The Funny Stuff

A compendium of
quotes and riffs from more than four decades of writing 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 75^th
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.