Pun Salad

This is, I think, the late P. J. O'Rourke's final book with new material. (Grove Atlantic brought out a "compendium of quotes and riffs" from his career "on what would have been his 75th birthday." That might be a good buy unless you (like me) already own just about everything the guy wrote. I was a fan of my fellow Granite Stater.

This 2020 book is a collection of PJ's recent essays, mostly from the free online magazine he edited, American Consequences, which I think is now defunct. To be honest, the book is kind of a mixed bag. A number of pieces are cynical and pessimistic without actually being funny. (Maybe I wasn't in the mood for that.)

On the other hand, many essays are insightful and witty. The laugh-out-loud gags are rare, but that's OK. (One, on pp. 161-2, is actually a 51-word quote from a Dave Barry book.) PJ's combination of politics (moderate conservatism/libertarianism) resembles mine pretty closely, and his worldview (disgusted/amused/stoic) is roughly what I aspire to.

He unaccountably, but forgivably, voted for Hillary in 2016. ("She's wrong about absolutely everything, but she's wrong within normal parameters.") I went for Gary Johnson. I'm not sure who I would have voted for if my vote could have actually swung the election, but fortunately it didn't.