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The Funny Stuff: The Official P. J. O’Rourke Quotationary and Riffapedia
A compendium of quotes and riffs 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.
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.
- GenresHumorNonfiction
288 pages, Hardcover
Published November 15, 2022
20 people are currently reading
33 people want to read
About the author
P.J. O'Rourke
192 books514 followersPatrick Jake "P. J." O'Rourke is an American political satirist, journalist, writer, and author. O'Rourke is the H. L. Mencken Research Fellow at the Cato Institute and is a regular correspondent for The Atlantic Monthly, The American Spectator, and The Weekly Standard, and frequent panelist on National Public Radio's game show Wait Wait... Don't Tell Me!. Since 2011 O'Rourke has been a columnist at The Daily Beast. In the United Kingdom, he is known as the face of a long-running series of television advertisements for British Airways in the 1990s.
He is the author of 20 books, of which his latest, The Baby Boom: How It Got That Way (And It Wasn’t My Fault) (And I’ll Never Do It Again), was released January 2014. This was preceded on September 21, 2010, by Don't Vote! – It Just Encourages the Bastards, and on September 1, 2009, Driving Like Crazy with a reprint edition published on May 11, 2010. According to a 60 Minutes profile, he is also the most quoted living man in The Penguin Dictionary of Modern Humorous Quotations.
He is the author of 20 books, of which his latest, The Baby Boom: How It Got That Way (And It Wasn’t My Fault) (And I’ll Never Do It Again), was released January 2014. This was preceded on September 21, 2010, by Don't Vote! – It Just Encourages the Bastards, and on September 1, 2009, Driving Like Crazy with a reprint edition published on May 11, 2010. According to a 60 Minutes profile, he is also the most quoted living man in The Penguin Dictionary of Modern Humorous Quotations.
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Displaying 1 - 10 of 10 reviews
September 24, 2022
For those of us missing the wit of P. J. O'Rourke, here is a treasure trove of his bon mots, a book to be dipped into and savored, not really to be read in a sitting. One to have handy when you need a lift and a laugh and a memory of what humor from the heart looked like.
August 20, 2022
A huge, yet – if the introductions and hagiographies are to be believed, by no means comprehensive – guide to the wit of PJ O’Rourke. Now he and I had barely, if ever, crossed paths, but it is very easy to get O’Rourke’s drift from these pages. He hates the Democrats with a loathing. He hates the Republicans who showed his side up no end by being privileged, over-lauded numpties with a ready path to making America naff again with almost as much loathing (not a jot on the loathing for Hillary Clinton, but that’s scale-busting as it is).
And then we leave politics, for the social niceties and hobbies and drugs that are supposed to make up the modern person’s life – anything from game hunting to blow jobs and party etiquette. Slices of his cutting journalism as a war correspondent (to use a very loose term), reactions to writing in a post-journalism, Internet world, and being a baby boomer in the US all have their own chunks (the last of which is by far the least interesting).
The merits of reading this are actually on every page, and I’m not going to discuss the wordplay, surprise beats and quips thrown at us. No, it’s in every quote that could have come from last year, and is from 2010 instead, or even 1998. It’s in how accessible this vitriol is, and how it really doesn’t stick in your craw as a one-note dirge, which is mostly down to its accuracy.
No, it’s very much a book for Americans, and less so for the rest of the world – at one point I was faced with a reference to “Strunk and White” on one page (whoever they are), and LL Bean on the next (whatever price they sell at). It’s not easy to remember who was being excoriated in 1991. “Hee Haw” - what dat? But for every reference non-Yanks get, there are twenty apercus we cannot fail to. If you fancy more non-US comments, he’s a Jeremy Clarkson, car-loving, cyclist-hating rent-a-gob, although much sharper and better, and with more knowledge of cocaine (allegedly).
In a world of people getting triggered by even semi-literate commentators, and forcing a cancel job on the sharpest comedians left, right and centre (sorry, the sharpest comedians don’t tend to be left, any more) this proves to be yet one more instance of us being without our PJs and feeling colder, more insecure and more exposed. These four star plus pages show he will be missed.
And then we leave politics, for the social niceties and hobbies and drugs that are supposed to make up the modern person’s life – anything from game hunting to blow jobs and party etiquette. Slices of his cutting journalism as a war correspondent (to use a very loose term), reactions to writing in a post-journalism, Internet world, and being a baby boomer in the US all have their own chunks (the last of which is by far the least interesting).
The merits of reading this are actually on every page, and I’m not going to discuss the wordplay, surprise beats and quips thrown at us. No, it’s in every quote that could have come from last year, and is from 2010 instead, or even 1998. It’s in how accessible this vitriol is, and how it really doesn’t stick in your craw as a one-note dirge, which is mostly down to its accuracy.
No, it’s very much a book for Americans, and less so for the rest of the world – at one point I was faced with a reference to “Strunk and White” on one page (whoever they are), and LL Bean on the next (whatever price they sell at). It’s not easy to remember who was being excoriated in 1991. “Hee Haw” - what dat? But for every reference non-Yanks get, there are twenty apercus we cannot fail to. If you fancy more non-US comments, he’s a Jeremy Clarkson, car-loving, cyclist-hating rent-a-gob, although much sharper and better, and with more knowledge of cocaine (allegedly).
In a world of people getting triggered by even semi-literate commentators, and forcing a cancel job on the sharpest comedians left, right and centre (sorry, the sharpest comedians don’t tend to be left, any more) this proves to be yet one more instance of us being without our PJs and feeling colder, more insecure and more exposed. These four star plus pages show he will be missed.
July 10, 2022
P. J. O’Rourke had a legendary run as an author and commentator on a vast array of social, economic, and political issues. From his early days with the National Lampoon magazine to the more than twenty books he published over almost forty years, O’Rourke was always known for his irreverent attitude, perceptive observations, and wicked sense of humor. So, when he died in early 2022, his passing was mourned by legions of people who knew him, either personally or through the gift of the prose he left to posterity. It was perhaps natural, then, that people close to him thought to put together a compilation project that would stand as a tribute to his writing.
The result of the effort to honor O’Rourke’s memory is The Funny Stuff, a book that assembles in one place scores and scores of the most memorable quotes and passages from the author’s long and productive writing career. To give the project some structure, the passages—most of which amount to a short paragraph or so—are grouped into six sections by broad theme, such American manners and habits, global conflicts, the Baby Boomer generation, and so on. Within each of these sections, the quotes are then listed in alphabetical order by sub-themes that are somewhat randomly chosen (e.g., ‘Anger’, ‘Civil Rights’, ‘The Death Penalty’, ‘Political Promises’, ‘Rednecks’, ‘Taxes’, and ‘Waste’ in the ‘America and Americans’ section).
This encyclopedic approach to gathering the quotations turns out to be a terrible idea, for at least a couple of reasons. Mainly, there is very little context provided for any of passages; when O’Rourke produces a classic riff on the U.S. Congress—“When buying and selling are controlled by legislation, the first things to be bought and sold are legislators”—the reader is not sure to whom, what, or when the author is referring. (That quote was actually written more than thirty years ago.) Beyond that, the alphabetical groupings create some jarringly odd combinations, with, for instance, pithy zingers about Ronald Reagan, Bill and Hillary Clinton, Richard Nixon, and Donald Trump being lumped together.
In fact, thinking about the premise for this work begs the question: wouldn’t a better tribute to O’Rourke be to just have people read (or even re-read) his whole books so that they can experience his wit, charm, and snark in the way it was originally intended? That point is underscored by the last section of this volume—“My Generation (Baby Boomers)”—where the vast majority of the listed quotes come from a single source, The Baby Boom, including the only passage that runs in length to multiple pages. Of course, it is doubtful that O’Rourke initially wrote his essays in alphabetical order by topic, so it is quite likely that some of his intended meaning has fallen victim to the stylistic choices made here.
Given all that, the challenge for the reader is figuring out how to evaluate a book such as this. On one hand, much of O’Rourke’s writing remains sharp and insightful—and a lot of it really is funny—even if some of that material is decades old by now. Reliving that work merits a four-star rating, possibly even five. On the other hand, despite its good intentions and the considerable effort it represents, this is project that makes little sense beyond the editorial team’s desire to pay tribute to a dearly departed friend and colleague. From that perspective, a one- or two-star rating would be appropriate. I think that splitting the difference seems about right.
The result of the effort to honor O’Rourke’s memory is The Funny Stuff, a book that assembles in one place scores and scores of the most memorable quotes and passages from the author’s long and productive writing career. To give the project some structure, the passages—most of which amount to a short paragraph or so—are grouped into six sections by broad theme, such American manners and habits, global conflicts, the Baby Boomer generation, and so on. Within each of these sections, the quotes are then listed in alphabetical order by sub-themes that are somewhat randomly chosen (e.g., ‘Anger’, ‘Civil Rights’, ‘The Death Penalty’, ‘Political Promises’, ‘Rednecks’, ‘Taxes’, and ‘Waste’ in the ‘America and Americans’ section).
This encyclopedic approach to gathering the quotations turns out to be a terrible idea, for at least a couple of reasons. Mainly, there is very little context provided for any of passages; when O’Rourke produces a classic riff on the U.S. Congress—“When buying and selling are controlled by legislation, the first things to be bought and sold are legislators”—the reader is not sure to whom, what, or when the author is referring. (That quote was actually written more than thirty years ago.) Beyond that, the alphabetical groupings create some jarringly odd combinations, with, for instance, pithy zingers about Ronald Reagan, Bill and Hillary Clinton, Richard Nixon, and Donald Trump being lumped together.
In fact, thinking about the premise for this work begs the question: wouldn’t a better tribute to O’Rourke be to just have people read (or even re-read) his whole books so that they can experience his wit, charm, and snark in the way it was originally intended? That point is underscored by the last section of this volume—“My Generation (Baby Boomers)”—where the vast majority of the listed quotes come from a single source, The Baby Boom, including the only passage that runs in length to multiple pages. Of course, it is doubtful that O’Rourke initially wrote his essays in alphabetical order by topic, so it is quite likely that some of his intended meaning has fallen victim to the stylistic choices made here.
Given all that, the challenge for the reader is figuring out how to evaluate a book such as this. On one hand, much of O’Rourke’s writing remains sharp and insightful—and a lot of it really is funny—even if some of that material is decades old by now. Reliving that work merits a four-star rating, possibly even five. On the other hand, despite its good intentions and the considerable effort it represents, this is project that makes little sense beyond the editorial team’s desire to pay tribute to a dearly departed friend and colleague. From that perspective, a one- or two-star rating would be appropriate. I think that splitting the difference seems about right.
July 24, 2022
So somewhere among the ridiculous insanity that is our daily news I missed the fact that P. J. O'Rourke passed away this past February. This is very sad for those of us that appreciate fine humor writing. Mr. O’Rourke approached every subject with the same cynical eye but always with a touch of humor, and if you paid attention you might also learn a thing or two. Whether he was writing about American politics, an international crisis he was covering, or even reviewing a car, he always was aware of the craft of writing, of the power words and sentences had. He will be missed.
So it is with a heavy heart that I read through “The Funny Stuff: The Official P. J. O’Rourke Quotationary and Riffapedia”. His wit is all here, sorted by topic, both individual quotations and longer paragraphs. Anyone who is a fan can read through this and bring back the memories, smile, and wish we had much more.
And that is the main issue here – these are bits and pieces that make you want to go back and reread the originals. Mr. O’Rourke may be funny in bits and pieces, but the joy of his writing was in the composition and flow of the entire story. For the fans, this is a nice reminiscence that will make you want to pull out the originals. For those of you new to P. J. O'Rourke, for God’s sake go and read his collections, his books, his articles. You will not be disappointed.
I requested and received a free advanced electronic copy from Grove Atlantic, Atlantic Monthly Press via NetGalley. Thank you!
So it is with a heavy heart that I read through “The Funny Stuff: The Official P. J. O’Rourke Quotationary and Riffapedia”. His wit is all here, sorted by topic, both individual quotations and longer paragraphs. Anyone who is a fan can read through this and bring back the memories, smile, and wish we had much more.
And that is the main issue here – these are bits and pieces that make you want to go back and reread the originals. Mr. O’Rourke may be funny in bits and pieces, but the joy of his writing was in the composition and flow of the entire story. For the fans, this is a nice reminiscence that will make you want to pull out the originals. For those of you new to P. J. O'Rourke, for God’s sake go and read his collections, his books, his articles. You will not be disappointed.
I requested and received a free advanced electronic copy from Grove Atlantic, Atlantic Monthly Press via NetGalley. Thank you!
December 2, 2022
B: in the summer of 1970 I had my first job as the kitchen boy at the Bangor YMCA’s Camp Jordan. There for the vast salary of $300 for 10 weeks of work, I woke to shovel ash from an incinerator I had set on fire the night before. In between I lived in a one room cabin with a single light bulb where I started reading the first issues of the National Lampoon and my introduction to the wit and humor of P. J. O’Rourke. He made me laugh and continued to do so until his death earlier this year. As a conservative, he was leary of many trends in modern society but unlike so many so called conservatives when he looked back at the “good old days,” he laughed. This book is a good compendium of his observations on both today and our recent past.
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November 9, 2023I'm not going to give this a star rating because I got this in the wrong medium. Probably should have gotten a book instead of the audiobook, something I can just flip through pick things out; the audiobook is like having political bumper stickers from 1994 read at you nonstop by your most boring relative at Thanksgiving dinner. I think I was also expecting a curated selection of O'Rourke's essays, not just a string of quips and one-liners.
January 19, 2026
I can only give it 3 stars, because PJ O'Rourke didn't actually write this book. It was not what I thought it would be, sort of a greatest hits. No, it is just a bunch of one-liners, some of which appear multiple times. The intro may indeed be the best part of the book. Either way, it's PJ O'Rourke, so it can't be but so bad. I miss PJ O'Rourke, Hunter S Thompson, and Tom Wolfe - the likes of those three we will never see again.
May 9, 2023
I have read PJ O'Rourke for years, and while I don't often agree with him, I have always liked his style. That said, this book is a disappointment. His friends have picked out snippets of text that THEY like and their political biases are what drives the content. I only read a little before closing the book.
I received a review copy of this book from Grove Atlantic through NetGalley.com.
I received a review copy of this book from Grove Atlantic through NetGalley.com.
January 30, 2023
Full of short paragraphs from his writings. Lots of nuggets with common sense, which seems in short supply today.
August 22, 2023
Not funny!!
Displaying 1 - 10 of 10 reviews