Title: Modern Manners
Author: P.J. O'Rourke
Date: 1989
Publisher: Atlantic Monthly
ISBN: 0-87113-313-X
Length: 280 pages
Quote: "The modern world is a horrid place. It lacks anything enduring and true. It is devoid of every tenable value."
It's hard to choose a favorite among P.J. O'Rourke's satires. They're all fact-based and guaranteed to be dangerous to read while eating or drinking. And there's no reason to pick one; you can collect them all. If I had to choose, though, this early, pre-political book just might be my favorite.
So here, Nephews, is an official document of the kind of thing your elders...mostly were not doing in the 1980s, but we knew richer, trendier people who were doing most of it. It includes some Adult Content, especially about drugs, with which O'Rourke had done some research, and things that were probably laughed about more than done because, if done, they would probably have caused some untimely deaths and criminal investigations that did not occur. Nothing in this book should be taken as a guide to behavior, even at drunken celebrations of the fact that somebody else's excessively and probably dishonestly rich parents are not in their house when you and your friends are.
O'Rourke described his younger self reading Emily Post's Etiquette as a fantasy--of growing up to live among people who were more polite than the people he knew. I shared that fantasy, in junior high school. Emily Post was witty enough about her fictional illustrations of good manners that her long-outdated guide to etiquette is still a good read. If, however, you grew up and went into a profession where you partied with people like the Belushis...well, this book was a satire on what O'Rourke found when he grew up and went to sophisticated parties with people who were richer and more sophisticated than the ones he had previously known. It was a disappointment. This disappointment naturally made the satire all the more hilarious.
"A reception is a modenr tea with a guest of honor who's not important enough tor ate a dinner or who can't be trusted to be sober after six P.M."
"Waring a hat implies that you are bald if you are a man and that your hair is dirty if you are a woman."
"But there are plenty of masculine things women have, so far, shown no desire to be: pipe smokers, first-rate spin-casters, wise old drunks, quiet."
"Soup Nagasaki: Put unopened cans of Campbell's soup into oven at five hundred degrees and get out of there, fast."
"[T]he rich love money too well to be spendthrifts. They delight in getting others to pick up the tab, which is why it's not only polite, but also very delightful to imitate them."
If you buy it here, O'Rourke or a charity of his choice gets 10% of the price as ruled by Amazon.
Don't you just loved his quotes?
ReplyDeletenever minces his words.
I did and do. He does and doesn't. (This review should probably have mentioned how many books he's written since this one.)
DeleteModern Manners sounds like a real hoot. I just requested it from my public library. Thank you so much for sharing, Priscilla.
ReplyDeleteThank you for being here, Magaly.
DeleteI like satires; never heard of O'Rourke, but would like to check him and his book out some time.
ReplyDeleteI hope you enjoy him, Hazel. He did a lot of travelling--war correspondent, test driver, and in a metaphoric sense from left-wingnut to moderate right wing. He's his own target and never minds making himself look bad. So it's a taste I remember acquiring in the 1990s.
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