Backgrounder: A.J. Jacobs
Photo by William Pelkey.
A.J. Jacobs, editor-at-large for Esquire Magazine, didn’t set out to become a stunt journalist. The whole thing started as a gag. It was 1996 and he was a staff writer at Entertainment Weekly. Shine, a weepy biopic about Australian pianist David Helfgott’s battle with schizoaffective disorder, had just hit theaters. Jacobs’s colleagues swore he was a dead ringer for Noah Taylor, the actor who played Helfgott as a teenager. When Jacobs’s editors learned that Taylor wasn’t attending the Oscars, they came up with a novel idea: the magazine would send Jacobs, in his place.
The absurdity of this idea immediately struck a chord with him. Overcoming his inherent shyness, Jacobs hopped a plane to Los Angeles, donned the requisite tuxedo, and sauntered down the red carpet, making occasional pit stops for interviews with the press. His faux-Australian accent was reminiscent of “the Lucky Charms leprechaun,” Jacobs told this reporter in February 2006, but no one seemed the least bit suspicious. It was one of the best nights of his life, he said.
“Everyone was kissing my butt,” Jacobs, 38, told this writer. “[The comedian] Chris Farley, may he rest in peace, told me I was brilliant.” He went entirely undiscovered until he ran into Geoffrey Rush, the star of Shine. Drunk on mock fame, Jacobs approached the celebrity with a casual “Hello, Geoffrey.” Rush slowly backed away, bewildered and slightly frightened-though apparently not frightened enough to alert security. (Maybe he just thought he was in danger of being cornered by some unsavory b-lister.)
After his brief stint as a movie star, Jacobs was hooked on stunt journalism. This, mind you, is the same man who graduated with a degree in philosophy from Brown University in 1990; the man who, according to his book Know-It-All, once harbored the suspicion that he was “the smartest boy in the world.” Now, here he was, jumping at the chance to document the experience of spending 24 consecutive hours in a La-Z-Boy recliner for Entertainment Weekly.
In the introduction to Know-It-All, Jacobs blames his “intellectual swan dive” on years spent “cramming [his] cranium with pop culture jetsam.” For a while, he was reconciled to this “long, slow slide into dumbness,” but around his 35th birthday, he decided it was time for some mental aerobics. And what better way to get his brain back in shape than to read the entire 32-volume set of the Encyclopedia Britannica?
It took him an entire year. But after trudging through 33,000 pages, Jacobs had more than a surfeit of trivia; he had a book: The Know-It-All: One Man’s Humble Quest to Become the Smartest Person in the World (2004). A reference book-cum-memoir, Know-It-All is also sit-down comedy, enlivened by Jacobs’s tongue-in-cheek commentary on his intellectual journey through the Britannica.
The title of Jacobs’s book reeked of irony, and most critics got the joke. From Time Magazine to The Washington Post, reviewers heaped praise on the book. In July 2004, Publishers Weekly said, “Jacobs’s ability to juxtapose his quirky, sardonic wit with oddball trivia make [Know-It-All] one of the season’s most unusual books.” He was feeling quite pleased with his efforts until he settled down one Sunday morning in October 2004 to peruse comedian Joe Queenan’s review in The New York Times Book Review.
As a rule, Times reviewers don’t resort to name-calling. But something about Jacobs’s self-mocking endeavor pushed Queenan to his breaking point. In his review, “A Little Learning Is a Dangerous Thing,” Queenan blasted Know-It-All as “interminable” and “mesmerizingly uninformative.” He pilloried Jacobs as “a prime example of that curiously modern innovation: the pedigreed simpleton” and closed with a stinging insult: “le mot juste here is ‘jackass.’”
Jacobs responded with a February 2005 essay, unambiguously titled “I Am Not a Jackass,” which also appeared in The Times Book Review. For a while, it looked like the Queenan-Jacobs kerfuffle might turn into a bona fide literary feud, the 21st century equivalent of Gore Vidal’s famous dust-up with Norman Mailer. Fortunately for Jacobs — a self-proclaimed conflict-avoider — Queenan opted not to bite back. (Perhaps, he donned his muzzle after The Times Public Editor Daniel Okrent deemed his treatment of Jacobs “gratuitously nasty.”)
In the end, Jacobs got his revenge in the form of a movie deal — three in fact. Radar Pictures optioned Know-It-All in 2004. Jacobs is currently working on the screenplay. To up the dramatic ante, his wife’s brother Eric, who serves as Jacobs’s intellectual arch nemesis in the book, has been turned into a romantic rival, vying for his wife’s affection. (Understandably, Jacobs’s wife finds this roman à clef a little creepy.)
In 2005, Universal Pictures purchased the rights to his Esquire feature “My Outsourced Life,” which chronicles a month spent living the personal version of Thomas Friedman’s book The World is Flat (2005). The project, which presented the author with the chance to farm-out everything from bickering with his wife, to writing rejection letters, is pregnant with comedic possibilities.
Jacobs’s newest book project has been optioned by Plan B Productions in advance of publication. The Year of Living Biblically, due out in Fall 2006, is just what it sounds like, a memoir recounting Jacobs’s effort to “live the bible” for 12 months. Adhering to biblical doctrine requires growing a “Kaczynski-esque beard,” consulting a priest whenever mildew appears in his shower, and giving the sin of Onan (or “self-abuse”) a wide berth, among other things.
If Jacobs happened on Queenan at a literary mixer, he’d have plenty to crow about. Of course, he observed piously, in an interview with this reporter, “it’s not Biblical to boast.”
SOURCES
“13 Things I Meant to Write About but Never Did.” Okrent, Daniel. The New York Times. 22 May 2005. http://www.nytimes.com/2005/05/22/weekinreview/22okrent.html
“A.J. Jacobs Goes Biblical.” Gwinn, Scott. Filmhobbit.com. 4 Aug. 2005. http://www.filmhobbit.com/new/AJ_Jacobs_goes_Biblical.html
“A Little Learning Is a Dangerous Thing.” Queenan, Joe. The New York Times Book Review. 3 Oct. 2004. http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9B07E7DE1E39F930A35753C1A9629C8B63
“Between the Lines.” Flamm, Matthew. Entertainment Weekly. http://www.ew.com/ew/report/0,6115,390595_5_0_,00.html
“Biography.” Jacobs, A.J. A.J.Jacobs.com. http://ajjacobs.com/blog/blog.asp
“Books: The Know-It-All.” Metacritic. 2004. http://www.metacritic.com/books/authors/jacobsA.J./knowitall
“David Helfgott.” Wikipedia.org. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Helfgott
“Diary: August 26, 2005. Zulkey.com. 25 Aug. 2005. http://www.zulkey.com/diary_archive_082605.html
Friedman, Thomas. The World is Flat. New York: Farrar, Straus, Giroux, 2005.
“I Am Not a Jackass.” Jacobs, A.J. The New York Times Book Review. 13 Feb. 2005. http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9904E4DD103BF930A25751C0A9639C8B63
Jacobs, A.J. Telephone interview. 8 Feb. 2006.
Jacobs, A.J. The Know-It-All: One Man’s Humble Quest to Become the Smartest Person in the World. New York: Simon & Shuster, 2004.
“My Outsourced Life.” Jacobs, A.J. Esquire. Sept. 2005. http://www.smartmoney.com/esquire/index.cfm?Story=20050909-outsource
“My Outsource Life-The Movie.” Rajghatta, Chidanand. Information Technology Professional Associations of America. 21 Aug. 2005. http://www.itpaa.org/modules.php?name=News&file=article&sid=1897
“Paramount Signs Up for Year of Living Biblically.” Weinberg, Scott. Rottentomatoes.com. 5 Aug. 2005. http://www.itpaa.org/modules.php?name=News&file=article&sid=1897
“Pop Quiz: A.J. Jacobs.” Sulkey, Claire. Mediabistro.com. 5 Aug. 2005. http://www.mediabistro.com/mbtoolbox/pop_quiz/pop_quiz_aj_jacobs_24286.asp
“Roach Explores His Outsourced Life.” Franklin, Garth. Darkhorizons.com. 17 Aug. 2005. http://www.itpaa.org/modules.php?name=News&file=article&sid=1897