The best line from Matt Labash's obituary for P.J. O'Rourke: "Good writers make you want to read, Great writers make you want to write." P.J. O'Rourke made me want to write. He had one keen eye inherited from Tom Wolfe, and one gimlet eye inherited from Hunter Thompson. But he didn't eviscerate his targets like Wolfe or stink bomb them like Thompson. He simply laughed at them. No -- scratch that. He laughed with them. However ridiculous his targets came out, he never suggested that he was any better, in fact he often targeted the man in the mirror. He once pointed out that Hunter Thompson schtick was being a crazy guy looking at normalcy. His schtick was being a normal guy facing all the crazy. As a result, no matter how incisive and biting his critique, you had to love him. In the end, this made his words all the more powerful. It was a remarkable thing to see.
Me taking up writing back then was me saying "I want to be able to do that." I am comparatively weak sauce, but I like to think my first three books were absolutely in that vein. You can get a feel for how much he influenced me by searching the early days of this blog (largely greater than 15 years ago) for all the references to him.
I'm lucky to have lived during his tenure on Earth, and hope he's found all the good bars in Heaven.
