The Benchley Roundup: A Selection by Nathaniel Benchley of his Favorites [Paperback]

Robert C. Benchley (Author), Gluyas Williams (Illustrator), Nathaniel G. Benchley (Introduction)

Book Description

Publication Date: October 1, 2001

Robert C. Benchley's sketches and articles, published in periodicals like Life, Vanity Fair, and The New Yorker, earned him a reputation as one of the sharpest humorists of his time; his influence—on contemporaries such as E. B. White, James Thurber, and S. J. Perelman, or followers like Woody Allen, Steve Martin, and Richard Pryor—has left an indelible mark on the American comic tradition. The Benchley Roundup collects those pieces, selected by Benchley's son Nathaniel, "which seem to stand up best over the years"-a compendium of the most endearing and enduring work from one of America's funniest and most penetrating wits.

"It took me fifteen years to discover that I had no talent for writing, but I couldn't give it up because by then I was too famous."
—Robert Benchley

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

Robert Benchley's wit appears effortless--it is a blend of autobiography, satire, the inconsequential, and the sudden surprise. At the start of "Fall In!" he muses, "It may be because I do not run as fast, or as often, as I used to, but I seem to be way behind on my parades. It must be almost a year since I saw one, and then I was in it myself." At one time Benchley was everywhere, a prolific reviewer and ubiquitous actor and screenwriter; now we must be grateful for his son's selection of humorous sketches. The Algonquian witster remains as brilliantly nonplused as ever as he observes his species in all its skewed play--from football's confusions to the folly of footnoters to French for Americans. When Benchley declared, "The surest way to make a monkey of a man is to quote him," he can surely not have been looking to himself. James Thurber's remark seems truer: "One of the greatest fears of the humorous writer is that he has spent three weeks writing something done faster and better by Benchley in 1919."

From the Inside Flap

"Robert Benchley is the funniest writer who ever lived."-Dave Barry

Robert Benchley once described himself as a man at whom pigeons sneered, but his sketches and articles, published in periodicals like Life, Vanity Fair, and The New Yorker, earned him a reputation as one of the sharpest humorists of his time. His influence-on his fellows at the Algonquin Round Table, contemporaries such as James Thurber and S. J. Perelman, or followers like Woody Allen and Steve Martin-has left an indelible mark on the American comic tradition, a legacy more than safe from the opinions of birds.

The Benchley Roundup is made up of selections Benchley's son, Nathaniel, regarded as those "which seem to stand up best over the years," a smorgasbord of the most endearing and enduring pieces from the pen of one of American's funniest-and most penetrating-wits.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 359 pages
• Publisher: University Of Chicago Press (October 1, 2001)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0226042189
• ISBN-13: 978-0226042183
• Product Dimensions: 7.9 x 5.3 x 0.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 12 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (8 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #100,865 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

19 of 20 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A genuinely great American humorist, September 8, 2000

By 

IA (San Francisco, California United States) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Benchley Roundup: A Selection by Nathaniel Benchley of his Favorites (Paperback)

I only found out about Benchley from a short book on Algonquin Round table quotes but I'm very thankful for it--it's shameful that Benchley has basically been forgotten. Why on earth should such a gifted, briliant comic writer be so little known nowadays? There's simply no reason I can think of. He's just as good as Perelman or Thurber, and he deserves much wider reading. This anthology is a pretty good collection of his work, featuring most of his more popular and beloved pieces. What one notices about Benchley is that he really isn't quite so gentle and affectionate in his humor as those who remember him say--he was the original master of what he termed the "dementia praecox" (crazy written humor basically)and when he applies this to ordinary life or parodies bad writing he can be quite cutting. His style is just about perfect--simple but carefully constructed to wring every laugh it can out of subtleties of phrasing and syntax. His parodies of academic writing are among the greatest ever, effortlessly exposing the bad ideas, pretension and willful obfuscation that lurk beyond so many professors' works. His humor is that of a good natured man so bewildered with the modern world that he defends himself with humor, and depending upon the situation that humor can be quietly observant or fast and crazy, therefore reducing its target to nonsense as well. This book needs to be re-printed with a beter cover, and it wouldn't hurt to add more stories to make it a definitive overview of the man's work. Having done so, the book should be aggresively marketed so that it ends up in the humor section of every bookshop in the land. It's the least Benchley, one our greatest American comic writers, deserves.

13 of 15 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Wonderful writer, so don't buy this book., August 28, 1999

By A Customer

This review is from: The Benchley Roundup: A Selection by Nathaniel Benchley of his Favorites (Paperback)

I love Benchley's work. I began reading "My Ten Years in a Quandary..." as a child at the cottage nearly forty years ago. I can still read that tattered book and enjoy it immensely. I am less thrilled by this compilation--can't always agree with Nathaniel Benchley's choices and miss some of Gluyas Williams sketches that have been dropped. Get one of the original collections--starting with, if you want, "My Ten Years..." and then, when you decide that you want everything the man ever wrote, you won't be buying stories you already have.

8 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars "Immergluck Never Marries", December 13, 2005

By 

Matthew Patton (Deltona, Florida) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: The Benchley Roundup: A Selection by Nathaniel Benchley of his Favorites (Paperback)

Whether providing program notes for you to read while the Mezzo changes her mantilla (and she always has more mantillas than songs), providing a cut-and-paste for Dreiser's next American Tragedy (complete with maps, recipes, and court transcripts), or simply describing The Wreck of The Sunday Paper, Robert Benchley proved that comedy could be witty, sophisticated, and yet completely unpretentious. His scale was Seinfeldian, but far from being the eminently hittable Suburban Snot, Benchely admits to being as confused about the detritus of daily life as the rest of us. And like the rest of us, he finds it amazing that we make it from one day to the next with our lives, and even some shreds of our dignity, intact. He likes opera music, but knows that the plots are wild, trashy, and more than a bit ridiculous. He knows that travelling with kids is a contact sport that only the hardy survive (the hardy usually being the kids themselves), and that Christmas dinner with the extended family is something very pleasant in the abstract but a trial by fire in practice. And he has a sharp eye out for go-getters, lecturers on health and sex, and the pretentious of any sort, all of whom make life even more annoying than it already is. A few of the period details may strike you as quaint, but at heart, this is still very contemporary comedy. And very funny.