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Of all things, by Robert Benchley
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This is a reproduction of a book published before 1923. This book may have occasional imperfections such as missing or blurred pages, poor pictures, errant marks, etc. that were either part of the original artifact, or were introduced by the scanning process. We believe this work is culturally important, and despite the imperfections, have elected to bring it back into print as part of our continuing commitment to the preservation of printed works worldwide. We appreciate your understanding of the imperfections in the preservation process, and hope you enjoy this valuable book.
- Published on: 2010-06-15
- Original language: English
- Number of items: 1
- Dimensions: 9.69" h x .56" w x 7.44" l, 1.06 pounds
- Binding: Paperback
- 266 pages
From Library Journal
Published in 1922 and 1921, respectively, these collections of Benchley's humorous essays feature his observations on daily life, ranging from marriage, business, and gardening to newspapers, opera, trout fishing, and even toothaches. The jokes no doubt are a bit dated, but human nature doesn't change that much.
Copyright 2001 Reed Business Information, Inc.
From the Publisher
A brightly appealing collection of inimitable comic essays by a whimsical master of American humor. Originally published in 1921, Of All Things! and a companion volume, Love Conquers All, published in 1922 and also available now in a Common Reader Edition, were the first books by a true American original, one whose wry, befuddled, and gently exasperated outlook on life can never go out of date.
About the Author
Robert Benchley, 1899 - 1945 Writer and actor Robert Benchley was born on September 15, 1899 in Worcester, Massachusetts. Benchley was best known for being a humorist and comedian. While an undergraduate at Harvard University, he gave his first comedic performance impersonating a befuddled after-dinner speaker. He became a campus celebrity and he landed the position of editor of the Harvard Lampoon. Benchley worked as a drama critic at Life magazine in 1920. Under the pseudonym Guy Fawkes, he wrote The Wayward Press column for The New Yorker. He also briefly served as managing editor for Vanity Fair where his lieutenants were Dorothy Parker and Robert E. Sherwood. He quit in protest to the firing of Parker. The three of them were among the regulars of the Algonquin Round Table, which was a social circle of New York wits that included Harpo Marx and George Kaufman. As a member of the Algonquin Round Table, he became a poplular radio personality, film actor and screenwriter. Several of Benchley's humorous monologues were performed in short films, which include "The Treasurer's Report" (1928). His comic sketches were collected in fifteen volumes, including "My Ten Years in a Quandary, and How They Grew" (1936) and "Benchley Beside Himself" (1943). His son Nathaniel edited a collection of his essays, "The Benchley Roundup" (1954) and published a biography of his father in 1955. Robert Benchley died in 1945.
Most helpful customer reviews
21 of 21 people found the following review helpful.
Benchley never fails to please.
By Amazon Customer
This collection of Benchley's writings, appearing in magazines prior to 1920 or so, pleases the reader on several levels. There are articles whose humor hasn't faded in the 80 or more years since they were written such as "Coffee, Megg and Ilk," or "The Passing of the Orthodox Paradox," containing a nice parody of Oscar Wilde's plays. I think these are as funny to us as they were to the readers when they were written. There are others, such as "Lesson Number One," that tells about learning to drive at a time when an automobile was as exotic a possession as, say, a home computer in the early 1990s. These are funny in a different way, and I enjoyed reading them even though the things they laugh at are decades out of date.
Anyone who has suffered through learning to play bridge will enjoy "Not According to Hoyle," and those who sympathize with the record number of Americans finding it hard to pay all their bills will delight in "Turning Over a New Ledger Leaf." Those who read old literature will get a kick out of his pastiche of annotated Shakespeare in "Shakespeare Explained," and anybody who has read a novel in which the plot is advanced by letters exchanged between two viewpoint characters will laugh at "When Genius Remained Your Humble Servant."
All in all, an excellent collection of humor writings not available elsewhere.
11 of 12 people found the following review helpful.
Five stars for Benchley, two stars for this edition
By Hal Jordan
I've loved Benchley since I stumbled on a collection of his short pieces in my father's library as a kid. Like any writer who turns out material in such volume, the entries are a bit hit or miss, and they should definitely be read a few at a time, rather than straight through. But at his best, Benchley was both a hilarious writer and a keen observer of the passing parade. The fact that these pieces were written 90 or more years ago doesn't detract from enjoying them. In fact, some of the most dated pieces are the best.
Unfortunately, this Kessinger reprint edition isn't of the highest quality. Here is their disclaimer from the front:
"Due to the very old age and scarcity of this book, many of the pages may be hard to read due to blurring of the original text, possible missing pages, missing text, dark backgrounds and other issues beyond our control."
Not too clear why these issues are beyond their control. In the case of this book, the main problem is that they have reprinted the original in reduced size. I have no idea why that would have been necessary. Every page has two-inch margins on each edge and type that is reduced in size to an extent that might cause a problem to anyone with vision difficulties. Otherwise, the reproduction is pretty good and I didn't detect any missing pages or missing text. As you can see, Kessinger has also replaced the original cover with a very nondescript one. One final problem is that my copy arrived a bit scuffed up. Whether that is a problem with Kessinger or with Amazon, I don't know.
So, if you like Benchley and don't otherwise have access to this book, buying this edition may be worth it. If Kessinger had done a better job of reprinting it, the book would have my unreserved recommendation.
1 of 1 people found the following review helpful.
A Composite Review of Books By & About Robert Benchley [1889-1945]
By Donald P. Reed
14 Robert Benchley titles, as of 01/25/16: Eleven Benchley clip books; his son's biography (12); "Wayward Press" (13) & "Benchley At The Theatre" (14) were added on 12/16/15 to this revision of "A Composite Review of Books By & About Robert Benchley [1889-1945]," originally sent / accepted 12/10-11/15; revised 01/25/16)
"You may think that you are not superstitious, but would you walk under a burning building?"
--- from "Good Luck, And Try & Get It" ("Chips Off The Old Benchley")
I was staggered when I read, in Nat Benchley's "The Benchley Roundup," that his father had written at least "a thousand" published pieces of humorous satire.
In so doing, Robert became America's most popular / famous wit of writ since Mark Twain. When he formally announced his retirement as a humorist in 1944, the doleful news was presented on the front page of The New York Times. During wartime.
(He had already ceased writing humor columns years prior to 1944. Overall, I found out that trying to identify the dates of original publication of his columns was a fool's errand. Short of weeding through each biography & related publications & setting up a chronological study, for which I will reluctantly accept the payment of $1,000 an hour as a consultant, what follows suffices.)
For many years, I've owned & re-read from time to time, "Benchley - Or Else!" & "Inside Benchley," collections of his columns. Recently, the compulsion to acquire what turned out to be almost all of his books took precedence over common sense, as it is now realized without regret.
I had had no idea that there had been that many. I also didn't anticipate that it would be almost impossible to find out in which years each column was originally published.
Here are our current Benchley library members:
1) After 1903 --- What? Robert Benchley (with illustrations by Gluyas Williams, & 16 photographs); Harper & Brothers (1938 hardcover)
2) Benchley At The Theatre, Dramatic Criticism 1920-40, Charles Getchell, Ed.; The Ipswich Press (1985 hardcover)
3) Benchley Beside Himself, Robert Benchley (with Drawings by Gluyas Williams); Harper & Brothers (copyrights 1921, 1922, 1925, 1927, 1928, 1930, 1943; hardcover).
4) Benchley - Or Else! Robert Benchley (with Drawings by Gluyas Williams); Harper & Brothers (1932, 1934, 1936, 1938, 1947 hardcover)
5) Chips Off The Old Benchley, Robert Benchley (with an Introduction by Frank Sullivan & drawings by Gluyas Williams); Harper & Brothers (Estate of RB; 1949 hardcover)
6) Inside Benchley, Robert Benchley (Pictures by Gluyas Williams); Harper & Brothers (1921, 1922, 1925, 1927, 1928, 1942 hardcover)
7) Love Conquers All, Robert Benchley; Blue Ribbon Books Reprint Edition 1947 by special arraignment with Harper & Brothers; orig. copyright, 1922, by Harper Brothers (hardcover, with illustrations by Gluyas Williams)
8) My Ten Years In A Quandary, & How They Grew, Robert Benchley; "Blue Ribbon Books... published by arrangement with Harper & Brothers... copyright 1936... [B.R.] Books Edition... [15th] Printing, February 1939" (contains drawings by Gluyas Williams; hardcover)
9) Off All Things! Robert Benchley; Garden City Publishing Co., Inc. (1921 hardcover; contains drawings by Gluyas Williams)
10) Robert Benchley, A Biography, Nathaniel Benchley (Foreword by Robert Sherwood); McGraw-Hill Book Co., Inc. (1947, 1948, 1954, 1955 2nd printing hardcover; illustrated with photographs & one Gluyas William title page illustration)
11) Robert Benchley’s Wayward Press (TNY Columns, 1927-1939), S.L. Harrison, Ed. (Prologue by Nat Benchley, Robert's grandson; front cover illustration by Al Hirschfeld); Wolf Den Books (2008 paperback)
12) The Benchley Roundup, Nathaniel Benchley, Ed. (drawings by Gluyas Williams); Harper & Brothers (1954 hardcover)
13) The Early Worm, Robert Benchley (with illustrations by Gluyas Williams); Blue Ribbon Books Reprint Edition 1946 by special arrangement with Harper & Brothers; original copyright 1927 Harper & Brothers (hardcover; contains engravings by John Held, Jr.)
14) 20,000 Leagues Under The Sea or David Copperfield, Robert Benchley (with illustrations by Gluyas Williams); Henry Holt & Co. (1928 hardcover)
Not purchased: "Pluck & Luck," "The Treasurer's Report & Other Aspects of Community Singing"; "No Poems, or Around The World Backwards & Sideways"; & "From Bed To Worse, or Comforting Thoughts about the Bison."
With many of the same columns promiscuously reprinted in successive Benchley books --- see below --- it didn't make sense to pay high prices for books when I probably already possess most of their contents.
***
No one in their right mind reviews this many books in one shot. It is a sure thing that, if you have a sense of humor, you will find Robert Benchley to be a forgotten master of an art that is eternally, fiendishly difficult to master because comedy works best when the ego is sublimated by self-discipline to the potential of the magic of selfless laughter.
Who the hell wants to hear that?
***
What's Next: A table of contents of Benchley's newspaper / magazine columns, later reprinted in books published between 1921-54.
With the exception of "Wayward Press" & "At The Theatre," the columns were thrown together in no particular order (The Landfill Method of publishing, quite popular back then, you're out the door at 3 p.m.).
And with the exception of one professionally-assembled copyright page (in microscopic print), not one Benchley publisher gave a hoot about listing the original copyright dates of the individual columns (by year).
Here they are, listed in alphabetical order.
*****
Columns were recycled. If so, how the repeats are listed:
"Shakespeare Explained, BBH, p. 87; IB p. 202; OAT, p. 175; TBR, p. 33."
1) After 1903 --- What? ------------------- Abbreviated as "A1903"
2) Benchley At The Theatre --------------Abbreviated as "BAAT"
3) Benchley Beside Himself -------------- Abbreviated as "BBH"
4) Benchley or Else! ----------------------- Abbreviated as "BOE"
5) Chips Off The Old Benchley --------- Abbreviated as "CHIP"
6) Inside Benchley-------------------------- Abbreviated as "IB"
7) Love Conquers All ---------------------- Abbreviated as "LCA"
8) My Ten Years In A Quandary-------- Abbreviated as "MY10"
9) Of All Things! --------------------------- Abbreviated as "OAT"
10) Robert Benchley, A Biography ----- N/A
11) Robert Benchley's Wayward Press -- Abbreviated as "WP"
12) The Benchley Roundup ---------------- Abbreviated as "TBR"
13) The Early Worm ------------------------ Abbreviated as "TEW"
14) 20,000 Leagues Under The Sea,
or David Copperfield ----------------------- Abbreviated as "20,000"
Some column titles had quotation marks (front & back). If missing in the list below, call the F.B.I.
Assumed: None of the original column titles were later changed by publishers.
(i.e., "Animal Stories" is not the same column as " Great Bison News").
*****
"Robert Benchley's Wayward Press" (New Yorker articles) & "Robert Benchley" (his son's biography) are not directly relevant to what follows. Both are warmly recommended, even if the mores of the era in which Nat Benchley published his biography (1940s-50s) deterred him from being entirely candid.
"Wayward," assembled brilliantly three decades later by Charles Getchell (see praise of, continued below), reminds us that Robert was both a humorist & a quite serious writer:
"Writing as Guy Fawkes, Benchley chastised the press for practices that led it astray from journalistic ideals. The lapses were vast & continue still [to this day]:
"News reports based on [nothing but] speculation; made-up news; blatant advertising plugs; fawning accounts of celebrities; government propaganda reported as news; airline & shipping lobbying; quotes of dubious veracity;
"Publicity plugs & corporate press releases masquerading as news; inaccurate & conflicting facts; faked or doctored photographs; poor writing & fatuous overwriting, especially on the sports pages --- 'literary' baseball reporting & 'purple prose' describing football games.
"Benchley was no pedant; he was concerned with the integrity of the press --- its ethics & competency --- & exposed misreporting in terms easy to understand. His tone, light but lethal, was dead-on accurate. Attentive readers [today] are aware that the journalistic faults Benchley cited [continue to] thrive in many newspapers --- & especially in electronic reporting."
"Wayward's" "Glossary*" provides the full names & biographical details of people mentioned somewhat nebulously in the Guy Fawkes columns.
The book's Bibliography is superb (especially for recognizing the merits of the commendable, yet oft-unreadable "What Fresh Hell Is This" --- Marion Meade's biography of Dorothy Parker & a source of information about Robert Benchley not found in Nathaniel Benchley' biography).
*Sorry, wrong word. Glossaries are used to list inanimate objects in alphabetical order, NOT people:
"A glossary... is an alphabetical list of terms in a particular domain of knowledge [which provides] definitions for those terms. Traditionally, a glossary appears at the end of a book & includes terms within that book that are either newly introduced, uncommon, or specialized."
*****
Post Note (01/22/16): "Benchley at the Theatre," his dramatic criticisms of Broadway & other productions published in Life & New Yorker magazines between 1920-1940, arrived late to the party.
Although an introduction to Benchley is best served by first sampling his work as a satirist, overall, there is no question that this is by far the best Benchley book of the 14 titles above & easily the equal to anything that I have had the good luck to read in the past, including "Lantern Slides, The Diaries & Letters of Violet Bonham Carter" (1986), edited by the brilliant Mark Pottle.
*****
About one "thousand" columns were written. Here are the titles of about 500 of them.
"Brilliant"; "Superb"; "Excellent"; "Very Good," "Pretty Good" & "Good" --- indicate the ones that I thought represented the best that Benchley had to offer.
Unfortunately, various publishers felt free to toss in, as filler, Benchley's "pay-the-mortgage" columns. These didn't do any harm in their original newspaper form, but should have never seen the light of day twice.
There is some minor confusion about the titles that are adorned with quote marks, which, for the sake of this reader's alleged sanity, will remain unresolved. If both the front & the back QM exist (one not being missing), that's good enough. The gun goes off, the game ends & we covered the spread.
Post Note: It proved impractical (i.e., an insane idea due to technical limitations) to list the 500+ titles with each of the 14 separately posted reviews.
Go to the vendor page for "Benchley At The Theater":
http://www.amazon.com/Benchley-Theatre-Dramatic-Criticism-1920-1940/dp/093886405X/ref=cm_cr-mr-img
Hit the "see all reviews" (there are currently four) Look for mine. The titles are posted in 16 consecutive comment boxes below the same review as you see above.
See all 25 customer reviews...
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