Wry Martinis [Hardcover]

Christopher Buckley (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: February 18, 1997

n the most inebriating humor book of the year, the author of Steaming to Bamboola and The White House Mess goes straight for the funny bone with essays and mischief that includes such gems of gullibility as the pope's appearance on Oprah, O.J. Simpson's search for a new apartment, the true story behind Whitewater, and so much more. Illustrations.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

His famous father conducted a legendary literary feud with Gore Vidal, and while Christopher Buckley's dust-up via fax machine with novelist Tom Clancy (who was outraged by Buckley's trashing of one of his novels in the New York Times Book Review doesn't reach that intellectual level, it does make for very funny reading and illustrates Buckley's gift for puncturing pomposity wherever he finds it. To his credit, most of the essays in this collection are quite witty, and he doesn't sink to mean- spirited ideological blather. Included are pieces published in the New Yorker, Esquire, the Wall Street Journal, and other publications. Apart from the humorous essays, Buckley's ruminations on why he didn't serve in Vietnam provide thought-provoking commentary on his generation's defining event.

From Publishers Weekly

The author of Thank You for Smoking has put together more than 65 bits and pieces of journeyman work (much of it very amusing indeed) from sources ranging from the New Yorker to the New York Times to Forbes to the Portsmith Abbey Alumni magazine. Touched on, usually quite briefly, are subjects such as mad cow disease (could the animals be used to counteract illegal emigration from Mexico?), drunken Yale undergraduates (a growth industry, it seems), presidential debates (which, he observes, would be improved if all involved had three martinis before things got under way) and the Unabomber (the next client of O.J.'s dream team?). There are also accounts of hoaxes successfully perpetrated by Buckley, including the well-publicized "rumor" that an impoverished Russia plans to auction off Lenin's embalmed corpse. The section called "Homage to Tom Clancy" is typical of the book's variety. It begins with a none-too-serious profile of the author written soon after the success of The Hunt for Red October, followed by a parody of Clancy as a U.S. senator, then a savage review of Debt of Honor (Clancy is "the James Fenimore Cooper of his day, which is to say the most successful bad writer of his generation"), followed by an exchange of actual faxes between an unamused Clancy and a puckish Buckley. As a comic, Buckley frequently suffers from the Saturday Night Live syndrome: his ideas are often funnier than his punch lines. But readers hell-bent on amusing themselves will find laughs enough here. Illustrations not seen by PW.
Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 294 pages
• Publisher: Random House; 1 edition (February 18, 1997)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0679452338
• ISBN-13: 978-0679452331
• Product Dimensions: 9.3 x 6.2 x 1.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.2 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 3.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (13 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #542,127 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Christopher Buckley is the author of fourteen books, including "Supreme Courtship," "Boomsday," and "Thank You For Smoking." He is editor-at-large of "ForbesLife" magazine, and was awarded the Thurber Prize for American Humor and the Washington Irving Medal for Literary Excellence. He lives on the Acela train between Washington, D.C. and New York City.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

10 of 11 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Someone wicked this way comes., September 19, 2000

By 

taking a rest - See all my reviews
(HALL OF FAME REVIEWER)   

This review is from: Wry Martinis (Hardcover)

I found a good illustration of Christopher Buckley's sense of humor while reading of one of the ocean crossings that he had taken with his Father. Buckley the Elder routinely sailed an ocean every 5 years or so, and his Son was often part of the crew. All the ship's members had tasks, and on this trip Christopher was in charge of bringing along projects for fun and diversion during the extended voyage. The one I will remember was the model he brought for the group to construct, of course a ship, and for him it could be no other, The Titanic.

His is not low brow cheap shot humor, although you may be surprised by how inept some other Authors are when engaging him in written debate. He writes within this book on a variety of subjects guaranteed to make you laugh, and for those that take themselves, or a given subject too seriously, he will annoy you. Even if the latter group is the one you find yourself in, if only to yourself, you still cannot deny the wit, and the intellect that is behind his thoughts.

So if The Pope appearing on Oprah selling his new book intrigues you, or perhaps Johnnie Cochran writing a letter of recommendation for the squeezed fruit who was his client piques your interest, this read is for you. If the two topics I mention do not suffice, there is always his written feud with Tom Clancy, satire on Star Trek, or perhaps the "How I went 9 G's in an F-16 and Only Threw Up Five Times", there is something here that will cause you great pain in your sides, as he is the cause of pain for his adversaries in their nether regions.

The stories I mentioned are a tiny fraction of what awaits the reader, for I have not touched upon the selling of Lenin's embalmed corpse.

Buckley the Younger is wonderful, or as the Author Tom Wolfe states "Fifty years ago the 3 funniest writers in the English language were named Shaw, Mencken and Muggeridge....today they're named Thompson, O'Rourke, and Christopher Buckley..."

If you have not tried this man's work, this is a great place to start.

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Better than most books, but ho-hum for Buckley, September 25, 2002

By 

Tomato Pie "tomatopie" (West Chester, PA USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Wry Martinis (Paperback)

Chris Buckley is my favorite author, having written masterful satires like "Thank You for Smoking" and "Little Green Men." This is not a novel, as I was dismayed to learn, but just a collection of Buckley essays. Each is cute and funny, and the set makes for nice, lite, magazine-style reading. The essay about George Bush (Sr.) and martinis is hilarious -- I still refer to an extra-dry martini (just wave the vermouth bottle over the glass, not opening it) as the "George Bush" martini. Get this book if you have read everything else Buckley has written.

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars One of the funniest books to hit the stores in some time., June 11, 1997

By A Customer

This review is from: Wry Martinis (Hardcover)

Wry Martinis is an easy to read, funny collection of essays. Buckley has a wry wit and his outlook on topics from the old Soviet Union to Fly Fishing will keep you laughing for quite a while. Especially fun is his fax feud with Tom Clancy