The Funny Stuff: The Official P. J. O’Rourke Quotationary and Riffapedia - Hardcover

O'Rourke, P. J.

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0802160646 ISBN 13: 9780802160645

Verlag: Atlantic Monthly Press, 2022

Inhaltsangabe

A compendium of quotes and riffs by P.J. O’Rourke on subjects ranging from government (“Giving money and power to politicians is like giving car keys and whiskey to teenage boys”) to fishing (”a sport invented by insects and you are the bait”) to apps (“we need a no-app app—let’s call it a nap”) to be published on what would have been his 75th birthday.

“P. J. O’Rourke was the funniest writer of his generation, one of the smartest and one of the most prolific. Now that he belongs to the ages, P.J. takes his rightful place along with Oscar Wilde, Mark Twain and Dorothy Parker in the Pantheon of Quote Gods.”—Christopher Buckley from his introduction

When The Penguin Dictionary of Modern Humorous Quotations was published in 1994, P. J. O’Rourke had more entries than any living writer. And he kept writing funny stuff for another 28 years. Now, for the first time, the best material is collected in one volume. Edited by his longtime friend and member of the American Society of Magazine Editors Hall of Fame Terry McDonell, THE FUNNY STUFF is arranged in six sections, organized by subject in alphabetical order from Agriculture to Xenophobia. From his earliest days at the National Lampoon in the 1970s, through his classic reporting for Rolling Stone in the 80s and 90s to his post-Trump, pandemic, new media observations of recent years, P.J. produced incisive, amusing copy. Not only did P.J. write memorable one-liners, he also meticulously constructed riffs that built to a crescendo of hilarity and outrage—and are still being quoted years later. His prose has the electric verbal energy of Tom Wolfe or Hunter Thompson, but P.J. is more flat out funny. And through it all comes his clear-eyed take on politics, economics, human nature—and fun. THE FUNNY STUFF is a book for P.J. fans to devour but also a book that will bring new readers and stand as testament to one of the truly original American writers of the last 50 years.

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Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

P. J. O’ROURKE (1947–2022) was an author, journalist, and political satirist who wrote twenty-two books on subjects as diverse as politics and cars and etiquette and economics. Parliament of Whores and Give War a Chance both reached #1 on the New York Times bestseller list. After beginning his career writing for the National Lampoon, O’Rourke went on to serve as foreign affairs desk chief for Rolling Stone where he reported from far-flung places. Later he wrote for a number of publications, including The Atlantic, the Daily Beast, the Wall Street Journal, and the Weekly Standard, and was a longtime panelist on NPR’s Wait Wait…Don’t Tell Me.

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GOVERNMENT

A little government and a little luck are necessary in life, but only a fool trusts either of them.

—Parliament of Whores

AMERICA

America’s political ideologies (of which we currently have three—Left, Right, and Insane—with considerable overlap between the third and the other two) claim to have all the answers.

—A Cry from the Far Middle

IMMIGRATION

We don’t need a wall on our border; we need gates with turnstiles and ticket-takers. The right way to limit immigration (and make people in foreign countries pay for it) is to charge admission to the United States. Disneyland costs $100 a day. There are at least 12 million illegal immigrants in America. By my calculation, you’re leaving $438 billion a year on the table.

—How the Hell Did This Happen?

RENTAL CARS

There’s a lot of debate about what kind of car handles best. Some say a front-engined car; some say a rear-engined car. I say a rented car. You can go faster, turn corners sharper, and put the transmission into reverse while going forward at a higher rate of speed in a rented car than in any other kind. You can also park without looking, and you can use the trunk as an ice chest. A rented car is an all-terrain vehicle. Mud, snow, water, woods—you can take a rented car anywhere. True, you can’t always get it back—but that’s not your problem, is it?

—Republican Party Reptile

CONGRESS

When buying and selling are controlled by legislation, the first things to be bought and sold are legislators.

—Parliament of Whores

REPORTERS

If you spend seventy-two hours in a place you’ve never been, talking to people whose language you don’t speak about social, political, and economic complexities you don’t understand, and you come back as the world’s biggest knowitall, you’re a reporter.

—Holidays in Heck

SOCIAL MEDIA

With social media, we’ve done something worse than create a world where we can hear what everybody says. We’ve created a world where we can hear what everybody thinks.

—A Cry from the Far Middle

SOCIAL SECURITY

Social Security is a government program with a constituency made up of the old, the near-old and those who hope or fear to grow old. After 215 years of trying, we have finally discovered a special interest that includes 100 percent of the population. Now we can vote ourselves rich.

—Parliament of Whores

MIND-ALTERING

I love that phrase, “mind-altering drugs.” As if there were no changes in brain function after you drink six cups of coffee before doing your taxes or after you drink four martinis before putting the nut dish on your head, mounting the back of the sofa, and reciting “Charge of the Light Brigade” to the cocktail party. But I digress. Which I find I’m doing a lot while writing about the drug culture. It may have something to do with the drugs. I’ll have to go ask Alice, when she’s ten feet tall.

—A Cry from the Far Middle

AUSTRALIA

Australia is not very exclusive. On the visa application they still ask if you’ve been convicted of a felony—although they are willing to give you a visa even if you haven’t been.

—Holidays in Hell

ENGLAND

Oxford and Cambridge have courses in anthropology, sociology, psychology, political science, economics, and no telling what else. Meanwhile the British Empire has shrunk to three IRA informants, a time-share deal with the Red Chinese in Hong Kong, and that bed-and-breakfast of an island, Bermuda. Sic transit gloria mundi, as if anybody knew what that meant anymore.

—Age and Guile

Details zur Ausgabe

• Verlag: Atlantic Monthly Press
• Erscheinungsdatum: 2022
• Sprache: Englisch
• ISBN 10: 0802160646
• ISBN 13: 9780802160645
• Einband: Gebundene Ausgabe
• Anzahl der Seiten: 288
• Kontakt zum Hersteller: Nicht verfügbar
• Verantwortliche Person: Nicht verfügbar