Reading List
P. J. O’Rourke
Satirist and Journalist
P. J. O’Rourke (1947-2022) was an American political satirist and reporter who began at the underground press, became editor-in-chief of National Lampoon, and then spent two decades as a foreign correspondent for Rolling Stone.
Holidays in Hell (1988) collected his dispatches from war zones and failing states. Parliament of Whores (1991) turned the same eye on the workings of American government, and Eat the Rich (1998) on economics. His later books include On the Wealth of Nations (2007) and How the Hell Did This Happen? (2017).
He was a regular panellist on the radio quiz Wait Wait… Don’t Tell Me!
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Put Out More Flags
by Evelyn Waugh
“Waugh was sent to cover the coronation of Haile Selassie in Ethiopia and from that he spun three novels: Black Mischief, Scoop and Put Out More Flags. I suppose Put Out More Flags is the least known of his comic novels. There’s A Handful of Dust and…they’re like the Seven Dwarfs, I can never name all of them. The satire of Black Mischief involves a primitive society getting all sorts of modern ideas.” — via Interview, November 2010
02
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1984
by George Orwell · 1949 · Fiction
“But one of the things that’s interesting to me about both Animal Farm and 1984 is that they are warnings against collectivism from a man of the left. Sure, any old Tory or Republican might be likely to make this point, though not so well, perhaps, nor so amusingly, but the fact that it comes from a man of the left is interesting. It seems to me to be something Orwell never fully came to grips with.” — via Interview, November 2010
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Brave New World
by Aldous Huxley
“He posits the idea that the political system actually does perfect things for people and it turns out to be nearly as scary as the horror shows actually created in the 20th century in the attempt to create the new man, whether as Aryan super-German or Marxist and whatever Mussolini and Franco were up to. So Huxley was showing us that this is a rum goal however ‘well’ it turns out.” — via Interview, November 2010
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Gulliver’s Travels
by Jonathan Swift
“In the first place, it is very funny. We read it first as an adventure story, when we were kids, without understanding the political context in Europe or the philosophical context. Then when we read it again as adults we realise that Swift is having a good deal of fun here. Just the religious allegory with the Big-enders and the Little-enders and the idea of people who live forever.” — via Interview, November 2010