Book Review: Age and Guile

A Fair Trade Book

Title: Age and Guile Beat Youth Innocence and a Bad Haircut

Author: P.J. O'Rourke

Date: 1995

Publisher: Atlantic Monthly Press

ISBN: 0-87113-609-0

Length: 341 pages

Quote: “Everyone, rich or poor, needs healthcare to live. And everyone, rich or poor, needs food to live. Therefore, next year, the Clinton administration will introduce legislation mandating federal preparation of everybody's breakfast.”

In this collection of articles P.J. O'Rourke documents, and to some extent explains, the rightward drift in his politics: He started out infatuated with idealistic notions of revolutionary Communism, then noticed what that way of thinking had done for other big, formerly rich countries, such as Russia, and became the classic Republican Party Reptile of our generation. Basically, he admits in some of the later pieces, his politics are informed by an anti-authoritarian temperament. And a little serious study of economics.

Along the way, he shares several non-political thoughts: “Concrete poems” from the 1960s. Stories about hippie adventures in the late 1960s and early 1970s. Car reviews, including one that documents the harm done by open-air spraying of “agricultural pesticides.” Two book reviews, of a book about relationships and a book about etiquette. And, finally, four sports articles—participatory rather than spectator sports, and the one about hunting diverges into recipes, unfortunately not including bear. (I suspect P.J. O'Rourke at least knows people who can make gourmet food out of bears.)

(O'Rourke would undoubtedly say, on reading the paragraph above: “How do you know it was agricultural pesticides? Maria didn't claim to know any such thing...” I know from firsthand experience. Several experiences. I know exactly what he describes the photographer going through, I've gone through it enough times to know that the pollen allergy remedies are useless, and if poison hadn't been sprayed in the vicinity of the magnolia tree I would probably have been better off living in it than sitting inside a poison-sprayed house with the windows down to protect me from pollen. The corporations that market poison sprays don't tell you the sprays cause hayfever and asthma and all kinds of other nasty things, they sponsor all sorts of useless verbiage about how some combination of “triggers” that have never done the patient any harm before has to be causing these symptoms, but over time, if the patient pays attention and gets better, the patient will notice that no combination of “triggers” does him or her as much harm as the poison spray does. If you have melodramatic allergy symptoms or sudden dramatic flare-ups of any number of chronic conditions, check for exposure to “pesticides”--many people notice a correlation every single time. For years, while our feeble (bribed) federal agencies keep drivelling on about all the other possible factors that might blah blah blah EXCEPT THE OTHER FACTORS DO NOT HAVE THAT EFFECT IN THE ABSENCE OF POISON SPRAYS.)

O'Rourke has selected his own autobiography-in-early-published-writing and it's entirely likely that he's selected the early pieces for their juvenile, shallow, hysterical, if-you-can't-be-funny-be-rude qualities, as a way of showing us how far he's come. The funny thing about his poems is that in the 1960s he was able to publish them. Not that he hasn't always written like a guy (in the Dave Barry sense, where “guy” is almost as opposite to “Man” as it is to “Woman”); not that he's ever passed up a joke merely because he knew some readers would hate it. (In some of these articles, he jokes about readers acting out their dislike of his politically incorrect jokes.) Not that he's ever denied being more libertarian than conventionally Republican, politically; he's in favor of legalizing recreational drugs and opening the borders to immigrants who've shown initiative and intelligence, and similar things. Not that he's ever had—or that he shouldn't have had—the benefit of a Drill Sergeant Dad to remind him to save the “Army language” until he's in the Army. Just that he's become much funnier, as well as better informed, with maturity.

What's not to love about this book, if you liked O'Rourke's other books: Less travel. Many find O'Rourke funniest when he's on the road, and although the car magazines did put him on the road to test cars—a Jeep in Wales, a Bugatti in Italy, a Lincoln Town Car in Mexico, a Ford Explorer in Hawaii, and a snowmobile in Michigan during heavier than usual snow—and this book contains another account of a journalistic trip to Mexico, mostly these articles were written in, of, and for Middle America, with minimal descriptions of scenery to help a maximum number of readers imagine that wherever O'Rourke was sitting looked just like wherever they were sitting while reading this book. Not that that prevents me from laughing out loud, frequently, each time I've reread the book every few years since I bought my own copy, but if the travel stories are your favorites then this will not be your favorite O'Rourke book.

But even if it's only your seventh or eighth favorite O'Rourke book, it's still definitely too funny to be a good present for anyone recovering from a broken rib. The first person I knew to have bought a copy of Age and Guile warned me, “Try to discipline yourself to read only one or two articles a day.” Good advice, although you probably need to be at the point where you can keep using the same glasses for another year, if you just reduce your reading time, in order to follow it. 

(Since I inserted a rant above, I should probably not go into one about how readers should be blessed with more friends like me who, when we see a funny book at a friend's house, will skim through bits of half a dozen articles and rush out and buy their own copy, rather than "borrow" the friend's book for longer than they'd need even if they were meticulously reading one chapter a day.)

Age and Guile is A Fair Trade Book. Buy it here for $5 per book, $5 per package, plus $1 per online payment, and O'Rourke or a charity of his choice gets $1. You could add O'Rourke's other books of similar size and vintage, Give War a Chance, All the Trouble in the World, and Parliament, to the package for a total of $25 (or $26), in which case O'Rourke or his charity would get $4.