Holidays in Hell

The 80's had some ideal hotspots for a rogue journalist like PJ O'Rourke. Somehow he managed to convince the editors of magazines he worked for that they required stories from these largely untravelled (at the time - not necessarily before or after), largely dangerous places where he was able to ignore sensible advice, and live to write about it.

He visits many - El-Salvador, Ireland, Israel, South Korea, Lebanon, Nicaragua, Panama, The Philippines, Poland, Russia and South-Africa are the main spots, and there are also a few stories based in the USA and one in Australia (which is generally not known as a hot-spot, for good reason). His Australian story was about the America's Cup in Fremantle, and was largely a piss-take of the ‘sport' for millionaires.

O'Rourke is about as far from a politically correct, culturally sensitive, ego massaging journalist as you can get. He is deliberately controversial, throwing up generalisations and stereotypes and mocking cultures as he sees fit, and so long as you are not easily offended - pretty funny while he does it.

Has it aged well? This was published in 1988, and the individual stories range from 1984 to 1988. In many ways it hasn't aged well - there are references to people and events that I am a bit dusty on, (to be fair the 80's were still my school years, so political events were not really high priorities), so for younger persons - perhaps hard to reconcile some of the references. To be honest, it was probably funnier when the troubles were more topical. However in general, the writing does hold appeal and interest now. It is, of course snapshots of the time, but all Journalism is. I felt a couple of the chapters rolled on a few pages too long, and I found myself looking forward to the end, but in general they are short enough to read in a sitting (or less).

There were some very funny (and likely highly insulting) quotes in the book, but I neglected to mark them as I read, so having had a 30 second flick through, I couldn't locate anything worthwhile to share, but there are a few quotes in other reviews, and listed on the book page. To me these didn't seem the best of them.

3.5 stars, rounded down to 3.