Under the influence of my father I have always felt some type of desire to read Adam Smith’s The Wealth of Nations. “It was what our nation’s economic principles were based on!” I was told (or something similar).
However, while I felt the need to feel the need to read it, I never actually wanted to pick up the book. Honestly, it was written by a Scottish philosopher who died a couple hundred years ago. I can appreciate that, but I’d rather not sit down and read all [INSERT OUTRAGEOUS NUMBER HERE] pages of his writing. Luckily, P.J. O’Rourke has taken it upon himself to make Smith’s ideas consumable for the general unwashed masses, aptly titling his interpretation of the influential work On The Wealth of Nations.
Ok, I think I was a bit over dramatic on how much he cleaned up Smith’s original work. He presents Smith’s origins, the origins of his ideas, and his economic thinking all very well, without the circular thinking and wordiness O’Rourke admits is present in The Wealth of Nations. But it isn’t at all dumbed down.
The complexity of Smith’s ideas are still there, but O’Rourke presents them in both a humorous and understandable way. But there were times I felt like I was a little kid watching Saturday Night Live again. I just laughed when everyone else did regardless of whether I actually understood the joke or not. Even though no one else was reading the book with me, so I just sat there and laughed to myself. It was at this point my mother began to worry about my substance abuse habits.
But unlike SNL, O’Rourke’s humor is much more high-brow (keep in mind being more high-brow than SNL isn’t particularly hard). In fact, there were times at which I thought I was trying to fit in at some swank, overtly pretentious Ivy League cocktail party. I’ll be honest, some of On The Wealth of Nations was just over my head. And I’m not stupid, I got a 750 on the Reading Comprehension part of the SAT (transcript available upon request).
But not all of his writing is like that. After doing a little research, I found his ode to Hunter S. Thompson-style gonzo journalism entitled “How to Drive Fast on Drugs While Getting Your Wing-Wang Squeezed and Not Spill Your Drink.” Not only was it one of the funniest things I’ve ever read, but it wasn’t over my head.
The only thing I dislike about the book, is the cover. Perhaps because I was waking into my room from the shower this morning when I looked down at the book cover, and O’Rourke seemed to be looking back at me as if to say, “y helo thar.”
Perhaps it was just the ideas O’Rourke was presenting that made me feel like I was in a bit over my head. Or maybe it was the fact I was coming down off a hangover almost every time I cracked the pages of the book. Either or.
