A. J. Jacobs on knowing everything
By Tom Hardej
A. J. Jacobs may hold the distinction of being the only writer to grace these pages who is read by an American Idol. Jacobs definitely has a fan in David Cook, who recently mentioned The Year of Living Biblically as his current reading material. In a cab downtown in New York City, Jacobs thought carefully what to write as the inscription of The Know–It–All, which he was passing along to Cook to round out his collection, and decided on: “From one word nerd to another.” (That’s how Cook referred to himself while on the show.) But before all that, A. J. Jacobs and I met to discuss his writing new and old, chastity belts for men, Sheela na Gigs, and posing nude for Mary–Louise Parker.
As you know, Slice is a magazine for writers starting out. Can you start off by talking about how you got started writing?
I graduated college with no marketable skills, as many of us do. I was a philosophy major and they weren’t hiring a lot of philosophers at Fortune 500 companies, so I ended up trying to be a freelance writer, because the only thing I could sort of do was half put a sentence together. I started to freelance write for anyone who would take me. So I wrote for magazines—places like Glamour and other women’s magazines for some reason. My name was A. J. so they didn’t know I was a man. And I wrote for publications like Dental Economics, which is a fine publication for dentists who are interested in investing, one of, perhaps the best of, all the investment dentistry magazines.
But honestly I was not earning enough as a freelancer. It was really hard because I didn't have a lot of contacts, and it's just hard. It's hard being a freelancer. So, I moved to the Bay Area and started working for a tiny newspaper in California called the Antioch Daily Ledger. I was a general assignment reporter, so I wrote on everything from like PTA meetings to sewage taxes—that was a big issue for some reason. Low–hanging pants at the mall, that was a big breaking scandal at the time, so you know how long ago that was. And then I got a job as a fact–checker at the New York Observer. I was only there for about a year, and then I moved to Entertainment Weekly, where I covered B–list stars. And about nine years ago, I moved to Esquire.
How did you decide to go into books from there?
I had always wanted to be a book writer. I wrote this humor piece for a small San Francisco–based humor magazine and it was a back page little chart of the similarities between Jesus and Elvis. It was called The Two Kings. It was based on something Elvis himself had said, that he might be the Second Coming. So I just did some investigative reporting and I found the goofy parallels between them.
You know, Jesus walked on water; Elvis surfed. So it was basically that joke over and over again. I was deluded enough to think I could make a humor book out of it, so I sent it to a bunch of agents. One happened to be an Elvis fan, and he sold it to another editor who was an Elvis fan. And I got that little book.
I did a few of those sort of novelty books. But I had always wanted to write a real, narrative nonfiction book, but I never had the right idea. And then, finally, I came up with the idea to read the encyclopedia from A to Z. And the guy who had edited my first book was now working at Simon & Schuster. I called him up and said, what do you think of this crazy idea? And he said, let's do it.
What brought you the idea for the next book?
Both of my ideas are partly from my family. The [idea for The Know–It–All] came because my father had started to read the encyclopedia when he was a kid, but he only made it to the Bs. Boomerang, I think, is where he stopped. He had enough. Because he had a life. He had kids and a real job. So, I decided to take up where he left off, you know, to try to finish what he started, and remove that black spot from our family history.
The [idea for The Year of Living Biblically] came from a couple of places. I grew up with no religion at all, and this was my way to dive into religion. And also, just that I had written a book on the encyclopedia, and what is the only book that can trump the encyclopedia? And I thought, the Bible. I wanted to find a way to tackle the Bible. And I thought, why not try to live it?
By Tom Hardej
A. J. Jacobs may hold the distinction of being the only writer to grace these pages who is read by an American Idol. Jacobs definitely has a fan in David Cook, who recently mentioned The Year of Living Biblically as his current reading material. In a cab downtown in New York City, Jacobs thought carefully what to write as the inscription of The Know–It–All, which he was passing along to Cook to round out his collection, and decided on: “From one word nerd to another.” (That’s how Cook referred to himself while on the show.) But before all that, A. J. Jacobs and I met to discuss his writing new and old, chastity belts for men, Sheela na Gigs, and posing nude for Mary–Louise Parker.
As you know, Slice is a magazine for writers starting out. Can you start off by talking about how you got started writing?
I graduated college with no marketable skills, as many of us do. I was a philosophy major and they weren’t hiring a lot of philosophers at Fortune 500 companies, so I ended up trying to be a freelance writer, because the only thing I could sort of do was half put a sentence together. I started to freelance write for anyone who would take me. So I wrote for magazines—places like Glamour and other women’s magazines for some reason. My name was A. J. so they didn’t know I was a man. And I wrote for publications like Dental Economics, which is a fine publication for dentists who are interested in investing, one of, perhaps the best of, all the investment dentistry magazines.
But honestly I was not earning enough as a freelancer. It was really hard because I didn't have a lot of contacts, and it's just hard. It's hard being a freelancer. So, I moved to the Bay Area and started working for a tiny newspaper in California called the Antioch Daily Ledger. I was a general assignment reporter, so I wrote on everything from like PTA meetings to sewage taxes—that was a big issue for some reason. Low–hanging pants at the mall, that was a big breaking scandal at the time, so you know how long ago that was. And then I got a job as a fact–checker at the New York Observer. I was only there for about a year, and then I moved to Entertainment Weekly, where I covered B–list stars. And about nine years ago, I moved to Esquire.
How did you decide to go into books from there?
I had always wanted to be a book writer. I wrote this humor piece for a small San Francisco–based humor magazine and it was a back page little chart of the similarities between Jesus and Elvis. It was called The Two Kings. It was based on something Elvis himself had said, that he might be the Second Coming. So I just did some investigative reporting and I found the goofy parallels between them.
You know, Jesus walked on water; Elvis surfed. So it was basically that joke over and over again. I was deluded enough to think I could make a humor book out of it, so I sent it to a bunch of agents. One happened to be an Elvis fan, and he sold it to another editor who was an Elvis fan. And I got that little book.
I did a few of those sort of novelty books. But I had always wanted to write a real, narrative nonfiction book, but I never had the right idea. And then, finally, I came up with the idea to read the encyclopedia from A to Z. And the guy who had edited my first book was now working at Simon & Schuster. I called him up and said, what do you think of this crazy idea? And he said, let's do it.
What brought you the idea for the next book?
Both of my ideas are partly from my family. The [idea for The Know–It–All] came because my father had started to read the encyclopedia when he was a kid, but he only made it to the Bs. Boomerang, I think, is where he stopped. He had enough. Because he had a life. He had kids and a real job. So, I decided to take up where he left off, you know, to try to finish what he started, and remove that black spot from our family history.
The [idea for The Year of Living Biblically] came from a couple of places. I grew up with no religion at all, and this was my way to dive into religion. And also, just that I had written a book on the encyclopedia, and what is the only book that can trump the encyclopedia? And I thought, the Bible. I wanted to find a way to tackle the Bible. And I thought, why not try to live it?