The title of the present volume, The Funny Stuff, might imply the existence of other volumes of the not-funny variety, presumably by the same author, but this is not so. Some 20 other volumes of genuinely funny stuff by the late P.J. O’Rourke are, indeed, already weighing down our bookshelves. What this new book does is build a kind of museum exhibit of O’Rourke sentences, the better to examine them up close while we note their careful construction and hell-for-leather action. As for the perky title, it’s just an opening gambit, a promise that you’ll want to pause admiringly here, there, and everywhere, maybe memorize some of the words and plagiarize them in conversation until you get too big a laugh and have to admit, yeah, I am just ripping off P.J. O’Rourke.
