P.J. O'Rourke travels with a right-wing sensibility.
HOLIDAYS IN HECK
P.J. O'Rourke,
Grove Press, A$29.99
A great work of travel writing can command a physical response from its reader: the neck-tingle of a sublime landscape rendered in prose, the gut-drop when a voyage takes a turn for the worse.
There's one such moment in veteran P.J. O'Rourke's latest collection of wanderings that had me bug-eyed and palms-to-cheeks like the kid from Home Alone. He's not describing the frothing might of a charging bison or the rumble of an avalanche gathering momentum. In fact, this moment of high drama occurs in a museum of natural history in Chicago, of all places. O'Rourke happens upon a plaque describing ancient Mayan culture that notes the practice of sacrifice finds its metaphorical equivalent in most of the religions of today. Cue O'Rourke:
Holidays In Heck by P. J. O?Rourke.''Now wait a damn minute, you infidel apes of social science. Shut your brie holes and listen up. God, the God, the God who didn't make me an Eskimo, does not require human sacrifice; he suffers it … That is the difference - perhaps the only difference - between civilisation and savagery.''
If that sounds a little unusual an entry in a book promising ''frightening vacation fun'', it's really just the most overt expression of the world view underscoring each of the 19 essays here. O'Rourke is an SUV-driving, duck-shooting, Jack Daniel's-swilling conservative of that peculiarly American ilk. He's an outspoken Republican with the requisite, if inexplicable, sneering disdain for the French (I'm convinced party membership involves smashing a baguette with a ceremonial hammer) but, in fairness, he dislikes most cultures equally. And, as a conservative, he'll be the first to tell you the leftie-led US is pretty screwed, too.