Customer Reviews

Age and Guile Beat Youth, Innocence, and a Bad Haircut (O'Rourke, P. J.)

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PJ O'Rourke has always been one of my favorite cultural and political commentators. An unrepentant Libertarian Republican who used to be an unrepentant Marxist radical, O'Rourke is a conservative who writes with all the wit and verve that, supposedly, only liberals are capable of. P.J. O'Rourke is the Al Franken of the American Right, if Al Franken were actually funny. Age and Guile Beat Youth, Innocence, and a Bad Haircut is made up of O'Rourke's previously uncollected writings over the past three decades. As such, the book begins with a few choice pieces from his angry days as a Marxist journalist in the early '70s (where, it must be said, O'Rourke still writes with a wit that proves that funny is funny not matter what the ideology) moves on to cover his brief period as an adherent to Concrete Poetry (an art form that he admits still having no idea what to make of) and finally closes with a few of his recent essays as Rolling Stone's Foreign Affairs Editor. Best of all, O'Rourke includes a few short stories that he wrote and published while editor of National Lampoon. The stories, all dealing with his past as a '60s radical, are a perfect mixture of radical nostalgia and modern day clear headedness and, along with an unexpected pathos for his lost characters wandering through the political wilderness of protest, they also rank amongst the most hilarious of O'Rourke's writings, perfectly displaying his trademark style of detached irony and self-depreciating wit (one can always sense O'Rourke saying, "Can you believe they actually pay me to write this stuff?"). Perhaps most nicely, the pieces in this collection are arranged by chronological order so that the reader literally goes through O'Rourke's political and literary evolution with him over the course of the book. As such, we're provided with a nice view of the political odyssey of both O'Rourke and America over the past 30-odd years. If one thing remains the same it is that O'Rourke, whether conservative or liberal, consistently refuses to accept anything at face value. He remains, always, the eternal skeptic. And we, as readers, are all the better off for it.

I first got into PJ O'Rourke when I started reading his book "Republican Party Reptile" and realized that I could laugh heartily at his wit, as opposed to the often divisive rhetoric of Rush Limbaugh and Fox News Channel. O'Rourke is equally scathing in his approach to "born-again" nutjobs as he is to "pinko" enviromentalists, and his is a style of writing I wouldn't mind trying to emulate in my own belated (and as yet unpublished) career as a writer.

"Age and Guile" caught my fancy because I had heard it was a collection of his pieces from over the years, and I tried to find it at the local library and various bookstores, but was unlucky in my pursuit. I ended up checking out a Books-on-Tape version of the book, read by Norman Deitz, and I was quite pleased.

The early material is amatuerish, to be fair, but there are nuggets of wit to be found amongst the "juvinelia". The Truth About The Sixties was actually one of my favorite parts of the book, I found it very involving and fascinating to hear. The rest of the book tickled my funny bone. I just don't have enough good things to say about this book.

So, I ordered it on Amazon, and I've recieved it, and it's joined my collection of P.J. O'Rourke books. A liberal at heart myself, I agree with a previous reviewer that O'Rourke celebrates individual freedom and doesn't care for those who try and take it away. I only hope I can be as good at conveying that in my own writing, he's certainly one hell of a teacher.

Having read all of P.J. O'Rourke's books, I can safely say that this was one of my favorites. Save for the first 41 pages, I was thoroughly entertained and stayed up 'til the wee hours giggling like a mad squirrel. Rip the first chapter out and it's a five-star read.

This is an excellent anthology of O'Rourke's writings from his commie journalist days in Baltimore in the early 1970s, through his years at NATIONAL LAMPOON, up to the mid-90s when he was writing articles about politics, current events and foreign affairs for ROLLING STONE and the conservative AMERICAN SPECTATOR. Included are articles about cars the he wrote for CAR & DRIVER, articles about fishing and hunting originally published in MEN'S JOURNAL, and a speech he gave at a CATO Institute function.

The essays vary greatly not just with regards to topics, but also with respect to the degree of humour, and some border on the serious. But all are interesting, as any P.J. O'Rourke fan would expect.

As O'Rourke states in the Introduction: "It is, I guess, interesting to watch the leftist grub weaving itself into the pupa of satire and then emerging a resplendent conservative blowfly."

If you or someone you know and love is looking for great material for a speach competition, try the stories "Dynamite" and "Another Tale of Uncle Mike." I used them to get to the state competition. The book is all-around hillarious with great little tips such as how to out-drink an Irish wedding party when they have a few hours head-start. It also has some great lines such as "none of us were seriously hurt, except for Terry, who had part of a hash pipe blown up his nose, something they had a hard time understanding at the emergency room." Buy it and laugh.

The epitome of Republican, yes I said republican humor. Liberals don't have the handle on humor, obviously, and P.J. has done it again with his O'Rourke finesse! Many kudos to a laff- a- line guy. Get it and laugh your left(ist) sock off! Infact, get every one of his hilarious books and laugh both socks off. You'll be glad you did. When will he give us the President this country needs and sit on the White House lawn with a fine cigar and a tall one? We can only hope.

I have recently taken to reading O'Rourke's book's (Give War a Chance, Holidays in Hell, Republican Party Reptile, and All the Trouble in the World) and have found them all enjoyable. He is a humorist with a conservative bent, which I admit is a good part of the reason that I like him. It is always nice to read something that you agree with and especially so if the author has original, well considered ideas and can present them in an humorous way. More liberal readers will, in all probability, not like him at all, unless they have an extraordinary capacity for taking criticism. Part of the reason for his venom towards the left is that he was once one of them. In the sixties he got about as liberal as he could, living in communes and writing for underground papers, damning capitalism. This book follows his development from there to his current occupation, writing about foreign politics and fast cars and damning communism. The first section of the book, a collection of pieces written for those underground papers, is juvenilia and really only interesting as such. It takes time for a writer to become good and he in the late sixties O'Rourke had not had that time yet. Politics aside, it simply is not very good. The part that I enjoyed the most was his experiments with something called "concrete poetry" which seems to be a version of those pictures that people draw with characters and have on the bottoms of their e-mail, only not as interesting. I don't know who decided that this was poetry but I found the whole thing very amusing. Which is okay because that's the point. The next part is things that he wrote about his experiences in the sixties, a bit later and after he had begin to rethink some of his political ideas. The style has improved here, as it does steadily through the book, but the subject matter is a bit too self obsessed to be really good reading. The rest is various articles for which the O'Rourke was actually paid and they are mostly pretty to very good. I liked this book, but not as much as a liked some of his others, mostly because there weren't too many of his stories about international trouble spots, which for some reason are my favorites.

I first discovered P.J.O'Rourke in the pages of various automotive publications. In addition to being a well-known political humorist, he is also an automotive enthusiast, as am I. This book, the second of his that I have read, is quite good once you get past the somewhat slow start. The second half of the book ("Drives to Nowhere," "Bad Sports") is wonderful. O'Rourke is a master of simile, metaphor, and analogy. Only the fiction writer Tom Robbins compares to him in this regard, in my opinion. I had my wife read a selection from the book, and she enjoyed it so much that she started reading it aloud to me. We laughed so hard our jaws hurt and our eyes teared! Whether you agree with his political bent or not, you cannot help but to enjoy the man's way with words; he is a true wordsmith. He can really "turn a phrase," as the trite expression goes. I can't wait to read more of his prose.

This is an eclectic collection of PJ's writings. Some of it is a down-right a waste of paper - like his "concrete poetry" inclusions. However, many of the essays are classic PJ - travelling the world, commenting on the ordinariness of people and events everywhere with his famous wit. If there's a connection between each article, I missed it. But you can certainly see his growth and evolution as a writer.

Having gone to Miami University, PJs alma mater, I was very interested in his early writing about his days in Oxford, OH. If the stories he tells are even half true then college has changed dramatically since his day. And for the better. But his writing of this period is compelling and often touching. He has some great lines, such as, "It's hard to forgive someone when you're beginning to agree with her."

You can see the shift in his political attitudes, but he never really explains them. Maybe he doesn't have to. Several of these essays are outstanding, such as his speech at the dedication of the new Cato Institute building. And his article about Hillarycare is very timely given the recent healthcare debate (note: this review written in January 2010).

If you're a PJ completest, and I am, you'll enjoy large parts of this book. But if you're new to PJ, start with Parliament of Whores: A Lone Humorist Attempts to Explain the Entire U.S. Government or Eat the Rich: A Treatise on Economics (O'Rourke, P. J.).

Just as the 1960's apparently exists in the drug-saturated memory of Mr. O'Rourke, his recollections ramble on like a man on a melancholy trip down Memory Lane, joint in hand. However, once O'Rourke pulls himself into the 1980's, the book becomes the typical yet uproarious wit which made O'Rourke the present-day Will Rogers. His observations on his road trips make even Mexico sound like an enjoyable place. Despite the slow start, this book must take it's place on the shelf next to "Give War a Chance," etc.