that many modern Americans/British people would not have heard of now.
posted by brainmouse at 9:34 AM on September 13, 2013 [6 favorites]

I'd never heard of such a thing, but with context I basically knew what they meant.

They have not existed since well before I was born, but I was familiar enough with that term "Music Hall" to know that music hall acts involved people doing interesting things (feats of strength, magic, ventriloquism, twins singing together, comedy). That, combined with the context of asking a butler questions as if he were a human encyclopedia, had me understanding that a Memory Man must have done an act involving answering difficult questions that could be memorized.

I thought that context might be helpful.
posted by tchemgrrl at 11:03 AM on September 13, 2013 [1 favorite]