Hand Me My Quill!

A.J. Jacobs & Cowboy Books

When was the last time you read the one & only U.S. Constitution? To be perfectly honest, y’all, I haven’t read it at all — it’s on my list, I promise!

A.J. Jacobs admits as much in the opening of his new book, The Year of Living Constitutionally: One Man’s Humble Quest to Follow the Constitution’s Original Meaning. It’s exactly what it sounds like, & it’s right up Jacobs’ alley: he’s become known for being a human guinea-pig, performing experiments that highlight the hogwash that is sometimes veiled when thinking too much in the abstract. His speciality lies in removing the veil by taking things literally, thus revealing any bird-brained silliness. Which might seem like a bit of blasphemy if we could all say we’ve read the Constitution inside & out, but that is the brilliant jumping-off point of this book: for such an important document, indeed the founding document of this country, few seem to have actually read it, though we inherently trust that those who should read it have — it exists at a remove for most of us, creating a certain aura of foggy mystery & awe-inspiring respectability. Jacobs’ goal is to dispel this mistiness & make plain what this very important document actually says, & how seriously we should really take it.

Much of the U.S. Constitution comes from its time: the parchment it was written on is made of calfskin, & it was composed by hand in ink with a feather quill pen. Jacobs wrote his entire book with a quill pen (or at least part of it, I saw the papers myself, y’all!) in order to fully immerse himself in the world of the founding fathers, as well as sporting a tri-corn hat & carrying a musket around New York City, among other dicier & more comical trials. His writing is an effervescently straightforward account of his dealings in the absurdities hidden in this time-honored document, & his interactions with senators & other state officials are as goofy as they are serious (one delightfully ridiculous passage involves Jacobs petitioning his local senator to become a privateer, which is essentially a legal pirate in times of war, using a friend’s fishing boat as the registered vessel). His wife, Julie, is an ongoing foil in the background of the unfolding story — you can feel her rolling her eyes & shrugging her shoulders as A.J. continually insists on his various experiments.

Working its way through the Constitution point by point, the book is actually an incredible deep dive into not only the Constitution itself, but the minds & environment of the founding fathers, as well as the current legal system, & especially the contrast thereof. The contrast is where the book thrives, the contrast is indeed the point, y’all. A quote from legal scholar Kermit Roosevelt III sums it up nicely: “I’ll be honest: This is a funny book. And — dare I say it — the book actually offers better ideas about how to improve modern constitutional democracy than most legal scholarship.” Darn tootin’!

Now, don’t tell Humphrey, but I moonlight as a barber to pay the rent (a puppet’s gotta eat!), & I’ve been cuttin’ ol’ A.J.’s hair for some time now — during one such haircut, I asked him a few questions about his book, & he illuminated me with some facts about hair in the old days. Keep readin’!

Tell me about the book & your work in general.

Well first, thank you Mr. Books for agreeing to talk to me, it’s quite an honor! My book is about my attempt to get inside the minds of our founding fathers & figure out what we should do with America & democracy.

How did that shake down?

Many years ago I wrote a book called A Year of Living Biblically, & that one was because I knew nothing about religion & I thought one way to learn about religion would be to actually to dive in — I like to be a ‘method writer’, there are method actors I like to be a method writer — & to live by the Bible as literally as possible. So that meant the ten commandments, but it also meant growing a huge beard because the Bible says you cannot shave the corners of your beard, I didn’t know where the corners were so I just let the whole thing grow, & it was a huge mass of tangled topiary. I also stoned adulterers as the Bible instructs, but I used very small stones, like pebbles, so as not to cause grievous injury. A lot of the book was about how literally should we take the Bible, a lot of it was about how fundamentalism is a very bad way to approach a text, & that’s what leads to people saying the world was created 5000 years ago or being gay is a sin, & I always thought I could do a sequel with the Constitution. It was the same idea: how literally should we take it? How much should we try & get into the mindset & the meaning of 1789 vs. how much does it evolve over the years & change with society? So this was my attempt, using the toolset of the founding fathers, so that meant I bought a musket over ye olde internet, & I carried that around the Upper West Side of New York, & I wrote the book with a quill pen, & I quartered soldiers in my apartment as is my 3rd Amendment right, & I tried to become a pirate, which is mentioned in the Constitution. So it was a wild year. The conclusion was many things, but one of them was that it was written in a very different time; there are some amazing parts of the Constitution, but it was also 237 years ago & we do have to evolve.

What are some of the hair facts that you learned from 237 years ago?

One of the big adventures was related to hair because I was trying to adopt the customs of the 1700s, & it turns out men loved to give chunks of hair to women, not even as a romantic gesture but as a gift of friendship. George Washington gave a lot of locks of his hair to female friends, & I don’t think he was trying to get with them, I could be wrong, but it was just a show of respect & honor. So I decided to do the same & I snipped some locks of hair & gave it to some of my wife’s friends & they found it off-putting, maybe a little creepy, one found it very flattering, they admired my commitment.

It is kind of a good metaphor for the Constitution as well, how customs change over time as drastically as giving someone your hair — it seems so weird to us now. It kind of drills home the point of how different things are now.

That’s a great point, Mr. Books, that’s exactly it. If you do that now, which I did, you come off as a serial killer. Whereas back in George Washington’s day, the first president, the father of our country, gave chunks of hair to multiple women & that was considered a lovely gesture.

Do you have any other beauty tips from the 1700s?

Well I do! First of all, they did wear a lot of wigs back then, it seems for a couple of reasons. One is that a lot of men seem to have gone bald from syphilis, so this was a good thing to do — George Washington actually did not wear a wig, he wore his regular hair but he powdered it, that’s not something I love, the powder, I think I’m allergic to it.

Did you ever wear powder in your hair?

I did, actually, I tried to put some powder in my hair but it just wasn’t for me. But yeah, they wore a lot of wigs — lice was a big problem back then too, they didn’t have the fancy shampoos we have nowadays. I also read about the history of barbers & getting shaved & getting your haircut, & according to some of my sources it wasn’t quite as traumatic as going to the dentist with these Medieval torture instruments to pull out your teeth, but it wasn’t a pleasant experience, getting shaved, they had these straight razors that may not have been the sharpest, so they were taking off layers of skin along with the beard. So I’m very grateful that I have you, Mr. Books with your fancy modern equipment. I came across an anecdote during my research for my book, The Puzzler, about the oldest riddles in the world & the oldest jokes in the world — jokes are kind of the cousins of puzzles, & one of the first recorded jokes, I think it’s from 200 BCE, goes like this: a man went to the barber & the barber was known to be quite talkative; so the barber says to the man, ‘How would you like your hair cut?’ & the man says, ‘In silence.’ It’s not bad for a 2500-year-old joke.

I know you’d said you rushed to get the Constitution book together before the election, how do you feel about that?

My publisher wanted it out ASAP because they thought it was extremely relevant & timely, which hopefully it is, & I was able to do a lot of interviews, none as esteemed as yourself, Mr. Books, no one certainly with as cool a bowtie as yours. But I was on The Daily Show with Jon Stewart, & I think my hope was to get across that originalism, which is what the Supreme Court practices right now, the conservative members anyway, is not a good approach to the Constitution & that we should not be obsessed with that original meaning. We need to look at the past, yes, but also we need to look at the present & the future & what the consequences are. But I tried to do it with a light touch, because if I went in too heavy-handed then it’ll just be preaching to the choir, so if someone is more inclined to have a different view, maybe they would actually read my book & not throw it across the room.

So you see humor & lightness as a gateway into something more serious.

I do, I love that idea.

It’s very Humphrey Magazine.

That’s true. Humphrey Magazine is a great inspiration. I love Humphrey, I bought the first issue & every issue since, & I’m super honored to be in it. And I will say, I’m not comparing myself to Ben Franklin, but maybe I am, he used humor so brilliantly to get across serious points, including at the Constitutional Convention. He told a joke, he said that there was this French lady who said to her sister, ‘Why is it that I’m the only person I’ve ever met who is correct on every single issue?’ Ben Franklin’s point, of course, is that we are all the French lady, we all think that we’re correct on every issue, but in fact we’re not, we have our biases. So he was saying try to look past your biases, try to have a flexible mind, & that is just a lesson I love, it’s something that we need nowadays more than ever when we’re so intransigent & tribal & not solution-oriented. He was a character, that Ben Franklin. He also said in his autobiography that when you’re arguing with someone, don’t use words like ‘absolutely’ or ‘obviously’ or ‘clearly,’ you should say things like, ‘it seems to me’ & ‘I could be wrong, but’, & I think that is such good advice. I try to do that myself.

 The Year of Living Constitutionally: One Man’s Humble Quest to Follow the Constitution’s Original Meaning, 304 pages, Crown Publishing Group, 2024. Get to readin'!