The CEO of the Sofa [Englisch] [Taschenbuch]

I can't, in good faith, recommend this book to non-P.J. fans. The wit is there but the book lacks the coherence, factual analysis and dogged persistence on a subject that characterize his best books - Eat the Rich, Parliament of Whores and All the Trouble in the World. Even his previous collections - Vacations in Hell, Give War a Chance and Age and Guile - had related articles sandwiched together in sections. This just sounds like someone rambling on and on from topic to topic with no rhyme or reason. If you're not familiar with O'Rouke, I recommend the above-mentioned books, which are excellent.

Some of the stuff in the book is very good. Some of it isn't. His open letter to Democrats, his discussion of how being a parent changed his outlook, his (well-deserved) lambasting of Hillary and his analysis of the impeachement scandal in which no side is spared his sharp tongue, are top notch. But the CEO linkages annoyed me. Moreover, he took his old articles and pasted in asides to his (fictional) audience. The pasting is obvious and the asides are unnecessary and distracting. If he'd just done this as a coherent collection of his writings, it would probably be a 3.5-4 star book. As it is, it's 3-3.5 stars for PJ fans, probably less for novices.

O'Rourke has the knack of being able to find the universal in some rather arcane scenery - like the bureaucrats in India, and has a lot of fun with wine tasting and altering the senses in general. He also likes to tee off on both of our political parties, though, being a Republican there seems to be more glee in his hammering on the Democrats (or maybe my being conservative and Republican, I get more glee from his pounding on the other guys. But I must admit to relishing his exposing the hypocrisy on the right as well.).

This book is a collection of his published articles (at least one unpublished before) that are woven (pasted - pastiched?) together as if they came out of events in O'Rourke's life rather being set up as separate articles. This device works OK and offers the P.J. the opportunity the opportunity of setting up a few more laughs.

I am sure you will enjoy some articles more than others, as I did. Again, humor is a difficult thing and sometimes you find yourself outside the point of the joke. But there are plenty enough delicious barbs that you will find yourself laughing out loud more than few times. It ends in August of 2001 so it comes from the pre-9/11 world and that shows a bit. But, hey, it is still very good stuff.

Four stars: while it is very good writing, it isn't the best O'Rourke - but it is still far better than most other satirical commentary.

What PJ has done here is create a semi-fictional community, and embedded his essays (à la Holmes) as monologues delivered to these family members, friends, neighbors, and his long-suffering assistant, Max. To his credit, PJ is very up-front about what he's trying to do. In the Acknowledgements, he writes, 'Holmes pulled this [conceit] off with so much wit and charm that there was only one way I could pay his idea the compliment it deserved. I swiped it.' Like a successful actor or director, PJ seems to be in a position to get his publisher to indulge his personal pet projects. Like Holmes, PJ is witty. Charming, I guess, is a matter of taste. I found it dull and contrived, and skipped over it as quickly as I could in order to get to the actual essays.

The good news here is that most of the essays are PJ in fine form. Fans of 'Parliament of Whores' will savor his coverage of the United Nations Millennium Summit. And if you enjoyed his deconstruction of Jimmy and Rosalyn Carter's tome way back when, you'll prize the way he tears apart 'Guidelines for Bias-Free Writing' and (especially) 'It Takes a Village.' ('The village is Washington. You are the child.').

Interestingly, the parts I found most funny were those that involved, or were suggested by, Christopher Buckley. The Blind (Drunk) Wine Taste Test and the section titled 'Who the F___ Are They?' are, for pure humor writing, some of the best things in the book.

It was Christopher Buckley who coined the equation PJ = SJ [Perelman] + LSD, but you won't find much of the latter in this book. The author of the classic 'How to Drive Fast on Drugs while Getting Your Wing-Wang Squeezed and Not Spill Your Drink' now finds himself writing about childcare, the stock market, and the vicissitudes of home computers. These are some of the sections I skimmed over, as PJ veered terrifyingly close to (Lord have mercy) Andy Rooney-dom.

Despite those scares, though, there is still great material here. I found the occasional recycled joke, but there are also many true O'Rourkean one-liners to enjoy ('What a feckless, timid, timeserving [Republican] revolution that was in 1994, as if the sans culottes had stormed the Bastille to get themselves jobs as prison guards.' [p. 102]).

So ... good try on the Holmes thing, PJ. It wasn't my cup of tea, but *de gustibus ...*. The rest is still worth the trip.