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

P. J. O'Rourke

Dec 2007 · Open Road + Grove/Atlantic

About this ebook

The political humorist shares his transformation from dirty hippie to conservative middle-aged grouch: “An incorrigible comic gift” (The New York Times Book Review).
 
The #1 New York Times–bestselling author of Give War a Chance was at one time a raving pinko, with scars on his formerly bleeding heart to prove it. In Age and Guile: Beat Youth, Innocence, and a Bad Haircut, P. J. O’Rourke chronicles the remarkable trajectory that took him from the lighthearted fun of the revolutionary barricades to the serious business of the nineteenth hole.
 
How did the O’Rourke of 1970, who summarized the world of “grown-ups” as “materialism, sexual hang-ups, the Republican party, uncomfortable clothes, engagement rings, car accidents, Pat Boone, competition, patriotism, cheating, lying, ranch houses, and TV” come to be in favor of all of those things? What caused his metamorphosis from a beatnik-hippie type comfortable sleeping on dirty mattresses in pot-addled communes during his days as a writer for assorted “underground” papers? Here, O’Rourke shows how his socialist idealism and avant-garde aesthetic tendencies were cured, and how he acquired a healthy and commendable interest in national defense, balanced budgets, Porsches, and Cohiba cigars.
 
From a former editor-in-chief of National Lampoon and frequent NPR guest, this hilarious essay collection shows that there’s hope for all those suffering from acute bohemianism.

About the author

P. J. O’Rourke has written nineteen books, including Modern Manners, Parliament of Whores, and All the Trouble in the World. He has written for such publications as Car and Driver, Esquire, Vanity Fair, The New Republic, The New York Times Book Review, Parade, Harper’s Magazine, and Rolling Stone. He is currently editor-in-chief of American Consequences.