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Summary
Summary
P. J. O'Rourke is one of his generation's most celebrated political humorists, hailed as "the funniest writer in America" by both Time and The Wall Street Journal . Twenty-three years ago, he published the classic travelogue Holidays in Hell , in which he trotted the globe as a "trouble tourist," a chaos rubberneck, sight-seeing at wars, rebellions, riots, political crises, and other monuments of human folly. After the Iraq War--"too old to keep being scared stiff and too stiff to keep sleeping on the ground"--he retired from what foreign correspondents call "being a s**thole specialist." But he couldn't give up traveling to ridiculous places, often with his wife and three young children in tow. Usually he was left wishing he were under artillery fire again.
O'Rourke's journeys take him to locales both near (and nearly bizarre) and far (and far from normal). Having made a joke that Ski magazine takes seriously, he winds up on a family ski vacation--to Ohio. The highest point of elevation is the six-foot ski instructor his wife thinks is cute. Convinced by an old friend and one too many drinks that "a horse trek is just backpacking on someone else's back," he finds himself (barely) in the saddle, crossing the mountains to a part of Kyrgyzstan so remote that the Kyrgyzs have never seen it. He visits Kabul for the food and conversation (excellent lamb chops and a droll after-dinner story about the mullah and the cow). He even takes his kids to his erstwhile home away from home, the bar at the Foreign Correspondents Club in Hong Kong.
Holidays in Heck shows P. J. O'Rourke in top form--a little older, a little wiser, going to the bathroom a little more often, but just as darkly funny as he was in Holidays in Hell . Here is a hilarious and often moving portrait of life in the fast lane, as he's always lived it--only this time with the backseat driver that marriage entails and three small hostages to fortune strapped into the booster seats.
Reviews (5)
Publisher's Weekly Review
In this cheeky follow-up to Holidays in Hell, former war correspondent O'Rourke trades battle zones for more appealing travel destinations, often with his family in tow. Deciding after the Iraq War that he was "too old to be scared stiff and too stiff to sleep on the ground," O'Rourke switches to travel writing after 21 years covering various conflicts. The exotic-a sailing trip to the Galapagos Islands in "Republicans Evolving" or a horse trek through the mountains of Kyrgyzstan in "A Horse of a Different Color"-rub shoulders with the more mundane-a family skiing vacation in "Round on the Ends and 'Hi!' in the Middle," a trip to Disneyland in "The Decline and Fall of Tomorrow"-and all of them share O'Rourke's razor wit. The family skiing vacation is made more hilarious by its being in Ohio (his eldest daughter doesn't like long hills), and the plethora of wildlife observed during the Galapagos jaunt become stand-ins for our country's political parties. The majority of essays were assigned by Forbes Life and reworked by O'Rourke for this collection; "Capitol Gains," the O'Rourke family's aborted tour of the Washington, D.C., sights is previously unpublished. O'Rourke loses none of his sly humor, finding many opportunities to lampoon American politics under his new guise as a traveling family man. (Nov.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.
Kirkus Review
Holidays in Hell (1988). Having retired from the hazards of war, O'Rourke (Don't Vote--It Just Encourages the Bastards, 2010, etc.) faces the challenge of learning to travel for leisure with his family: "What is this thing called fun? To judge by traveling with my wife and daughters it has something to do with shopping for clothes." Many of the essays are unabashed paeans to the pastimes of wealthy, middle-aged Republicans: The author visits ski resorts, hunting preserves and even a tour of the Galpagos Islands. Unfortunately, despite lovingly described meals and leisure, these serve as excuses for O'Rourke to rail against uptight liberals who love perverted art and oppressive government and hate guns, hunting, the outdoors and good times. This predictable rhetorical structure reaches its nadir in an irritating essay on the 2005 Venice Biennale, where O'Rourke expresses a strange anger towards the entire edifice of contemporary art: "The Guerrilla Girls are too young to remember what a babe Gloria Steinem was[and] too old to realize how beside the point their point is." The problem here is not the author's conservative views, but rather that his writing has become increasingly sour and lazy. The better pieces are built more around straightforward reportage and observation, such as two essays narrating his trips through the new economic powerhouse of China. He also provides colorful, earthy descriptive passages regarding stag hunts in Britain, extreme horseback riding in the wilds of Kyrgyzstan, a poignant look at his bout with cancer and a brief jaunt to Kabul, Afghanistan. Red meat for his fans, unlikely to convert new ones.]] Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Booklist Review
Two decades after Holidays in Hell (1988), the travelogue of a former war correspondent in search of fun in some of the world's most desperate areas, O'Rourke follows up with the travel adventures of a writer, husband, and father, which are thrilling and humbling in their own way. To venues ranging from China to Kyrgyzstan to Disneyland, O'Rourke offers the fresh perspective of a neophyte civilian and family traveler along with his own acerbic wit about politics, recreation, economics, and family life. There's skiing in relatively flat Ohio, whic. exposes the id of winter sports. and there's reading the European Union Constitution on a beach in Guadeloupe in 2005 while pondering French and Caribbean politics and economics. Political humorist O'Rourke discusses animal-cruelty issues and the class tensions underlying stag hunting in Exmoor in England and the love of birds and bird hunting in the Galapagos Islands with a bunch of Republicans, and in Brays Island Plantation, South Carolina, with his newly rifle-educated wife. The essays are as humorous and charmingly meandering as his travels. . HIGH-DEMAND BACKSTORY: Best-selling political humorist P. J. O'Rourke follows up on his classic travelogue, Holidays in Hell (1988).--Bush, Vaness. Copyright 2010 Booklist
New York Review of Books Review
IN March 1998, right here in the pages of the Book Review, the humorist P.J. O'Rourke wrote a satire de force entitled "Putting the Moi Back in Memoir." It contained jokes like: "My parents also neglected to abuse me. They're gone now, alas. . . . I've thought about asking my wife's parents to abuse me, but it seems too little, too late. I did have a stepfather who bowled." And: "I've had to endure enormous prejudice. True, since I'm a middle-aged white male Republican, most of the prejudice came from me. But I still had to endure it." And two dozen or so others we don't have time for. Has anyone seen that guy? If you have, tell him he's missed. In his latest collection of essays, a loose follow-up to 1988's "Holidays in Hell," O'Rourke, now a retired war correspondent, attempts to recapture the ironic spirit of his busman's holidays in Lebanon, Poland and El Salvador. This time, the 19 stops on his itinerary include China, Kyrgyzstan, Afghanistan, Washington, Ohio and Disneyland. He finishes 4-for-19, a batting average of .211, which will not keep you in the big leagues unless you can hit lefties. Which is what he does, at one point calling Hillary Clinton's 1993 inaugural gown a "trailer park burqa." To paraphrase Keith Olbermann paraphrasing Lincoln after Sarah Palin addressed the 2008 Republican National Convention: "For people who enjoy this sort of thing, this is the kind of thing they enjoy." But man, is it difficult when the shtick is this thick and a majority of entries sound like an after-dinner speech at a gun club, a pitch meeting for a sitcom at Fox News or the voice-over for "National Lampoon's Cliché-Ridden Vacation." During a ski trip to Ohio, O'Rourke describes himself as "a 57-year-old wide load on early 1990s Rossignols the length of 'War and Peace.'" How about taking the extra five seconds to come up with a reference from the last two centuries? Too many of the essays are more cast than written. The exasperated shopaholic wife, the terminally precocious kids. And O'Rourke seems to enjoy assigning them "funny" lines. If they're not scripted, they sound scripted, which is even more alarming. Here is what O'Rourke's wife supposedly said when asked, "How do you like birds now?" after her first quail hunt: "With quince preserves and curried rice, thank you." And if I were still a betting man, I would throw my wallet at the $50 window that his daughter Poppet, age 7, never uttered, "Candy is a state of mind." It's as if he's hoping there'll be enough money in the audiobook budget for a laugh track. O'Rourke is galaxies more entertaining when reporting. The more he observes, the more he ducks rimshots, the more satisfying the results. It is no coincidence that the two longest essays, on China and Afghanistan, are the most thought-provoking and vivid. How about this 2006 dispatch en route to Pudong: "I wanted to know what the Chinese think about politics when politics is not what they're thinking about. Maybe we should be listening to what they don't say." Or this from Kabul: "Muslims choose their own mosque, and, ideally at least, those who pray at that mosque choose their own mullah. People who say the Muslim world isn't ready for democracy ignore, among other things, the fact that Muslims already have it" That observation neatly summarizes how conflicted our presence in Afghanistan is. But is it worth the slog? The book, I mean. "Holidays in Heck" turns fearless and searching in Chapter 16, when O'Rourke recounts his bout with rectal cancer and his cantankerous relationship with God. It is the most jarring destination in the travelogue. "I consider evolution to be more than a scientific theory," he writes. "I think it's a call to God. God created a free universe. He could have created any kind of universe he wanted. But a universe without freedom would have been static and meaningless - a taxpayerfunded-art-in-public-places universe." Finally, the guy from the 1998 Book Review shows up. Too late? Bill Scheft is a writer for "Late Show With David Letterman." His third novel, "Everything Hurts," is available in paperback.
Library Journal Review
O'Rourke, conservative humorist and best-selling author, offers up a collection of entertaining essays, most of which have been previously published in the Atlantic Monthly and Forbes. They display a less provocative O'Rourke than fans who enjoyed Parliament of Whores and Give War a Chance might wish for; snide jabs at President Obama or people and things that could be deemed liberal are kept to a minimum. O'Rourke's stories of taking his three young children to Hong Kong and on a skiing trip to Ohio are the most appealing, tame, and funny (he describes his seven-year-old daughter skiing as "part ballerina and part frog"). Other essays take him horse-trekking in Kyrgyzstan, up the Yangtze River in China, and back to the future, as in the 1950s House of the Future at Disneyland. VERDICT Readers looking to reinforce their love or hate for O'Rourke's opinions will find little meat here, but he's an engaging writer, regardless of the topic. [See Prepub Alert, 5/9/11.]-Linda M. Kaufmann, Massachusetts Coll. of Liberal Arts Lib., North Adam (c) Copyright 2011. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
