Death by Leisure: A Cautionary Tale - Softcover

Chris Ayres

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0719560152 ISBN 13: 9780719560156

Publisher: John Murray, 2008

Synopsis

The hilariously intrepid young author of War Reporting for Cowards returns from Iraq only to dive head-first into another absurd, terrifying world: the American leisure class.
Like Hunter Thompson crossed with one of David Brooks’s bobos in paradise, Ayres embeds himself in LA’s liesuretocracy”: an over-the-top world of caviar facials, billionaire charity balls, souped-up SUVs, and monster home loans . . . not to mention $1,000-a-night brothels and million-dollar poker tournaments. Ayres’s highly leveraged lifestyle lands him a surreal night with a supermodel, a date at Michael Jackson’s birthday party in Neverland Ranch (Ayres bribes the organizers five grand to get in), and a wife courtesy of Craigslist. But disaster is never far away.
In the book’s brutal final section, Ayres is forced to confront the excesses of his generation at a scene of apocalyptic destruction: the Katrina-ravaged South. Told with a blend of offbeat irreverence, genuine pathos, and incisive social commentary, Death by Leisure is a savage and darkly humorous odyssey that taps directly into the contemporary psyche.

About this title

From Publishers Weekly:

Upon return from embedded duty in Iraq with a marines unit, Ayres, a British journalist, chronicles his brief visit to Los Angeles, the land of glam and glitz. This gonzo-influenced volume opens with Ayres (War Reporting for Cowards) getting the sultry once-over from a beauty in a white bikini at poolside, and everything goes wacky and downhill from there with a bogus assignment to cover singer Michael Jackson, his Neverland estate and his sleepovers. Ayres marvels at the perpetually sunny weather of the sci-fi metropolis, and the Tinseltown crowd of Beverly Hill princesses, plum-cheeked hedonists, journalists with notebooks and bad breath, fleets of android publicists, the rich, the very rich. Ayres makes note of this life of excess, eco disasters and obsession with physical perfection. Producing a topsy-turvy carnival ride of a book, Ayres knows how to find the laughs and fantasy in this accomplished satire of Los Angeles. (Feb.)
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Review:

"War Reporting for Cowards reminded me of the granddaddy of the genre, Evelyn Waugh's novel Scoop, and that Ayres's book can be mentioned in the same sentence is a tribute. . . . ChronicleYs many of the absurdities, horrors, and discomforts of life during wartime circa two years ago, and the honor and steadfastness of the men and women who have to endure them." -- Gary Shteyngart

About this edition

• Publisher: John Murray
• Publication date: 2008
• ISBN 10: 0719560152
• ISBN 13: 9780719560156
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 272