Trying out one life after another

kw: book reviews, nonfiction, autobiographies, experimentation

I could say that A.J. Jacobs tries on lifestyles like suits of clothes, but that would be stretching things. I can try out a suit in about five minutes. He tries something for a month or a year at a time. His one-year experiments resulted in books: The Know-it-All, about reading through the entire Encyclopedia Britannica in one year, and The Year of Living Biblically. A year or two of further experimentation with his own life has resulted in The Guinea Pig Diaries: My Life as an Experiment.

Author Jacobs calls George Plimpton "one of my literary idols". He recalls Nellie Bly, who actually tried to circle the world in eighty days when Jules Verne's book was published, and had herself committed to an insane asylum to study and report on patient abuse (nearly lost her life on that one).

Experimenting with oneself is more commonly done for scientific purposes. Most recently, Barry Marshall infected himself with Helicobacter pylori to prove it causes ulcers, then cured himself with antibiotics to cement the proof. And what of Dr. Walter Reed, who died proving that yellow fever is carried by mosquitoes?

Being a compulsive sort, of course I will list the nine experiments that comprise the book:

• My Life as a Beautiful Woman – The author and his wife employ a lovely, young nanny, who is shy about dating. A. J. offers to be a go-between on a dating web site. Score: 2 dates of ambiguous success, about sixty creeps of varying creepiness, and the nanny found herself a boyfriend elsewhere…but felt the experiment had raised her confidence.
  
• My Outsourced Life – You can hire people to do stuff for you, such as write and answer mail, or buy birthday and anniversary gifts, or even read bedtime stories (over a speaker phone) to your children. The author calls this the best month of his life.
  
• I Think You're Fat – Brad Blanton promotes Radical Honesty, in which you remove the filters and say whatever pops into your head. Blanton loves controversy and directness. The worst month of the author's life.
  
• 240 Minutes of Fame – He happens to strongly resemble a shy celebrity who'd been invited to an awards event. He went in his place and found that being adulated really does cause mental derangement.
  
• The Rationality Project – Our psychology is composed of System 1 (the emotional reptile mind) and System 2 (our inner Einstein). Tried to live a month by System 2 only. Came to appreciate what both Systems are for. Also tried out forty toothpaste brands to find the "most rational".
  
• The Truth About Nakedness – During discussions with Mary-Louise Parker about an article she would write for Esquire, it was suggested she pose nude for the spread. She agreed, with the proviso that A. J. also pose nude. They did it, and he got another taste of how the other half feels.
  
• What Would George Washington Do? – Depends on how old he was. The Father of our Country was a truly self-made man, nowhere more so than in his personality, which he strove to hone into the dignified, reserved icon he is remembered as. The 110 Rules of deportment Washington followed are reproduced in an appendix. Even professional Washington "interpreters" can't follow them all, but this very emotional aristocrat seems to have done so. Our author did less well, but learned a great deal.
  
• The Unitasker – Heeding the warnings of some that multitasking actually makes us less efficient, A. J. tried to learn to focus on one thing at a time. This in a time when we stand in front of a microwave that's running for 30 seconds and say, "Hurry up!".
  
• Whipped – The author catered to his wife's every whim for one month. He also let her write the concluding Coda to the chapter. Her greatest month, and not too bad for him, either.
  

These were not conducted one after another without a break, but span fifteen years, including the Biblical and Encyclopedic years. I think it is safe to say there are more experiments in the offing. Perhaps one is ongoing right now; read his blog to find out.