The Bachelor Home Companion: A Practical Guide to Keeping House Like a Pig
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About this ebook
In addition to debunking popular myths about bachelors (they are in fact not creatures known to hang around the house in silk smoking jackets, sipping brandy from oversized snifters), #1 New York Times–bestselling author P. J. O’Rourke offers some useful advice about housekeeping—or how best to avoid it—in this priceless guide. For example: “Every month or so, take the curtains down—and throw them away.”
In the inimitable and irreverent style that has made him one of America’s most popular humorists, O’Rourke provides an essential guide to the practical business of living in the modern world and proves that “Camus had it all wrong about the myth of Sisyphus—it’s not symbolic of life, just housekeeping.”
“To say that P. J. O’Rourke is funny is like saying that the Rocky Mountains are scenic—accurate but insufficient.” —Chicago Tribune
P. J. O'Rourke
P. J. O'Rourke is the bestselling author of ten books, including Eat the Rich, Give War a Chance, Holidays in Hell, Parliament of Whores, All the Trouble in the World, The CEO of the Sofa and Peace Kills. He has contributed to, among other publications, Playboy, Esquire, Harper's, New Republic, the New York Times Book Review and Vanity Fair. He is a regular correspondent for the Atlantic magazine. He divides his time between New Hampshire and Washington, D.C.
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63 ratings1 review
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5What can I say..funny, funny, funny. Great posed photos
Book preview
The Bachelor Home Companion - P. J. O'Rourke
PREFACE
We Are All Bachelors Now
Home life as we understand it is no more natural to us than a cage is natural to a cockatoo.
—GEORGE BERNARD SHAW
This book is addressed to the true bachelor, an adult male and a gentleman, who has never married and never intends to.
We are a select group, without personal obligation, social encumbrance, or any socks that match. We breathe the cold, pure air of solitude—of Olympus, of Parnassus, and of the basement where all the pipes are frozen because nobody turned up the thermostat. We have no need, unless puzzled by a meatloaf recipe, for dull, cloying familial ties. We are free to drop everything and mount our Rocinantes on a moment’s notice. (Although sometimes it takes a little longer than a moment because we can’t remember which laundry the shirts are at.)
Sherlock Holmes was portrayed as a bachelor. So was Raffles the gentleman cracksmith. Sir Isaac Newton and Giovanni Casanova were bachelors, also St. Paul, President Buchanan, Nietzsche, Oliver Goldsmith, George Chinese
Gordon, Voltaire, and almost all the Popes. King Henry VIII kept trying to be one. The Lone Ranger, Sam Spade, and Jesus Christ will always be bachelors, not to mention Clarabell, Mayor Koch, and Daffy Duck.
We are our own men, aloof and independent, unchocked wheels in a world of cogs and gears. We do as we damn well please. And we don’t belong to any immune-deficiency high-risk groups either.
We are all bachelors now, strangers in a home we never made.
We also don’t exist.
What’s become of the bachelors of yore? The old salts? The Oxford dons? The misanthropic billionaires wedded solely to greed? Well, some of us turned out to belong to that immune-deficiency high-risk group after all (Daffy Duck for one, I’ll bet). Some of us broke down and got married and are paying a fortune in child support. And the rest of us turned into singles.
We’ve given up cigarettes and are attempting to cut down on saturated fats. We live in co-op apartment complexes with heather-tone wall-to-wall carpeting. We try to meet girls at aerobics classes. And we’re in transactional analysis, dealing with our conflicted feelings about making mature commitments.
Therefore this book is really addressed to assistant district sales managers, Dekes and Phi Delts in off-campus housing, divorced guys, young men who’ve been told to get the hell out of the house by their parents, and any fellow whose girlfriend won’t marry him because her first husband was such a bummer. That is, to every male in a house without pot holders.
This book is also addressed to husbands whose wives have discovered careers, self-fulfillment, or charge cards with astronomical credit ceilings. Like the rest of us, these grass bachelors
must face that Augean stable whose name is kitchen.
In fact, this book is even addressed to the traditional housewife and mother who, in her heart, would like to put the kids in the dog run and go play golf. Go ahead. Throw a wad of baloney in there and grab your Pings. It doesn’t matter. Home life in our society has already disintegrated. Small children come home to find their parents (which, step-folks included, can number as many as ten) gone to jobs, love affairs, racketball courts, or detox centers. Old people are forced by uncaring progeny (and their own incessant complaints about what’s on TV) to live in the confines of golden-age communities. Even newlyweds don’t spend much time together, now that few marriages outlast the appliance