Susan Wright meets P.J. O’Rourke and discovers even economics can be fun if done the P.J. way…
It’s 10.15 am on a Monday morning, and O’Rourke is introducing himself in the Langham Hilton in London. He manages to look different from the photographs that adorn his book covers by being smaller than you might expect and he isn’t doing anything silly like wearing a dinner napkin or wielding a rocket-sized cigar – he’s simply standing in a raincoat, shirt and tie, introducing himself – “Hi, I’m PJ”.
It’s reassuring when he spots the hotel bar immediately after we shake hands – I know it’s really him. When we discover the bar is closed and must opt for a conversation in the marble-floored breakfast room, he mutters that this is fine just so long as he can mix a stiff gin with his tea. He can’t, as it happens, but he conjures up some great conversation anyway despite looking completely drained already at this early hour of the day.
O’Rourke has done a lot of hard travelling in his time – witness his war-torn, but hilarious, adventures in Give War A Chance and Holidays In Hell – but that was probably nothing compared to a week’s book touring in the UK which has included a five-minute appearance on BB2’s embarrassing talk-show, Clarkson, and a ‘serious’ discussion on Jeremy Paxman’s radio show, Start the Day, minutes before meeting us. I detect genuine relief – his head emerges from his hands and his eyes almost open properly – when I suggest to PJ that I only ask him easy questions so as not to add to his ordeal.
“Yes,” he says a little more brightly, “bubblegum questions…You know, I once knew a girl who studied philosophy at University and went on to work on a teen magazine, like a fanzine…It was her job to ask pop stars and people like that bubblegum questions. Questions like ‘What colour do you paint your bedroom?'” He laughs heartily at the idea.
I remark how apt that story is because I studied philosophy myself. “Really? The only thing is, this girl ended up throwing herself under the wheels of a New York subway train.” he laughs again. “I don’t know if it was the philosophy or the bubblegum or the combination of both.” His tired eyes look at me. “I’m sure she had a lot of other problems too”, he adds. I decide to skip the bubblegum questions.
PJ O’Rourke’s new book, Eat The Rich, sees him travel to a variety of different countries in an attempt to discover the economic reasons why some countries prosper while others ‘suck’. He also has a new Web site – http://www.pjorourke.com. The Web site is a waste of time, a simple copy of Eat The Rich‘s hardback cover, pasted on-line by his US publishing company. His book, though, is another slice of PJ O’Rourke greatness. It’s less gut-churningly funny than his previous work because, more so than his other books, he is relating tales of economic poverty and human suffering – especially in countries like Cuba, Albania and Tanzania – and examining that inherently boring subject of economics. You can’t laugh at true misery.
O’Rourke admits that even he, as a writer, must trim the biting humour of his usual style to make it appropriate to the subject. “You can say anything you want, make any sort of joke you want, as long as your target is folly.” he says. “And the real definition of folly is ‘persistance in error’. It’s not just making a mistake – everybody makes mistakes – folly is persistance in that mistake…As long as your target is folly rather than suffering, you can make the darkest, most horrible jokes in the world. On the other hand, the moment you start laughing at people for suffering, you’re out on thin ice.”
Yet people still expect to laugh at O’Rourke’s books and he never writes directly about the emotions involved in witnessing human suffering. He gets closer to the raw grit in Eat The Rich – for example, when he describes a “floppy tot” in Albania being cared for by a boy no older than 10 with not an adult in sight. Incidents like this reveal a sense of sickened helplessness in the face of suffering and loss of hope but does he feel typecast as a humour writer?
“Sure” he says. “There’s a kind of anti-comic voice which only works for certain things. I think it works better for younger people than it does for older people. It has a lot to do with upsetting adults. Then one day, one realises one is one,” he says, laughing, “and I’m just upsetting myself here aren’t I?” he adds in a mock dressing down tone. “Always tearing down without building up…”
In Eat The Rich, O’Rourke is critical of subsidies and handouts that appear to go nowhere, especially in the chapter where he visits Tanzania. This attitude to wasted relief efforts is understandable but is there a place for charity in the world? Giving to others is not something O’Rourke talks about much, certainly not in a positive light, and many interviewers interpret this as showing a lack of compassion. He has been labelled a hard-hearted bastard in the past and, recently in an Evening Standard interview, been accused of callousness. But this ignores the humanity in O’Rourke’s writing.
“Is there a place for charity? Oh, absolutely. In fact, I think that its place is at the very fore. The trouble is, or the thing that would lead you to ask me that question, is that there is a big difference between charity and government entitlement. Probably the worst thing about government entitlement programs is that they make the individual think that he or she is off the hook for charity. Charity is not just about giving money to bums…charity is love and compassion for others.”
It’s seems obvious that O’Rourke’s first-hand experience of poverty and suffering throughout the world has helped shape his politics. “It definitely helps,” he admits. “The first time I went to Russia I was politically conservative. It was a sort of instinctual conservatism. I hadn’t really thought much about the stuff. When I saw the actual results of Marxism in practice I began to oppose it in a more systematic way…rather than let it just be a gut instinct.”
More so than in his other books, O’Rourke, does get serious in Eat The Rich. Was it scary writing a book like Eat The Rich that is more straight and academic than his other work? “No, no,” he replies instantly. “It was hard work because I wanted to get my facts straight as much as I could and, unusually for a journalist I think, I was asking honest questions. That is to say, I didn’t know the answers to them. It’s very rare for journalists to ask questions that they don’t at least think they know the answers to…I was actually looking to learn something so it was a little like being sent back to school.”
Human suffering aside, O’Rourke does like to laugh and tell a good anecdote especially if he can be the butt of the joke. The ability to laugh at oneself is always an endearing quality for an individual – especially when they are as intelligent and well-read as O’Rourke and could talk the ears off Jeremy Paxman about politics. He likes to ham up any reference to his age and his slipping hold of what’s ‘hip’ in the modern world. Any references to 90s music in his writing are well-researched.
“Well, I write for Rolling Stone, right?” he laughs. “Usually, I call up the kids who work at Rolling Stone and say, ‘So…Alanis Morissette – that’s a girl, right?” and off he guffaws. O’Rourke is great when he laughs. When he truly cracks up in mirth, as he does when I tell him a joke (oh, okay, when I relate one of his own jokes), he shakes in a silent, controlled-but-losing-it, kind of way.
O’Rourke’s 36 year old wife, Tina, also helps to keep him abreast of the important things in life – like who’s who in the world of movie actors. “We were at a party for Hunter S Thompson’s 25th Anniversary of Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas“, he recounts, “and I was talking to some young actor for a while and I came back to my wife and said ‘you know, that Johnny Depp’s a pretty nice guy’. ‘That’, my wife said ‘was Brad Pitt’.”
P.J O’Rourke is only ever gentle and polite in person and there’s a sense of the traditionalist. He dresses conservatively and I get the impression he’s probably happiest in the company of men, talking politics, world problems and downing a scotch in one hand with a cigar in the other. Not that he can’t do that with women but maybe he’s not had the practice. Nevertheless, there’s an interesting edge to him and he has a fondness for guns, describing AK-47s as ‘fun’.
“I shot one in Pakistan up on the frontier,” he says. “Machine guns are a blast to shoot because they have no recoil. As Hunter S Thompson put it, it’s like watering the lawn. You just pull the trigger and spray the bullets around because the physical energy required to bring the bullet up from the magazine automatically absorbs the recoil. Therefore, you feel almost nothing.”
O’Rourke’s days on the wild side of life are disappearing though. He has a baby daughter now and reckons his days of globetrotting are coming to an end. This is why the target for his next book is the town he grew up in, Toledo, Ohio. One reason is he doesn’t have to travel far and the other is “just because it’s a silly place and I come from there so I know the turf”. He wants to “take a look at America but through a particular key hole – a place where things probably didn’t work out all that well, kind of a flop…but not tragic.”
O’Rourke has managed to make his comfortable fortune by doing a job he’s enjoyed which makes him an inspiration or an object of envy for others. But one thing he’s not, is boring. Has he found any relationship between how much money a person has and how boring they are? He thinks for a second. “Only if they really deserve the money that they’ve made,” he answers deliberately. “They’ve really worked hard for it and there’s no question whatsoever” he says slowly “that they deserve the money that they’ve got. Then…” He pauses. “They’re usually real boring.” He cracks a wide grin and his shoulders start shaking underneath his pinstripe shirt as he chuckles deeply. That’s the advantage of being a humour writer – your own jokes are usually the best.
But O’Rourke, despite being a funny, best-selling author, does not brandish an ego the size of the Eiger. He’s a down-to-earth guy with interesting stories to tell – some might even call him humble. “Thanks for letting me talk about that fabulous subject – me” he writes in my copy of Eat The Rich, “Hope you weren’t too bored”. As if.
