It's also unusual in not being ghosted or co-written. As Fagen explains in the introduction, he originally expected to make a living as a writer rather than a musician, and in recent years has dabbled in journalism, writing on film music for Premiere magazine, and contributing to online magazine Slate, Harper's Bazaar and JazzTimes.
This is a collection of pieces, some previously published, others not, many of them about Fagen's youthful experiences of music.
Fagen, born in 1948, grew up in New Jersey, and spent his teens escaping to jazz clubs in New York, before attending Bard College in Annandale-On-Hudson where he met Steely Dan co-founder Walter Becker.
Jazz, blues and the soul music of Ray Charles were Fagen's musical first loves, and he led a piano trio in his high school years, although "by jazz standards, I was strictly an amateur". But, he writes: "I noticed that guys who played even worse than I did all seemed to be in bands and seemed to be having major fun. By the time I hooked up with [Walter Becker] a couple of years later, I'd pretty much given up on a literary career."
Becker was also a jazz fan, and in the course of seven fine albums recorded between 1972 and 1980 the two evolved a sophisticated synthesis of sharp pop songwriting and high-level jazz musicianship.
Eminent Hipsters will appeal to those who know Steely Dan's and Fagen's solo music, but there is also interesting stuff for those who don't. Fans will recognise, for example, the background to My Old School from 1973's Countdown to Ecstasy in a piece entitled "Class of '69", but you can still enjoy the book without having heard any of their albums.