Wit, humor draws reader in with 'Guinea Pig Diaries'

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St. Louis Jewish Book Festival

Wit, humor draws reader in with 'Guinea Pig Diaries'

BY REPPS HUDSON, SPECIAL TO THE JEWISH LIGHT

A.J. Jacobs, author of The Guinea Pig Diaries: My Life as an Experiment (Simon & Schuster, $25) has made his reputation as a humorous yet incisive writer by performing gags and then writing books about them. He read the Encyclopedia Britannica and wrote the best-selling book, The Know-It-All. Then came The Year of Living Biblically, in which he dressed in period robes, grew a bushy beard and, though an agnostic, tried to follow the Ten Commandments — and the rest of the Torah's 613 mitzvot.

Jacobs is an editor-at-large for Esquire magazine, which means he has one of the best writing jobs in all of American journalism. He gets to pitch wild ideas to his editor, then spend weeks or even months doing the reporting and writing. Who wouldn't covet such a gig, Tenth Commandments or not?

Jacobs' special genius is that while you may think he's making non-stop jokes, he's really scoring quite serious points about contemporary society and times. His range of experiments for this book — things he's come up with to explore and write about with wit and good-nature humor — is broad and creative.

Jacobs, who lives in New York City with his wife and children, has taken on several identities to see what happens. For instance, he enlists Michelle, his kids' nanny — what choice did she have if she wanted to keep working for his family? — to be his front for assuming the identity of a woman on the Internet. Then he plays along as dozens of crude and obnoxious men, by e-mail, hit on him playing her.

(Obvious point No. 1: You never know who's who on the Internet. Why doesn't everybody get that?)

Jacobs finds so many boors to gull into making stupid moves. He and Michelle devised a system for rejecting electronic suitors, like if a guy says his best feature is his butt or uses too many exclamation marks or can't spell.

Here's a sample of Jacobs entertaining style:

"Aha. I hit the sleazeball jackpot, a longtime pickup artist. I tell him I'm glad my womanly radar warned me against him.

"He says, 'I was hoping online dating would introduce me to different girls than the ones I pick up and seduce in bars, clubs and Starbucks. So far not.'

"It was the closest thing to an admission of guilt that I was going to get.

"I write: 'Just remember as you wade through the dating pool [his lame metaphor, by the way]: we women are not just here to be conquered as part of the game.'

"I am a magnet for scammers. Everyone wants down my pants. Michelle probably would have sniffed this guy out eventually, but I'm proud that I saved her from a date."

In another chapter, Jacobs outsources to services in India many of the petty details of his life, an idea he picked up by reading New York Times columnist Tom Friedman's best-seller, The World Is Flat. His helpers halfway around the world are Honey K. Balani and Asha Sarella, both pictured at the beginning of the chapter.

This experiment Jacobs tries can only happen because we in the States are tied so closely to call centers and services in India, where English is commonly spoken and plenty of intelligent, educated, underemployed men and women are eager to do our bidding – for a price, of course.

His aides abroad help Jacobs muddle through his week, ordering flowers for his wife and handling little chores that take up time. He even asks Honey to help him worry about things, like a business transaction, that aren't going well. She tells him she will worry about things for him, the perfect solution.

"My outsourcing of my neuroses was one of the most successful experiments of the month," Jacobs writes. "Every time I would start to ruminate, I'd remind myself that Honey was already on the case, and I'd relax."

Chapters report on other roles, like what it's like to be fat; a celebrity; naked; George Washington, by trying to follow our first president's "110 Rules of Civility and Decent Behavior in Company and Conversation" (like don't gloat, as when Barack Obama won the election and don't spit into the sink when washing one's hands) and pleasing his forbearing wife, Julie, by asking her what he could do better to become a better mate.

The Guinea Pig Diaries is a fast read, with plenty of chuckles along the way. My bet is, though, that the points Jacobs' makes humorously will stay in readers' minds quite a while.

A.J. Jacobs

WHO: Author of The Guinea Pig Diaries: My Life as an Experiment

WHEN: 1 p.m. Tuesday, Nov. 10

WHERE: The JCC Staenberg Family Complex in Creve Coeur

HOW MUCH: $12 or free with a series ticket ($60)

TICKETS: 314-442-3299 or www.brownpapertickets.com