P.J. O’Rourke is in the doldrums. I couldn’t finish Peace Kills or Holidays in Heck; both read as if he were trying too hard to be funny with too-thin material—as opposed to Parliament of Whores, Holidays in Hell, and Eat the Rich, all of which are better because O’Rourke has more there with which to work. The Baby Boom isn’t terrible and three or four times it made me laugh out loud. But it’s not nearly as good as some of his other ones.

O’Rourke’s opening chapters are funny and reflect his attitude toward his subject, which is that boomers are everywhere and they won’t stop emoting. In one of his better moments, he states, “History is full of generations that had too many problems. We are the first generation to have too many answers.” But part of the reason why the book isn’t that great is explained in its very pages. Early on, O’Rourke says:

"The tip-off is the blather, the jabber, the prattle, the natter, the gab, gas, yak, yap, baloney. blarney, bunkum, the jaw-slinging, tongue-wagging, gum-beating chin music that is the Baby Boom’s gift to the world.”

The Baby Boom proves him correct: there’s too much blather, too much talking, too much of generalizations about the generation to make anything stick. Half of the book is a memoir of O’Rourke’s youth and half is an overview of the Boomer’s values and assumptions. He should have chosen one instead of doing both half-assed.

Finally, there’s the issue of the sound. Many paragraphs follow this model:

There’s a long opening topic sentence in which O’Rourke says something about something. And then a shorter one. And then another. And one more. And one more. And then a punch line that’s not so great.

This gets as old as a Boomer talking about what a good time he had in college. I wish he had written a flat-out memoir. Skip this one unless you happened to grab it in the library or need something to read as the kids get their haircuts.


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O'Rourke has been one of the funniest writers in America for about 30 years. His usual mediums are the column, article, or essay and, at times, this book - a biography thinly disguised as a meditation on an entire generation - feels a little strained. But when O'Rourke is funny he is very, very funny, and the sections on the 1960s are hilarious. ( )

P.J. O'Rourke is a very humorous man, or at the very least he seems to think he is hilarious. I truly hope this book about the Baby Boom generation (those born between 1946 and 1964) ((I am one)) is supposed to be more of a satire than true social commentary. Reading of his exploits during the same time period I grew up is completely foreign to me. I can relate to some of his childhood, not so much the burning of ants and firecrackers in a toad's throat, but the school experiences and the intense friendships and the freedom to roam at will throughout the town. Once he started discussing his college days that is where the big disconnect began for me and we never got back on track. I don't condemn him for his drug use, draft dodging or his non-belief in anything religious or political (unless he could meet girls) but his pretentious prose in recounting his lackadaisical lifestyle is too much. What does this even mean? - "The American Baby Boom is the future. We'll all turn into us eventually, as soon as families get excessively happy and start feeling too much affection for their kids. Unless, of course, extravagant freedom, scant responsibility, plenty of money, and a modicum of peace lead to such a high rate of carbon emissions that we all fry or drown." Huh? I need to reread Bryson's "Thunderbolt Kid" immediately.
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Anyone who brags in his book about killing innocent animals when he was a kid, does not get a good rating from me. ( )

Not as funny as most of O'Rourke's work. Perhaps because the failure of our generation to live up to its high expectations is not inherently funny.