Wise Guy

By R.Z. Sheppard

HOLIDAYS IN HELL

by P.J. O'Rourke

Atlantic Monthly Press 257 pages; $16.95

The generation that gave us the all-purpose jeer "It sucks" also gave us gonzo journalism, that self-consciously hip form of social commentary. The conventions are rather rigid. The reporter should work for a publication that is liberal in both its outlook and expense-account policies. He should know not only how to do light drugs and hold his liquor but also how to fold these manly vices into the copy.

The papa of gonzo is, of course, Hunter S. Thompson, who at 49 seems to have lost his bite. In his best-selling new book Generation of Swine: Tales of Shame and Degradation in the '80s, the old anger has been replaced by a wistful snit, as if Lenny Bruce had lived long enough to turn into another Mort Sahl.

For true spite and malice one must now turn to P.J. O'Rourke, 40, a baby boomer who seems to have teethed on brass knuckles and suckled on bile. He is also one of the funniest writers in America, or anywhere else he may go to satisfy his desperate need to extract humor from folly and chaos.

O'Rourke pops up in the middle of Beirut's factional bloodlettings, Israel's civil strife and South Korea's ritualized clashes between students and police. The camouflage uniforms of Syrian commandos are peach and purple, which "must give excellent protective coloration in, say, a room full of Palm Beach divorcees in Lily Pulitzer dresses." On Sandinistas as an attraction for junketeers: "There are probably more fact-finding tours of Nicaragua right now than there are facts."

The author finds the East bloc boring ("Imagine a world where everything is designed by the post office") and the night life especially disappointing. One club features a stripper doing the "Dance of a Couple of Veils." In the even less developed parts of the world, O'Rourke predicts a "festival of Malthusianism." On the up side, he gives two cheers for Western civilization, "the first in history to show even the slightest concern for average, undistinguished, none-too-commendable people like us." It may not be what the Founding Fathers had in mind, but neither did they envision that their liberal political philosophy would produce no-fault auto insurance and gifted wise guys like O'Rourke.