Age and Guile Beat Youth, Innocence, and a Bad Haircut

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Humor $12 Readers may be shocked to discover that America's most provocative (and conservative) satirist, P. J. O'Rourke, was at one time a raving pinko, with scars on his formerly bleeding heart to pro ve it. In Age and Guile Beat Youth, Innocence, and a Bad Haircut, O'Rourke chronicles the remarkable trajectory that took him from the lighthearted fun of the revolutionary barricades to the serious business of the nineteenth hole. How did the O'Rourke of 1970, who summarized the world of "grown-ups" as "materialism, sexual hang-ups, the Republican party, uncomfortable clothes, engagement rings, car accidents, Pat Boone, competition, patriotism, cheating, lying, ranch houses, and TV" come to be in favor of all of those things? What eauses a beatnik-hippie type, comfortable sleeping on dirty mattresses in pot-addled communes-as P.J. did when he was a writer for assorted "underground" papers- to metamorphosize into a right-wing middle-aged grouch? Here, P.J. shows how his Soeialist... Tovább

Fülszöveg

Humor $12 Readers may be shocked to discover that America's most provocative (and conservative) satirist, P. J. O'Rourke, was at one time a raving pinko, with scars on his formerly bleeding heart to pro ve it. In Age and Guile Beat Youth, Innocence, and a Bad Haircut, O'Rourke chronicles the remarkable trajectory that took him from the lighthearted fun of the revolutionary barricades to the serious business of the nineteenth hole. How did the O'Rourke of 1970, who summarized the world of "grown-ups" as "materialism, sexual hang-ups, the Republican party, uncomfortable clothes, engagement rings, car accidents, Pat Boone, competition, patriotism, cheating, lying, ranch houses, and TV" come to be in favor of all of those things? What eauses a beatnik-hippie type, comfortable sleeping on dirty mattresses in pot-addled communes-as P.J. did when he was a writer for assorted "underground" papers- to metamorphosize into a right-wing middle-aged grouch? Here, P.J. shows how his Soeialist idealism and avant-garde aesthetic tendencies were cured and how he acquired a healthy and commendable interest in national defense, the balanced budget, Porschés, and Cohiba cigars. P. J. O'Rourke's message is that there's hope for all those suffering from acute Bohemianism, or as he puts it, "Puli your pants up, turn your hat around, and get a job." "From the fíctionalized aecounts of his career as a hard-drinking hippié to tlie Bencliley-in-the-age-of-macho lampoon of fly físhing, Mr. O'Rourke shows an incorrigible comic gift and an eye for detail that keeps the wild stuff grouitded." -The New York Times Book Review P. J. O'Rourke is the author of All the Trouble in the World, Give War a Chance, Parliament of Whores, Holidays in Hell, Republican Party Reptile, The Bachelor Home Companion, and Modern Manners. Vissza