(If you also want to see what I think was funny on Twitter this past month, here's the link.)
So about this guy. Robert Benchley was a humor writer from the 1910s to 1945. He wrote a ton of articles and books and movies. I just looked up the list and I've only seen two (The Gay Divorcee and Foreign Correspondent). I guess he wrote a lot of duds?
His son ended up being Peter Benchley, author of Jaws. So indirectly, you can thank this guy for Jaws. (Even though the book sucked in comparison to the Spielberg adaptation- it wastes like 100 pages on a clunky adultery subplot.)
The Benchley books I've read- so far!- include From Bed to Worse, Love Conquers All, Pluck and Luck, and 20,000 Leagues under the Sea, or David Copperfield. Gems, all of them.
He specializes in whimsical, satirical observational humor. But every once in a while he'll drop a subtly brutal tirade on war, racism, and even a concise little anecdote that argues America is a failed experiment. Please note that Benchley's bitingly sarcastic take on racism- "Darkwater" in Love Conquers All- was published in 1922. Progressive thought on race relations was hardly the norm at the time.
"Instead of taking over a protectorate of Armenia we might better take over a protectorate of the State of Georgia, which yearly leads the proud list of lynchers."
Boom.
He was a master of the pithy epigram as well as a sustained comic anecdote. Some of his funniest work isn't cited here, because the effect doesn't work in excerpts. Just believe me, all his stuff is worth reading.
Enjoy!
* * *
“A boy can learn a lot from a dog: obedience, loyalty, and
the importance of turning around three times before lying down.”
“Anyone can do any amount of work provided it isn't the work
he is supposed to be doing at the moment.”
“Defining and analyzing humor is a pastime of humorless
people.”
“Drawing on my fine command of the English language, I said
nothing.”
“Drinking makes such fools of people, and people are such
fools to begin with, that it's compounding a felony.”
“Great literature must spring from an upheaval in the
author's soul. If that upheaval is not present then it must come from the works
of any other author which happens to be handy and easily adapted.”
“It took me fifteen years to discover that I had no talent
for writing, but I couldn't give it up because by that time I was too famous.”
“The surest way to make a monkey of a man is to quote him.”
“There are two kinds of people in the world, those who
believe there are two kinds of people in the world and those who don't.”
“Opera is when a guy gets stabbed in the back and, instead
of bleeding, he sings.”
“I have tried to know absolutely nothing about a great many
things, and I have succeeded fairly well.”
“After an author has been dead for some time, it becomes
increasingly difficult for his publishers to get a new book out of him each
year.”
“Goethe was in delicate health and had seriously contemplated
suicide. At least, that was what he said. More likely he was just fooling, as
there is no record that he ever succeeded.”
“We all, like a lot of poor saps, believed that the molecule
was the smallest division into which you could divide matter. Then someone came
along and proved that the molecule itself could be divided into something
called atoms. Well, the relief we felt at this announcement! Everyone went out
and got drunk.”
“I wouldn’t be surprised, If things keep on as they are, if
Shakespeare began to lose his hold on people. I give him ten centuries more at
the outside.”
“Every year a lot of judges get together and decide on the
best novels and plays of the season. Nobody asks them to. They just do it to be
funny.”
“Let’s
have an end of all this shilly-shallying. I killed Rasputin.”
“Croquet
has one big advantage over most other games in that it can be played nowhere
except on a croquet-field...This lends an aristocratic air to the sport, and
also makes it easily avoided.”
“There
has already been enough advice written for hostesses and guests so that there
should be no danger of toppling over forward into the wrong sop or getting into
arguments as to which elbow belongs on which arm. The etiquette books have
taken care of all that.”
“I
am a strict taskmaster for myself, and I expect others to be equally strict in
their attention to duty. (There will be a short wait until the laughter of my
employers and friends has died down.)”
“If
the movement toward a uniform national divorce law is to gain any headway it is
necessary for everyone to know just what the quickest ways of getting a divorce
are at present- and then discard them. The final plan must be as unsatisfactory
as possible, in order that there shall be fewer divorces and more axe-murders.”
“In
the hurly-burly of modern life I sometimes wonder if enough attention is paid
to the old-fashioned rites of demonology.”
“Someone
has just estimated that the velocity of the wind on some of the stars is
140,000 miles an hour. That’s too fast for wind to blow.”
“One
of the myriad traits that distinguishes me from the nation’s Great Men is my
inability to finish a detective story. I can get right up to the last ten
pages, but there galloping indifference sets in and I go out to the
ice-box...when the detective explains just why he came to the conclusion that
Scarboro did it I suddenly realize that I don’t even know what the characters’
names are, and that, furthermore, I don’t particularly care...But, so long as I
get a certain amount of simple-minded enjoyment out of the first chapters, when
the murder is committed, and can follow along with my forefinger over the more
exciting developments of the plot, what difference does it make who really
committed the crime? If I don’t care, who does? It’s my book, and I may do with
it as I like.”
“I
kept a diary from 1904 to 1921, more out of nervousness than anything else, and
I give you my word a less important record has ever been compiled. It would
seem impossible to write over six thousand pages, covering some of the world’s
most momentous years, and still not have a single one worth reading, and yet I
accomplished this herculean task...No one else is ever going to get a look at
these diaries so long as I have a bullet in my rifle.”
“So
you will see that it is the little things that count in successful police
evasion, and the sooner our criminals realize this the fewer humiliating
arrests there will be.”
“A
great many people have asked me ‘How did you learn to play tennis?’ (Maybe it
was ‘Why don’t you learn to play tennis?’ I don’t pay strict attention to
everything that people ask me.)”
“I
offer the fruit of my experience in the form of suggestions and reminiscences
which may tend to clarify the situation, or, in case there is no situation
which needs clarifying, to make one.”
“I
am no man to make light of chess and its adherents, although they might very
well make light of me. In fact, they have.”
“Just
why beards and bigamy seem to have gone hand in hand through the ages is a
matter for the professional humorists to determine. We certainly haven’t got
time to do it here.”
“Perhaps
some of our little readers remember what the major premise of this article was.
If so, will they please communicate with the writer.”
“I can’t quite define my aversion to asking questions of
strangers. From snatches of family battles which I have heard drifting up from
railway stations and street corners, I gather that there are a great many men
who share my dislike for it, as well as an equal number of women who, like [my
wife], believe it to be the solution of most of this world’s problems. The
man’s dread is probably that of making himself appear a pest or ridiculously
uninformed. The woman’s insistence is based probably on experience which has
taught her that any one, no matter who, knows more about things in general than
her husband.”
“There are several ways in which to apportion the family
income, all of them unsatisfactory. In our home we have hit upon the most
unsatisfactory of all- the budget. If any worse system is known, I hope that my
readers will write in and tell about it. Send communications to the Editor of
the Worse-than-Budget Department.”
“A manufacturer can’t tell whether he has turned out an
obscene play or a work of art...A good way to judge in advance about the
intrinsic art of a sex play is to see whether the characters have a good time
at it or not. If they get fun out of the thing, then it’s a harmful play. If
they hate it, it’s a work of art.”
“During
the early years of our political history the Republican Party was the
Democratic Party, or, if you choose, the Democratic Party was the Republican
Party. This led naturally to a lot of confusion, especially in the Democratic
Party getting the Republican Party’s mail; so it was decided to call the
Republicans ‘Democrats’ and be done with it.”
“Frankly,
I am not much of a fight fan. I always get sorry for the one who is getting
socked. On the other hand, if no one is getting socked, I am bored and start
screaming for blood. There is no such thing as pleasing me at a fight.”
“It
will be seen that in all these folk-songs the picaresque element is almost
entirely lacking: that is, there is very little- perhaps I mean ‘picturesque’
instead of ‘picaresque.’ In all these songs the picturesque element is
lacking.”
“Either
somebody has rubbed candy over each key while I have been dozing here or the
typewriter itself has a strain of maple in it and is giving off sap. I have
never run across anything like it in all my experience with typewriters. The
‘j’ key looks so sticky that I am actually afraid to touch it. Ugh!”
“He
polished his adjectives with meticulous and loving care.”
“There
has got to be a drastic deflation in style among football-reporters, otherwise
the sports-writers are going to find themselves swirling through space on
comets, with bulging eyes and throbbing temples, trying to find newer adn moer
ecstatic ways of saying, ‘Yale and Harvard played football yesterday.’”
“One
of the big questions which is agitating society today is why I don’t go out to
more parties...The real reason is that society has turned intellectual on me.
You can’t go out any more to parties without being asked questions on matters
of general information. Immediately the supper dishes are cleared away someone
comes out with a list of questions concerning famous characters in history or
literature, and there’s your evening- just sunk.”
“Of
course, Plato only wrote only what he had learned from Socrates, and Socrates,
like the wise old owl that he was, never signed his name to anything. So that
left Plato holding the bag for an unworkable political theory which has been
carried down to the present day.”
― Robert Benchley
-Compiled by Phony McFakename
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