P.J. O'Rourke

I always thought he had quite a British sense of humour. I don't think I can explain what I mean by that though.

But to get back to my original thought: if American letters weren't so )#(&*)$ pretentious maybe he could've made it as a comic novelist. Arguably he'd have done more good and less damage than as a political commentator. Isn't it generally dangerous for a writer to have to rationalize a certain political viewpoint for a living?

No, I said had he been born a generation earlier. I just about died laughing when I realized what O'Rourke's "youthful" photo on the front of "Youth vs. Guile" reminded me of: an uglier-mugged version of Martin Amis's photo on the back of his first novel! O'Rourke is roughly the age of Kingley's son, in other words, and they wound up with the same fashion sense. (O'Rourke can't help that he was never as comely as Martin -- and then, neither was Kingsley. Maybe being rejected by girls causes conservativism later in life? Then maybe getting laid all the time causes irritating, blathering liberalism...)

Holidays in Hell was good. Republican Party Reptile was good. Age and Guile was good -- mostly because most of it was written 20 or 30 years ago.

Try read his newer stuff, like CEO of the Sofa. It's LAAAAAME! Trying too hard, views are too boringly, mundanely middle-aged. Jokes are trite. Material is a) cliched or b) dated.

Come on, he IS funny.

Hey, I'm asking this for a friend, but was he in a fraternity at UMiami?

twitter is saying he's dead, and also twitter is saying he'd not dead

can we choose?

I always thought he was trying to be a right-wing Hunter Thompson; he did write for Rolling Stone, after all. He did manage to ape some of Hunter's wit, but missed completely his razor-sharp political insight and basic humanity.

Not to mention, Hunter was a really fucking good writer. P.J. is . . . not really fucking good.