Breaking news. No Cause of Death yet.
I really enjoyed a number of his books, not to mention his time with National Lampoon.
Dang, that’s a shame. I used to really like his books, even though I mostly didn’t agree with his conclusions.
His first books were really good, but they got worse for reasons having nothing to do with politics. He used to be on Wait, Wait Don’t Tell Me, but wasn’t as fast on his feet as a lot of panelists. Which was a shame because his different take would have been good there.
Nil nisi bonum and all, but he did pull NatLamp down the drain by reducing its content to titty-jokes. But his early books were enjoyable, especially the autobiographical parts.
Giving money and power to government is like giving whiskey and car keys to teenage boys.
One of my favorite stories of his was from his hippie days, when he and a bunch of friends went out to a cabin to do hallucinogens and drink moonshine. One of his friends wakes up face down in the toilet and, only able to see white porcelain, starts shrieking that he’s gone blind from drinking moonshine.
And then they did mushrooms and played with dynamite, and accidentally blew up the porch they were sitting on.
There aren’t many funny conservatives. Sad to lose one.
Sad. Holidays in Hell was awesome. I didn’t agree with him but he could be funny as hell.
Agreed. Parliament of Whores was a lot of fun. He was a principled conservative and saw even before the 2016 election that Trump was bad news.
Complications from lung cancer.
Yea, his quote about trump and Hillary is classic and the GOP shoulda listened to him:“I am endorsing Hillary, and all her lies and all her empty promises,” O’Rourke continued. “It’s the second-worst thing that can happen to this country, but she’s way behind in second place. She’s wrong about absolutely everything, but she’s wrong within normal parameters.”
Well, shit, I hated to read that. I’ve always thought he was one funny mofo, one of the best National Lampoon contributors, and an ace raconteur; and that even though we were so far apart in our views on just about everything, he’d still be fun to have a drink and a joint with. RIP, Mr. O’Rourke; you pissed a lot of people off, and gave a lot of other people some good laughs and food for thought.
[edited to include a word I accidentally omitted]
In the early eighties, I had some time to kill, so I wandered into a bookstore (remember those?) and saw Modern Manners on the shelf. I started reading it, sat on the floor to continue reading it, and then started laughing out loud and fell over on the floor. Never happened before and hasn’t happened since.
Some of his later books spent an uncomfortable amount of time punching down (IMHO), so he never became a must-read humorist for me, but when he was on point, nobody was better.
That is one of the more on-point quotes of this whole debacle. Other conservatives who did not take that to heart should be ashamed.
As a teen in the late 70s I read a lot of National Lampoon, and really liked PJ O’Rourke’s work there, so I read and enjoyed his early books. Reading the news today I instantly remembered his piece (with John Hughes) announcing the “Pants Down Republicans” and how I thought, at the time, that maybe this was more my speed than the progressivism that I was learning at home.
In retrospect, this was probably more about teenage rebelling against my folks’ beliefs than my having actual conservative values (and a love of partying), and I always felt a little embarrassed that I had once thought so highly of him as he went deeper into his conservatism. He was still funny and caustic (eg, on Real Time) but he came across to me very bitter in the last few years, and seemed to be doing schtick in a lot of his appearances.
But thanks for the many laughs, PJ. RIP
I can still remember his answer to the last question in a game of “Lightning Fill-in-the-Blank,” circa December 2005:
“According to a report released this week, an average of thirteen Americans are killed by these every year.”
“…Air Marshals?”
(FTR, the correct answer was “washing machines.”)
Humorists don’t age well. I can’t think of a humorist that didn’t go downhill as they got older. They have a style and run it into the ground. Sad, really.
O’Rourke wasn’t in my top dozen Lampoon writers but he was funny in his early years. Any good humorist is a treasure. I have more than a dozen of his books, not even including the Lampoon stuff. That’s a pretty good legacy.
I discovered P.J. O’Rourke when I read Modern Manners, a parody of etiquette books. When he described someone at a burial urinating into a grave yelling “Piss on you for dying, you asshole!” I became a devoted fan. Even though he’s a conservative.
So, in your honor, P.J. I say, “Rest in Piss, you libertarian asshole.”
Great writer. Really.
His gonzo reporting from Latin America and various war zones was excellent. His works got less funny as he aged.
Much of his early work would not pass PC muster nowadays. It is worth reading if only to remind ourselves how bad it once was. In fact, I looked up some of his articles I remember from the old Lampoon. They seem to have gone down the Orwellian memory hole.
I enjoyed his writing for NatLamp, for sure, including the tale that eventually got turned in the movie: NatLamp’s Vacation. And I enjoyed his early books a lot. I
He rather lost me with “CEO of the Sofa” or whatever it was called where he wrote about the election of Bush and Cheney putting “the grownups back in charge”. Granted, that book was made irrelevant shortly after its release by 9/11, but still.
I did find him partially redeemed in my eyes by his blatant unequivocal rejection of Trump, however.
I am sad he’s gone. But given his celebrated history of smoking, I’m not surprised.