Driving Like Crazy: Thirty Years of Vehicular Hell-Bending, Celebrating America the Way It's Supposed to Be - with an Oil Well in Every Backyard, a Cadillac Escalade in Every Carport, and the Chairman of the Federal Reserve Mowing Our Lawn

by P. J. O'Rourke

Overview

Driving Like Crazy celebrates cars and author P. J. O’Rourke’s love for them, while chronicling the golden age of the automobile in America. O’Rourke takes us on a whirlwind tour of the world’s most scenic and bumpiest roads in trouble-laden cross-country treks, from a 1978 Florida-to-California escapade in a 1956 special four-door Buick sedan to a 1983 thousand-mile effort across Mexico in the Baja 1000 to a trek through Kyrgyzstan in 2006 on the back of a Soviet army surplus six-wheel-drive truck. For longtime fans of the celebrated humorist, the collection features a host of O’Rourke’s classic pieces on driving, including “How to Drive Fast on Drugs While Getting Your Wing-Wang Squeezed and Not Spill Your Drink,” about the potential misdeeds one might perform in the front (and back) seat of an automobile; “The Rolling Organ Donors Motorcycle Club,” which chronicles a seven-hundred-mile weekend trip through Michigan and Indiana that O’Rourke took on a Harley Davidson alongside Car & Driver publisher David E. Davis, Jr.; his brilliant and funny piece from Rolling Stone on NASCAR and its peculiar culture, recorded during an alcohol-fueled weekend in Charlotte, North Carolina, in 1977; and an hilarious account of a trek from Islamabad to Calcutta in Land Rover’s new Discovery Trek.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780802144799
Publisher:	Grove/Atlantic, Inc.
Publication date:	05/11/2010
Edition description:	Reprint
Pages:	288
Product dimensions:	5.56(w) x 8.38(h) x 0.79(d)

About the Author

P. J. O’Rourke is the author of twelve books, including Parliament of Whores and Give War a Chance, both of which were #1 New York Times best sellers. His most recent book is the best seller On the Wealth of Nations.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments ix

Introduction: The End of the American Car xv

1 How to Drive Fast on Drugs While Getting Your Wing-Wang Squeezed and Not Spill Your Drink 1

2 How to Drive Fast When the Drugs Are Mostly Lipitor, the Wing-Wang Needs More Squeezing Than It Used to Before It Gets the Idea, and Spilling Your Drink Is No Problem if You Keep the Sippy Cups from When Your Kids Were Toddlers and Leave the Baby Seat in the Back Seat so that When You Get Pulled Over You Look Like a Perfectly Innocent Grandparent 13

3 Sgt. Dynaflo's Last Patrol 27

4 NASCAR was Discovered By Me 49

5 The Rolling Organ Donors Motorcycle Club 59

6 "Come On Over to My House-We're Gonna Jump off the Roof!" 77

7 A Test of Men and Machines That We Flunked 101

8 A Better Land Than This 109

9 Getting Wrecked 131

10 Keep Your Eyes Off the Road 145

11 Comparative Jeepology 101 161

12 Taking My Baby for a Ride 175

13 ReinCARnation 187

14 The Geezers' Grand Prix 215

15 Call for a New National Park 227

16 A Ride to the Funny in a Special Needs Station Wagon Complete with Booby Hatch 233

17 Big Love 245

18 The Other End of the American Car 251

Interview P.J.O'Rourke 259

Editorial Reviews

Humorist P. J. O'Rourke has always been a sly, strong advocate of automobiles: "We're told cars are dangerous. It's safer to drive through South Central Los Angeles than to walk there. We're told cars are wasteful. Wasteful of what? Oil did a lot of good sitting in the ground for millions of years. We're told cars should be replaced by mass transportation. But it's hard to reach the drive-through window at McDonald's from a speeding train." His Driving Like Crazy is a grand compilation of his writings about dream cars, SUVs, family trips in station wagons, and naughty things one shouldn't do while driving. A classic smooth ride.

When O'Rourke is on his game, he's as funny a writer as we have now, and even though many of the tales with which he regales us are certifiable stretchers, what matters is that they're funny, not whether they're true. If they really were true, O'Rourke would have been dead at least a quarter-century ago, yet here he is now, at the astonishing age of 62, purring along a lot more smoothly than those Buicks of yore about which he writes with more or less equal measures of affection and exasperation
—The Washington Post

Jonathan Yardley

Yes, this book is a monument to slash-and-burn living, glorifying old cars whose miles-per-gallon ratings read like shoe sizes and indulgent off-road races conducted in fragile terrain. The thing is, you'll hardly hear the cries of the rare lizards and cactuses being ground to extinction under O'Rourke's tires because you'll be laughing too hard. Sure, he's personally responsible for the impending death of our race and planet, but at his best…the guy's hilarious.
—The New York Times

Neil Genzlinger

Humorist O'Rourke shifts gears, covering and combining past pieces on cars (for Automobile, Car and Driver, Esquire and Forbes) with new material to set this auto anthology in motion. Much has been reworked "because the writing-how to put this gently to myself-sucked." Starting with car journalism language ("Drop the bottle and grab the throttle"), he steers the reader toward California cars: "Many automobiles were purchased to attract members of L.A.'s eight or ten opposite sexes." He writes about a variety of vehicles, from off-road racers to Philippine jeepneys ("a Willys cut in half and lengthened"). Accelerating the humor, he updates his 1979 account of a 700-mile weekend trip through Michigan and Indiana: "I can imagine what the farm girls and small town teen angels who looked so longingly at the Harley-Davidson FXE-80 Super Glide would have thought if I had been riding a Segway: 'dork.'A " His early essay "How to Drive Fast on Drugs While Getting Your Wing-wang Squeezed and Not Spill Your Drink" is followed by wild road trips, NASCAR nights and selecting "a new grocery hauler, parent trap, Keds sled, family bus." Never in neutral, O'Rourke offers laughter on wheels. (June)

Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Publishers Weekly

An original writer for the National Lampoon, O'Rourke (Peace Kills) knows a thing or two about satire. Here he collects material from the past 30 years as well as some new essays about the automobile. With the car industry under attack, both socially and economically, it is pleasing to read O'Rourke's trenchant analysis of all the good things the automobile has brought to American society, even as his tongue is firmly planted in cheek. He is an automobile lover whose work has appeared in Automobile magazine, Car and Driver, Esquire, and Forbes. If O'Rourke loves his SUV, thinks the auto executives are to blame for the current industry problems, and believes it is an American right to drive fast in gas-guzzling machines, then he is probably in the majority. VERDICT Much of this material will be new to casual readers and, to the rest, a reminder of a talented writer at work. A great book for summer reading; thumbing through it elicits a laugh at almost any point. [See Prepub Alert, LJ12/09.]—Eric C. Shoaf, Univ. of Texas Lib. at San Antonio

—Eric C. Shoaf

Library Journal

Hard-edged humorist O'Rourke (On the Wealth of Nations: Books That Changed the World, 2007, etc.) certifies his American manliness with a gathering of automotive reveries, most of them originally published in Esquire, Rolling Stone and Car and Driver. Certainly the funniest guy on the right side of the political road, the author begins with a youthful essay about "How to Drive Fast on Drugs While Getting Your Wing-Wang Squeezed and Not Spill Your Drink." That piece predates "Taking My Baby for a Ride," which regards the safe transportation of his children-in anything other than the cursed minivan, of course. O'Rourke also includes the requisite recollections of road trips, including a cross-country journey in a '56 Buick, already two decades old and cursed with vapor lock; and a few expeditions to Mexico likely to appeal only to like-minded car enthusiasts. The author presents an appreciation of Jeeps in everyday life in the Philippines; writes fondly about his discovery of NASCAR; and provides the obligatory fond memories of jalopies of yesteryear. For the most part, the waggish reporter eases up on his accustomed libertarian fun as he happily tools along in his Roadmaster, coasting along and sometimes going a little too light on the brakes. Ultimately, he proudly declares that his is a car guys' book. A joy ride for those who crave a Corvette Stingray or care about torque; others may want to get out at the next light.

Kirkus Reviews

“With the car industry under attack, both socially and economically, it is pleasing to read O’Rourke’s trenchant analysis of all the good things the automobile has brought to American society, even as his tongue is firmly planted in cheek . . . A great book for summer reading; thumbing through it elicits a laugh at almost any point.” —Library Journal

“Libertarian satirist P.J. O’Rourke has built a bestselling career by celebrating his own politically incorrect intemperance. So it’s only fitting that he’s devoted some of his best writing to that gaudy metaphor for excess, the gas-guzzling muscle car . . . The collapse of the auto industry makes the book poignantly timely.” —SmartMoney

“Car buff or not, all dads can enjoy satirist P.J. O’Rourke’s ode to the American automobile.” —The Daily Beast

“[A] treat of a book . . . As with almost all of O’Rourke’s work, it’s easy reading, and he’s just as good, if not better, at cracking wise about cars and driving as he is about liberal politics.” —Dallas Morning News

“Readers looking for insights and laughs will not be disappointed by Driving Like Crazy . . . [it] is a ride worth taking, even for readers who don’t know an oil pan from a frying pan.” —Washington Times

“Driving Like Crazy isn’t just a bound collection of greatest hits. P.J. has written new lead-ins to each story that offer fresh meat even for those who think they’ve read it all before . . . This book is a must-read.” —Automobile Magazine

“Reading O’Rourke can be like being dragged over a rocky field by a runaway ox on crystal meth—a wild and bumpy ride. His is a cartoonish vision of life, unapologetically if not joyously puerile, with enough hyperbolic volatility pumped into every paragraph to explode the Hindenburg all over again . . . For the automotive Walter Mittys of the world, who dream of an outlaw life on the road and identify more with the peace-disturbers than the peacemakers, it’s definitely something worth keeping under the pillow.” —Bruce McCall, Globe and Mail

“An insightful look not just at the American love affair with cars, but also at one man’s changing outlook on life, all of it fast-paced and over the top . . . Even readers who know nothing about cars and motorcycles will appreciate the joy and hilarity of this book.” —Booklist

“Never in neutral, O’Rourke offers laughter on wheels.” —Publishers Weekly

"Fasten your seatbelt, O'Rourke is about to provide us with some rocket-reading essays about life in the fast lane, the slow lane, and most of the time, no lane at all . . . This is not your parent's armchair travel book, but be sure to make it yours." —Ohioana Quarterly

“This book is a monument to slash-and-burn living, glorifying old cars whose miles-per-gallon ratings read like shoes sizes and indulgent off-road races conducted in fragile terrain. The thing is, you’ll hardly hear the cries of the rare lizards and cactuses being ground to extinction under O’Rourke’s tires because you’ll be laughing too hard.” —New York Times Book Review

From the Publisher

P.J. O'Rourke is at his most shocking and unapologetic here in 30 years’ worth of satire about America's (and his own) love of the automobile. Narrator Christopher Lane offers a fair approximation of O'Rourke's patented snarky banter. Lane projects O'Rourke’s underlying wise-guy attitude, which dares the listener to challenge what he's saying. O'Rourke's right-wing political agenda may annoy some listeners in his more recent essays, but most are meant to jab everyone, at least a little. Ever since his days of writing for NATIONAL LAMPOON, O'Rourke has worked hard to shock. The most bizarre element of this book is when O'Rourke becomes his own worst critic, savaging his own earlier work in later essays. Strange boy. M.S © AudioFile 2009, Portland, Maine

JULY 2009 - AudioFile