“THE BABY BOOM: HOW IT GOT THAT WAY (AND IT WASN’T MY FAULT) (AND I’LL NEVER DO IT AGAIN).” P.J. O’Rourke. 2014. Atlantic Monthly Press. Hardcover. 263 pages. $25.
Once again, America’s funniest, most sharp-tongued, clever, and smart commentator on modern life takes on a major issue: Himself and his whole generation, the Baby Boomers. And it’s about time.
Born between 1946 and 1964, the Baby Boom is “the generation that changed everything … Of all the eras and epochs of Americans, ours is the one that made the biggest impression — on ourselves … We’re the generation that created the self, made the firmament of the self, divided the light of the self from the darkness of the self, and said, let there be self.” (page 15) In the journalistic spirit of full disclosure, I admit to being part of the Baby Boom. That’s probably what makes me a cranky semi-old guy most of the time.
To help readers, P.J. (as those of us who have never met him like to call him) divides the Baby Boomers into high school classes: Seniors (his class), juniors, sophomores, and freshmen. With its huge span of years, sometimes members of the senior class became parents of members of the freshman class, “usually via an oopsie.” (page 3)
Being a member of the senior class of Boomers, he’s writing directly from a comfy recliner in the belly of the beast. He was there on the frontlines, as every good journalist should be. And with the rest of his class, he was protesting and demonstrating, and ducking for cover, until he got his first job. “I made $75 a week. Payday came every two weeks … I was looking forward to the $150 and so was my landlord. When I got my paycheck I found that I netted $82.27 after federal income tax, state income tax, city income tax, Social Security, union dues, and pension fund contribution. I was a communist. I had protested for communism. I had demonstrated for communism. I had rioted for communism. Then I got a capitalist job and found we had communism already.” (pages 219-220) If you want to read some of his funniest early stuff, hunt down and read “Age and Guile Beat Youth, Innocence and a Bad Haircut.”
One of the cries of Baby Boomers across America was, “Sex, drugs and rock ‘n’roll.” Or, as the Greatest Generation put it, “Wine, women and song.” As P.J. notes throughout, sometimes the difference between the Baby Boomers and their fathers was often a matter of terminology, and how loud they were about it all.
Another hallmark of the Baby Boom generation is their penchant for contradictions, or, as Jimmy Buffett is fond of singing, “We are the people our parents warned us about.” The greatest contradiction? The people who shaped and molded the Baby Boom weren’t Boomers themselves: John Lennon, 1940, Bob Dylan, 1941, Timothy Leary, 1920, Che Guevara, 1928, Gloria Steinem, 1934, Jane Fonda, 1937, Jimi Hendrix, 1942, and Charles Manson, 1934. Most of the bands and musicians that defined the music of the Baby Boom didn’t play at Woodstock, and the guys who put the whole shindig together had 10 years on the Boomers.
I could go on, but there isn’t space for all the tidbits here. Suffice it to say that most pages have something underlined, and sometimes, the entire page. Here, and in his previous book, “Holidays in Heck,” he’s toned down the salty language that characterized his past work, except when he’s dealing with the Sexual Revolution, and it works there.
As with every P.J. O’Rourke book, make sure you don’t skip the forward, the introduction, or the acknowledgment sections. They are every bit as funny as the main body of the book.
O’Rourke has given the Baby Boom the Jean Shepherd treatment: Simultaneously and joyfully ripping it to shreds, standing it on its head (something that has been too long in coming), and poking it in the eye, while also celebrating it with gusto, a twinkle in his ever-sharp eye, raising his whiskey glass — and eyeglasses — in a heartfelt salute. (And if you don’t know the works of Jean Shepherd, it’s time to hunt them down and see the lies beyond “A Christmas Story.”)
I grinned and chuckled on every page, laughed out loud on most, and enjoyed this book thoroughly. He may be a member of the senior class of the Baby Boom, but O’Rourke hasn’t slowed down yet.
