Customer Reviews

The CEO of the Sofa

5 star:		(6)
4 star:		(11)
3 star:		(14)
2 star:		(4)
1 star:		(5)

 

 

CEO of the Sofa is an uneven book. It's basically a collection of some of P.J.'s writings on everything from Hillary Clinton to driving to being a new father. It is linked together in an homage to Holmes' "The Autocrat of the Breakfast Table" as a series of diatribes P.J. unleashes on the Democrats next door, his assistant, his wife, his daughter, his godson and the baby sitter (usually as his alter ego, the Political Nut).

I can't, in good faith, recommend this book to non-P.J. fans. The wit is there but the book lacks the coherence, factual analysis and dogged persistence on a subject that characterize his best books - Eat the Rich, Parliament of Whores and All the Trouble in the World. Even his previous collections - Vacations in Hell, Give War a Chance and Age and Guile - had related articles sandwiched together in sections. This just sounds like someone rambling on and on from topic to topic with no rhyme or reason. If you're not familiar with O'Rouke, I recommend the above-mentioned books, which are excellent.

Some of the stuff in the book is very good. Some of it isn't. His open letter to Democrats, his discussion of how being a parent changed his outlook, his (well-deserved) lambasting of Hillary and his analysis of the impeachement scandal in which no side is spared his sharp tongue, are top notch. But the CEO linkages annoyed me. Moreover, he took his old articles and pasted in asides to his (fictional) audience. The pasting is obvious and the asides are unnecessary and distracting. If he'd just done this as a coherent collection of his writings, it would probably be a 3.5-4 star book. As it is, it's 3-3.5 stars for PJ fans, probably less for novices.

P.J. O'Rourke spares no one, especially not himself, in his sharp and funny observations on life, politics, culture, more politics, and family. I like his writing. Humor is a risky and delicate thing because it depends so much on knowing the reality behind the joke. For example, I am sure that there are many hysterical jokes that, oh, glass blowers tell among themselves that would elude me completely.

O'Rourke has the knack of being able to find the universal in some rather arcane scenery - like the bureaucrats in India, and has a lot of fun with wine tasting and altering the senses in general. He also likes to tee off on both of our political parties, though, being a Republican there seems to be more glee in his hammering on the Democrats (or maybe my being conservative and Republican, I get more glee from his pounding on the other guys. But I must admit to relishing his exposing the hypocrisy on the right as well.).

This book is a collection of his published articles (at least one unpublished before) that are woven (pasted - pastiched?) together as if they came out of events in O'Rourke's life rather being set up as separate articles. This device works OK and offers the P.J. the opportunity the opportunity of setting up a few more laughs.

I am sure you will enjoy some articles more than others, as I did. Again, humor is a difficult thing and sometimes you find yourself outside the point of the joke. But there are plenty enough delicious barbs that you will find yourself laughing out loud more than few times. It ends in August of 2001 so it comes from the pre-9/11 world and that shows a bit. But, hey, it is still very good stuff.

Four stars: while it is very good writing, it isn't the best O'Rourke - but it is still far better than most other satirical commentary.

I'm a big PJ fan, and found much in 'The CEO of the Sofa' to enjoy. The problem is the good parts are embedded -- like a fly in amber -- in a conceit that never really clicked: PJ's homage to Oliver Wendell Holmes's 'The Autocrat of the Breakfast Table.'

What PJ has done here is create a semi-fictional community, and embedded his essays (à la Holmes) as monologues delivered to these family members, friends, neighbors, and his long-suffering assistant, Max. To his credit, PJ is very up-front about what he's trying to do. In the Acknowledgements, he writes, 'Holmes pulled this [conceit] off with so much wit and charm that there was only one way I could pay his idea the compliment it deserved. I swiped it.' Like a successful actor or director, PJ seems to be in a position to get his publisher to indulge his personal pet projects. Like Holmes, PJ is witty. Charming, I guess, is a matter of taste. I found it dull and contrived, and skipped over it as quickly as I could in order to get to the actual essays.

The good news here is that most of the essays are PJ in fine form. Fans of 'Parliament of Whores' will savor his coverage of the United Nations Millennium Summit. And if you enjoyed his deconstruction of Jimmy and Rosalyn Carter's tome way back when, you'll prize the way he tears apart 'Guidelines for Bias-Free Writing' and (especially) 'It Takes a Village.' ('The village is Washington. You are the child.').

Interestingly, the parts I found most funny were those that involved, or were suggested by, Christopher Buckley. The Blind (Drunk) Wine Taste Test and the section titled 'Who the F___ Are They?' are, for pure humor writing, some of the best things in the book.

It was Christopher Buckley who coined the equation PJ = SJ [Perelman] + LSD, but you won't find much of the latter in this book. The author of the classic 'How to Drive Fast on Drugs while Getting Your Wing-Wang Squeezed and Not Spill Your Drink' now finds himself writing about childcare, the stock market, and the vicissitudes of home computers. These are some of the sections I skimmed over, as PJ veered terrifyingly close to (Lord have mercy) Andy Rooney-dom.

Despite those scares, though, there is still great material here. I found the occasional recycled joke, but there are also many true O'Rourkean one-liners to enjoy ('What a feckless, timid, timeserving [Republican] revolution that was in 1994, as if the sans culottes had stormed the Bastille to get themselves jobs as prison guards.' [p. 102]).

So ... good try on the Holmes thing, PJ. It wasn't my cup of tea, but *de gustibus ...*. The rest is still worth the trip.

O'Rourke is back with his latest broadsides in this book, which is a series of reprinted essays loosely framed as monologues given to his household. This is of course an homage to Oliver Wendell Holmes, and does not work particularly well. There is a reason why Holmes' work is in obscurity...

Nevertheless, any collection by P.J. is bound to be entertaining, and this one is good. It's also rare to find a funny book which has a conservative/libertarian point of view. After all, how many conservative writers/commentators do you know who are actually funny? Most are simply obnoxious, a la Rush Limbaugh - O'Rourke is funny, and the writing is good. This is a worthy collection - just don't expect the high level of "Holidays in Hell" or "Parliament of Whores".

I generally rate the worth of a P.J. O'Rourke book by the number of times I hoot out in laughter. As compared to past works such as The Bachelor's Home Companion or Parliament of Whores, where the hoot-to-page ratio was about 1:3, this one was about 1:75.

I hate to say it, but P.J.'s getting old. This book is soaking-wet with dreary essays about how tough it is for him to be married, married with children, etc., mixed -- in sort of a literary slurry -- with unpublished essays and old works from Forbes FYI, Rolling Stone, etc.

Judging from his writing, married life hasn't been be kind to P.J.'s wit. This is troubling; even Hunter S. Thompson wrote some of his best gonzo work when he was married.

Moreover, now that he is a Father, P.J. appears to be losing the strong libertarian streak that endeared him to millions of crazy young GOP types (like myself). In CEO, he engages in a rambling discourse in which he seems to be reversing his age-old position favoring the decriminalization of drugs, particularly marijuana.

Some of his essays have strength, and I did appreciate his use of the style of Oliver Wendell Holmes' heretofore-forgotten tome The Autocrat of the Breakfast Table ... but, in my opinion, it simply was't enough to save this book.

If you're a die-hard P.J. fan like myself, buy it -- but if you're looking to this one as an introduction to his work, you will be sorely disappointed.

After all the brilliant books to come from the pen (word processor?) of O'Rourke, this comes as a bit of a disappointment. It is a disjointed effort - while it contains a lot of O'Rourke's usual wit, there isn't the cohesive theme you find in many of his other books. He rambles around, recording conversations with his assistant or teenage nephew for much of the book. There is his biting lampooning of the bad and not-so-great, and many salient points are made; but very often the humour feels contrived. Perhaps this is a book that needed just a little more spit and polish.

But it didn't. The conceit just did not cohere. The passion, the clarity, the wit were all on the back burner. Even the great P. J., everyone's favorite right-wing fascist (i.e. non-Democrat), has his off days and this was one of them.

All is not lost, however. I recently finished a long piece of his about Egypt which was in top form so I am confident in his next book he will be back in his game. But until then . . . oh, well.

A rather uneven effort by O'Rourke. It lacked the cohesiveness of message found in Parliament of Whores. Certain chapters were delightful (the wine tasting chapter, most notably), but others were simply grating. One fully expects a humorous lambasting of liberals in PJ's books, but his attack on Hillary Clinton was unusually mean-spirit and entirely devoid of humor. Also, his decision to focus so much much on 'It Takes A Village' seems extremely dated. How long had he sat on that essay? Eight years?

P.J. O'Rourke wrote one of my all-time favorite books (_Holidays in Hell_) and the most expensive book I've ever thrown away (_Age and Guile Beat Youth, Innocence, and a Bad Haircut_). _CEO of the Sofa_ is, for me, somewhere in between but closer to the former. Some bits are laugh-out-loud funny, including some unexpectedly hilarious ones like "Blind (Drunk) Wine Tasting". ("Driving a Car in Winter" is another classic.) Others, particularly those involving the Political Nut, were hard for me to get through.

I love political satire and humor,both left and right wing.I can't believe it;but this is the first book of PD's that I've read.I know he is a popular writer,his books are everywhere;but for some reason I've passed them up.I guess I just wrote them off as popular fiction.I've got nobody to blame but myself ,but now that I've found him,I'll be reading more.
A lot of writers of political satire confuse hatred, foul language and outright nastiness with humor.Not so with PD.He takes the ordinary things that go on all the time and comes up with off-the- wall thinking and makes very different and truly humorous comments and observations.His approach is reminiscent of Twain and more recently Mark Russell.He had my sides splitting without resorting to mean spirited character assissination.His humor is more like the type of thing you get on "Roasts".
He amazed me time and tme again,by pointing out great humor where I had not even realized it existed.
If you like one-liners the book is littered with them.
Here is a little bit of the sort of thing he gives us:
"NABAA--The National Association to Ban Almost Everything"
"Clinton's popularity ratings are getting so high he's starting
to date again."
"If I had a cell phone, I'd lose it.I lose everything,I left my
first wife in the back of a cab somewhere."
"The only thing the UN is suited for,according to its charter,
is an invasion from Mars."
"The Web is just a device by which bad ideas travel around the
world at the speed of light."
"NAPWETD--National Association of People ith Not Enough to Do."
"Ideas are to Hillary,what sex is to her husband."
"Since the time of Jimmy Carter,Liberals have been chasing
their tail,and,last heard,they've caught it and begun eating
and had chewed their way up to the back of their own ears."
"The computer becomes the handgun of modern mugging."
"This spawned a multitudinous generation of white-collar
criminals who can't even be bothered with the collar."
"Kids today may be wizards with virtual reality,yet they seem
a little foggy about what makes reality virtuous.

He does some great takes on a book "Guidelines for Bias-Free Writing",obviously from the left:
"Sure,the task force seems to be nothing but a rat bag of
shoddy pedagogues,athletes of the tongue,professional pick-
nits filling the stupid hours of their pointless days with
nagging the yellow-bellied editors of university presses,
which print volume after volume of bound-wad fated to sit
unread in college library stacks until the sun expires.
"Why doesn't the task force just combine "she" and "it" and
pronounce the thing accordingly."
If you've ever read Hunter S. Thompson's "Fear and Loathing in
Las Vegas", or seen the movie,and wondered what it was all
about;PJ explains it all for you.
"A thrilling saga in which nothing much happens--a fitting
example of the picaresque for the Now Generation.One of the
things Hunter did in this book was write a coda to,an obituary
for,the nonsense of the 1960's.It is important to recall that
in the 1960's nothing much happened."
So,you can see,nothing in off-limits to PJ'sharp satire.
He keeps CEO's,the Stock Markets,technology,Drugs,Gun Control,
Political Correctness,Europe,India and particularly,the Liberal
Elite directly in his gun sites and fires back with some of
the best ammunition available---HUMOR!
This book has made me a P.D. James fan.
Oh yeah,my title is a quote from page 103;guess who he was
talking about.