The CEO of the Sofa (Brilliance Audio on Compact Disc)
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Product Description
New York Times bestselling creator P.J. O'Rourke has toured the fighting in Bosnia, visited the West Bank disguised as P.J. of Arabia, lobbed one-liners on the battlefields of the Frith War, and traded quips with Communist rebels in the jungles of the Philippines. Now in The CEO of the Sofa, he embarks on a job to the most frightening place of all - his own home. Ensconced on the steward boardroom's throne (although not supposed to put his feet on the cushions), he faces a three-year-old who wants a stall phone, a freelance career devoted to criticism articles like "Chewing-Mouth Dogs Perform Hope to People with Eating Disorders," and neighbors who foetor like Democrats ("That is, using smell as a transitive verb. When I berate a cigar they wave their hands in front of their faces and put on an act to cough."). Undaunted - with the help of martinis - by bull's-eye age, P.J. holds forth on everything from getting toddlers to nod off ("Advice to parents whose kids love the scenario of the dinosaurs: Don't give away the surprise ending") to why Hillary Clinton's poll victory was a good thing ("We Republicans were almost out of people to animus in the Senate. Teddy Kennedy is just too old and fat to pick on").
And P.J. leaps (well, groans and pushes himself up) from the settle to pursue assignments such as a high-speed drive across the ugliest part of India at the hottest space of the year, a blind (drunk) wine tasting with Christopher Buckley, and a holiday at the U.N. Millennial Summit, where he runs the risk of perishing from monotony and puts readers in peril of laughing themselves to expiry.
Customer Reviews
Over done reading
The audio version of this book is way over the top. When the reader reads dry humor in such a flowery way he makes the author sound snotty. I couldn't bear it. Its hard to say if I would have liked it better if the reader had toned it down.
2007-04-13
(New Jersey) | Helpful Votes: 0 | Rating: 1
P.J. being P. J.
The books of P. J. O'Rourke can be divided into three classifications. First come single-topic books, such as Modern Manners or The Bachelor Home Companion, which are (or give the appearance of being) single, unified works. Second are the collections of random essays on unrelated topics, such as Republican Party Reptile. Third are the essay collections whose individual pieces all fall under some general unifying topic, such as All the Trouble in the World or Parliament of Whores. Then there's The CEO of the Sofa, which either exists in a category of its own, or occupies a stitched-together amalgam of two or more of the preceding. Other reviewers have already cautioned the newcomer to O'Rourke's writing not to begin with this book. Heed them. If you've never sampled O'Rourke's style before, it's as likely as not that you'll be utterly at a loss if you begin here.
The CEO of the Sofa is a collection of essays with a unique conceit (unique to O'Rourke, at least, as he openly admits having swiped the idea from a collection of columns by Oliver Wendell Holmes): each is purportedly one of a series of conversations around the house with family members, friends, his personal assistant, and some imaginary neighbors. This is used as a means of linking, however tenuously, a series of essays that would otherwise have little to do with one another. The essays themselves are essentially unchanged from their various prior publications, and often the only reminder that a particular piece is supposed to be part of a dialogue is the occasional (sometimes jarring) insertion of the other party's name. Like most experiments, this one is not entirely successful, although only the pedant will allow it to detract from essays that he or she would otherwise enjoy.
The book's contents themselves are essentially what one has come to expect from P. J. O'Rourke; vaguely libertarian, mostly hilarious musings on a variety of subjects. In this case they include Hillary Clinton, the 2000 presidential election, the current (or then-current) crop of celebrities, and anything else he happens to cast his critical eye upon. His style is unchanged; he can still zero in on the dumbest-sounding passage in a book or speech and gleefully quote it, he is still adept at pointing out hypocrisy and contradiction, and he is still capable of generating hilariously descriptive similes about ninety percent of the time (likewise, about one simile in ten is a groan-inducing dud that thuds to the ground and dies; my biggest general criticism of O'Rourke, a writer whom I treasure, is that he is slightly too much in love with his narrative voice to effectively edit out the clunkers).
If you are an aficionado of O'Rourke, you will like this book, or should. It is never boring. If you haven't sampled his writing before, my admiration for the man demands that I warn you away from this one, at least for the time being. By all means you should give him a shot, but you would be best served by starting with something earlier, such as Parliament of Whores (one of the best nonfiction books on American government, period, and nicely evenhanded in criticizing the entire government, thus satisfying readers of numerous political stripes). Then come back to The CEO of the Sofa with your sense of humor properly honed, and enjoy.
2006-11-21
(Cleveland, OH) | Helpful Votes: 1 | Rating: 5
"Your girlfriend's ugly,your wife's a bitch,and your dog can't hunt."
I love political satire and humor,both left and right wing.I can't believe it;but this is the first book of PD's that I've read.I know he is a popular writer,his books are everywhere;but for some reason I've passed them up.I guess I just wrote them off as popular fiction.I've got nobody to blame but myself ,but now that I've found him,I'll be reading more.
A lot of writers of political satire confuse hatred, foul language and outright nastiness with humor.Not so with PD.He takes the ordinary things that go on all the time and comes up with off-the- wall thinking and makes very different and truly humorous comments and observations.His approach is reminiscent of Twain and more recently Mark Russell.He had my sides splitting without resorting to mean spirited character assissination.His humor is more like the type of thing you get on "Roasts".
He amazed me time and tme again,by pointing out great humor where I had not even realized it existed.
If you like one-liners the book is littered with them.
Here is a little bit of the sort of thing he gives us:
"NABAA--The National Association to Ban Almost Everything"
"Clinton's popularity ratings are getting so high he's starting
to date again."
"If I had a cell phone, I'd lose it.I lose everything,I left my
first wife in the back of a cab somewhere."
"The only thing the UN is suited for,according to its charter,
is an invasion from Mars."
"The Web is just a device by which bad ideas travel around the
world at the speed of light."
"NAPWETD--National Association of People ith Not Enough to Do."
"Ideas are to Hillary,what sex is to her husband."
"Since the time of Jimmy Carter,Liberals have been chasing
their tail,and,last heard,they've caught it and begun eating
and had chewed their way up to the back of their own ears."
"The computer becomes the handgun of modern mugging."
"This spawned a multitudinous generation of white-collar
criminals who can't even be bothered with the collar."
"Kids today may be wizards with virtual reality,yet they seem
a little foggy about what makes reality virtuous.
He does some great takes on a book "Guidelines for Bias-Free Writing",obviously from the left:
"Sure,the task force seems to be nothing but a rat bag of
shoddy pedagogues,athletes of the tongue,professional pick-
nits filling the stupid hours of their pointless days with
nagging the yellow-bellied editors of university presses,
which print volume after volume of bound-wad fated to sit
unread in college library stacks until the sun expires.
"Why doesn't the task force just combine "she" and "it" and
pronounce the thing accordingly."
If you've ever read Hunter S. Thompson's "Fear and Loathing in
Las Vegas", or seen the movie,and wondered what it was all
about;PJ explains it all for you.
"A thrilling saga in which nothing much happens--a fitting
example of the picaresque for the Now Generation.One of the
things Hunter did in this book was write a coda to,an obituary
for,the nonsense of the 1960's.It is important to recall that
in the 1960's nothing much happened."
So,you can see,nothing in off-limits to PJ'sharp satire.
He keeps CEO's,the Stock Markets,technology,Drugs,Gun Control,
Political Correctness,Europe,India and particularly,the Liberal
Elite directly in his gun sites and fires back with some of
the best ammunition available---HUMOR!
This book has made me a P.D. James fan.
Oh yeah,my title is a quote from page 103;guess who he was
talking about.
2005-12-19
(Toronto,Canada) | Helpful Votes: 1 | Rating: 5
Hit and miss.
If, like me, you read P.J. and enjoy his wit even though you frequently find yourself disagreeing with him politically, there is a great deal of material in this book that you will find very funny. However, if like me, you occasionally find that he goes too far and simply becomes insulting without bothering to be witty, you will find a great deal in this book annoying and unfunny. In this, it is not unlike "Republican Party Reptile", although it's not quite as funny and a bit more irritating. In quality, it's about on a par with "Bachelor Home Companion", although that book was less political and thus less annoying when it failed to be funny. As such, it's nowhere near as good as his best work: "Parliament of Whores", "Eat The Rich", "Holidays In Hell", and "Give War A Chance", in (more or less) order from best down, but it's miles ahead of his worst books, "The Enemies List", "Modern Manners", and "Age And Guile...", in order from worst up.
If you actually enjoy P.J. unconditionally and agree with his politics more than I do, you may well find this book more enjoyable than I did. I'd still say that it's a mid-range effort when compared to his other works.
2005-07-21
(Bellefontaine Neighbors, Mo. USA) | Helpful Votes: 0 | Rating: 3
Not his best, perhaps, but still worth reading.
I agree with some of the negative comments of others who comment on the book, that it's not his best, but there are still enough observations and turns of phrase that make you laugh out loud, to make it worth reading. I'm on the last 60 pages, now.
2005-07-04
(Denmark) | Helpful Votes: 0 | Rating: 3
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