Writing
O'Rourke was a proponent of Gonzo journalism; one of his earliest and best-regarded pieces was "How to Drive Fast on Drugs While Getting Your Wing-Wang Squeezed and Not Spill Your Drink", a National Lampoon article in March 1979. The article was republished in two of his books, Republican Party Reptile (1987) and Driving Like Crazy (2009).
O'Rourke's best-received book is Parliament of Whores, subtitled A Lone Humorist Attempts to Explain the Entire U.S. Government, whose main argument, according to the author, "is that politics are boring".
O'Rourke has described himself as a libertarian. He has sarcastically proposed two other American political parties: one for those with his mixture of views, another for those who hold the opposite mixture.
O'Rourke types his manuscripts on an IBM Selectric typewriter, though denies that he is a Luddite, asserting that his short attention span would make focusing on writing on a computer difficult. In a January 2007 interview, O'Rourke gave an example of his view of computers and writing by referencing novelist Stephen King, whom he paraphrased – saying had he a computer, he could have written three times as much in his early days. To which O'Rourke remarked, "Does the world need three times as many Cujos? Three times as many Jane Austens, maybe."
Read more about this topic: P. J. O'Rourke
Famous quotes containing the word writing:
“They’re writing songs of love,
But not for me.”
—Ira Gershwin (1896–1983)
“All writers are vain, selfish and lazy, and at the very bottom of their motives lies a mystery. Writing a book is a long, exhausting struggle, like a long bout of some painful illness. One would never undertake such a thing if one were not driven by some demon whom one can neither resist nor understand.”
—George Orwell (1903–1950)
“Literature is the art of writing something that will be read twice; journalism what will be grasped at once.”
—Cyril Connolly (1903–1974)