I have those CDs as well.
And nobody remembers them for this May 1985 cover.
Well, his quote is original and verified, I heard it on NPR. BUT, that one line may have been used earlier, I couldn’t say.
I went to a reading he did years ago while touring one of his earlier books, and I happened to have a John Le Carre novel with me. He graciously autographed that.
While I loved and accumulated National Lampoons in the 70s-80s, I was never aware of the internal tensions within the team or with their publishers until the documentary Drunk Stoned Brilliant Dead.
I can only imagine the inscription:
Dear Banksiaman: I didn’t write this book, but I’ll be glad to sign it for you anyway. Take it easy, PJO.
A good obituary/retrospective in The Guardian:
The book got lost many moves ago, but it was something very close to that.
The aforementioned Holiday in Hell is well worth a read, even today decades later. It is probably peak O’Rourke - he’s both funny and insightful (and also occasionally irritating) and he did indeed have balls of steel - his adventure in Lebanon in particular comes off as a bit dicey. It also displays his own particular brand of economic conservatism less stridently. He was pretty far from the social and religiously conservative branches of the Republican party.
Me too.
Picked up Eat the Rich for the first time in years. I highly recommend it.
Tiny nitpick (assuming the UK title isn’t different): Holidays in Hell. But more to the point, I entirely agree with you; and it has the best ending of any book I can think of. A highly edited version:
After being shown round war-torn Belfast in what was at that time referred to as “The Troubles”, and having been far too close to the sectarian bombings, murder and mayhem that was then endemic, O’Rourke recounts:
I went to Damien Devlin’s funeral. His mother had already had another son killed, shot by the IRA for "hooliganism "…
…Six hours later, after another of the Avenue Bar funerals, I went back to the cemetary with Stephen McGaghan’s body. Damien Devlin’s girl-friend was still there, alone on the other side of the graveyard, sitting, head in hands, amongst the flower arrangements.
People walked out of both these funerals because the priests denounced paramilitary violence.
[O’Rourke finds himself talking with a police sergeant about the cycle of violence. The sergeant’s view is that it isn’t possible to end the violence; the most that could be hoped for is to manage it at an acceptable level. O’Rourke asks:]
“You don’t see any end to it?”
He looked slightly puzzled. “This is an acceptable level of violence,” he said.
End of book. Rest in peace, PJ.
j
Thanks. Called it! 
Few writers could pack so much content and humor into so few words.
In Modern Manners, there was a labeled drawing of an outdoor wedding of two of PJ’s dreaded lefty flakes. The groom’s label read, “GROOM: Looking for a job stopping nuclear wars”.
RIP P.J.
I used to be in the “Jerkish, sexist, classist, bigoted and not very funny, but at least he was good in the 70s” camp. A few weeks ago we cleared out the basement storeroom and I unearthed all my old NATLAMPS from 1974-1984.
I’ve been reading through them, and by golly, he was a sexist classist bigoted jerk back then, too. The stuff I enjoyed back then was mostly Hughes, Miller, etc.
Also shocked by how much of the magazine was ads, mainly for stereo equipment, booze, cigarettes, and rolling papers.
Man alive, I just found out he died (thanks to this thread). Sigh.
Funnily enough, I picked up my copy of Give War a Chance last week to re-read. I hadn’t read any of his stuff in a while, and sometimes P.J. just hits the spot.
RIP, P.J. I’ll miss you, but I’ll continue to enjoy your work.