Everand Logo

Welcome to Everand!

  • Discover millions of ebooks, audiobooks, and so much more with a free trial

    Only $11.99/month after trial. Cancel anytime.

    The Bachelor Home Companion: A Practical Guide to Keeping House Like a Pig
    The Bachelor Home Companion: A Practical Guide to Keeping House Like a Pig
    The Bachelor Home Companion: A Practical Guide to Keeping House Like a Pig
    Ebook143 pages1 hour

    The Bachelor Home Companion: A Practical Guide to Keeping House Like a Pig

    By P. J. O'Rourke

    3.5/5

    ()

    Read preview

    About this ebook

    From “the funniest writer in America,” a book about cooking and cleaning for people who don’t know how to do those things and aren’t about to learn (The Wall Street Journal).
     
    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
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherOpen Road Integrated Media
    Release dateDec 1, 2007
    ISBN9781555847081
    The Bachelor Home Companion: A Practical Guide to Keeping House Like a Pig
    Author

    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.

    Read more from P. J. O'rourke

    Related to The Bachelor Home Companion

    Related ebooks

    Personal & Practical Guides For You

    View More
    View More

    Related podcast episodes

    Related articles

    • Article

      “As We Say Here In The South, ‘He Was Raised Right, Not Jerked Up’”

      Sep 12, 2019

      Reading the August/September 2019 issue, I marveled at a couple who collect buildings, laughed out loud at the naming of a dog, snickered at Elvis and creative cussin’, cried at the saving of a sea turtle, and got hungry from all the delicious food a

      2 min read

    • Article

      A Lawsuit Charges That LaCroix's Natural Water Is Full Of Synthetic Ingredients. But The Lawsuit Looks Like A Crock

      Oct 9, 2018

      The LaCroix brand of fizzy water came seemingly out of nowhere in the last few years, propelling its parent company to nearly $1 billion in annual sales and tripling its profits to $149.8 million since 2015. So perhaps it's natural that the brand wou

      4 min read

    • Article

      Fragile Evidence

      Nov 1, 2021

      In 2008, just after college, I spent the summer traveling across Texas in a midnight-blue Corolla with a crooked “Yes We Can!” Obama bumper sticker. I’d been hired by a new organization called the Texas After Violence Project, founded by Walter Long,

      11 min read

    • Article

      HOW I WRITE Liz Moore

      May 13, 2020

      HOW I WRITE Liz Moore
      1 min read

    • Article

      Nellie Oleson, C’est Moi

      Dec 11, 2019

      Nellie Oleson, C’est Moi
      4 min read

    • Article

      They Went To An Emergency Room For Help After A Sexual Assault. Instead, They Were Arrested

      Dec 11, 2019

      One woman was pinned to the emergency room floor by officers after her rape kit was done. Another woman was handcuffed to her hospital bed before the exam could begin. Both were sexual assault survivors who went to an Illinois emergency room seeking

      5 min read

    • Article

      The Nancy Pelosi Problem

      Mar 16, 2018

      The Nancy Pelosi Problem
      6 min read

    • Article

      Off The Shelf

      Apr 25, 2018

      COMPILED BY KIRSTY MCKENZIE Gorgeous images and accompanying quotes combine to make the ultimate gift for tea lovers. From rock stars including Mick Jagger (“I got nasty habits; I take tea at three.”) and Rod Stewart (“Brewing a good cuppa is somethi

      4 min read

    • Article

      Dawn Neesom Mind Of My Own

      Jun 14, 2022

      Dawn Neesom Mind Of My Own
      4 min read

    • Article

      Book Club

      Aug 18, 2021

      Book Club
      5 min read

    • Article

      Letters to Kevin

      Apr 25, 2021

      Letters to Kevin
      3 min read

    • Article

      Mid-Life-What?

      May 18, 2021

      Mid-Life-What?
      4 min read

    • Article

      Chairman Of The Hoard

      May 13, 2022

      Chairman Of The Hoard
      8 min read

    • Article

      Letter From The Editor

      Feb 11, 2021

      Letter From The Editor
      3 min read

    • Article

      Editor’s Letter

      Dec 4, 2023

      There’s an interesting video doing the rounds online. It’s from a BBC Panorama show first broadcast in 1961. It is a look at the Irish migrant workers who travelled to England to labour on sites and help rebuild Britain as it struggled to find its po

      2 min read

    • Article

      Second Life For Coffee Grounds

      Mar 1, 2023

      Second Life For Coffee Grounds
      11 min read

    • Article

      LetTer BoCKS

      Feb 1, 2024

      LetTer BoCKS
      12 min read

    • Article

      Storyteller At The Fire

      May 3, 2020

      Storyteller At The Fire
      13 min read

    • Article

      Readers’ Letters

      Apr 5, 2023

      Readers’ Letters
      5 min read

    • Article

      Readers’ Letters

      Aug 24, 2022

      Readers’ Letters
      6 min read

    • Article

      LeTteR BocKS

      Jun 24, 2021

      SCIENTISTS say that in the future, all meals will be in the form of a pill. Let’s hope they are right, and they don’t develop them in the form of a suppository. I think that would make dining out a most unpleasant experience. Umberto Coaltit, Hull YO

      13 min read

    • Article

      Steven Pinker

      Oct 24, 2022

      Steven Pinker
      5 min read

    • Article

      Three Poems

      Jul 1, 2020

      The purpose of being alive is to carry a sequence of code.And so, being adopted, I’m part of a plot, a sleeper cellin enemy territory, quietly working against the systemfrom within. It’s fall, I’m on an ancestry website signing up for a DNA kit,becau

      4 min read

    Related categories

    Reviews for The Bachelor Home Companion

    3.5/5

    63 ratings1 review

    What did you think?

    Tap to rate

    Review must be at least 10 words

    • 5/5
      What 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

    Enjoying the preview?
    Page 1 of 1