Teenage Hipster in the Modern World

April 1, 2005
For the past 30 years, Jacobson has personified New Journalism, or, as one wag has described it, the Self-Interview. These 33 collected articles--published largely in " New York" , " Village Voice," " Esquire," and " Rolling Stone" --put Jacobson in the middle of the action, whether it's taking a groin shot from blaxploitation goddess Pam Grier, gifting the Dalai Lama with a Brooklyn Dodgers baseball cap ("These Dodgers," exclaims the holy man, "they are exiles from their native country . . . like Tibetans!"), or hanging backstage with rock-'n'-roll legend Chuck Berry. That said, Jacobson's persona is transparent enough to allow full expression to his subjects, who also include gangsters, hipsters, reverends, cabbies (his 1975 " New York" magazine piece was apparently the basis for TV's " Taxi" ), street folk, Republicans, and reggae singers. And Jacobson's smart, rich reportage is equally unobtrusive. In the process, he delivers nothing less than a riveting snapshot of life in the "modern world," particularly New York, these past three decades. (Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2005, American Library Association.)