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14 of 14 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
A Different Kind Of Fish, July 2, 2006
Imagine it's 1975 and you're Peter Benchley. You've just published your first novel, a tale about a nasty shark that is an immediate success. Then along comes some guy named Speilberg, and suddenly its his "Jaws" everyone is talking about.
Talk about sharkbite. Ouch!
Making matters worse is that the book is very different from the movie, in many minor and a few major respects. People reading "Jaws" after seeing the movie may scratch their heads seeing the character Richard Dreyfuss played in the movie having a fling with Roy Scheider's wife, or how differently the final confrontation on the "Orca" turns out.
Steven Speilberg definitely improved upon it, but "Jaws" is still a good book, at times very much so. If you can set aside your memory of the movie and try to read this with fresh eyes, you will find yourself enjoying the book, and perhaps even feel, as I do, a little grateful it isn't just a novelization of what was on screen.
Speilberg had the best take on "Jaws" the novel when he said the characters in it are so unlikable he pulled for the shark. I think Benchley wanted exactly that effect. If so, he succeeds. The central character in the novel as in the film, Chief Brody, is lunkheaded if sympathetic. His wife, Ellen, feels shackled not because of the feminist urges then roiling the social scene but because she's a rich girl who married down and now has regrets about the Hampton cocktail soirees she passed up. The citizens of the town, named Amity perhaps ironically, are so cold-blooded they want the beaches kept open, shark or no, because otherwise they lose their summer trade. The mayor is in with the Mob.
As young people stretch out on the beach, Benchley describes the horny fantasies of the boys and their smug upper-middle-class satisfaction. "Privilege had been bred into them with genetic certainty," Benchley writes, before turning his attention to younger beachgoers with the scorn of a Puritan minister.
"The little children played in the sand at the water's edge, digging holes and flinging muck at each other, unconscious and uncaring of what they were and what they would become."
Nothing quite like a 20-foot Great White shark to knock the complacency from these sinful folk, maybe send a few to their early just desserts. Benchley sometimes presents this notion of the shark as instrument of divine judgment in a playful way, sometimes more seriously, but it lends an undercurrent to the story unique to the book.
Also unique to the book is Ellen's affair with Hooper the ichthyologist, which moves things quite afield from the shark hunt but has a good deal of suspense in its own right, as Ellen cold-bloodedly sets things in motion and worries more about the possibility of rejection then betraying the father of her three sons. Benchley here captures the social mores of the 1970s with Updikean ruthlessness, and perhaps suggests some of the preternatural reason for the shark's atypical presence off Long Island's southern coast.
Benchley doesn't catch every ball he tosses up, particularly with the mob subplot, and the final confrontation ends things on an abrupt and flat note. But he keeps you uneasily interested throughout, and his descriptions of the shark's attacks are especially well-written. The movie is better for its stronger focus and better humor, among other things, but Benchley's novel deserves credit for giving Speilberg's vision life, and for presenting an alternate fish tale you will enjoy reading, for its own sake as well as for comparison.
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20 of 24 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Great because it was the first, the original, July 23, 2003
I loved "Jaws" when I first read it, because it broke new literary ground and it terrified me to think what could be deep in the ocean where I swam so often. Subsequent readings have disappointed, somewhat, and I gloss over the tawdry relationship between Hooper and Ellen Brody; which has nothing to do with the story and rather cheapens the book, IMHO. The SHARK is what we want to read about; HIS effect on this tiny community, and his fateful encounters with various unfortunates. The reader who first received "Jaws" as part of his daily assignment was fired on the spot when he dismissed the book with the comment: "Who wants to see a movie about sharks?" He was blackballed, quietly, and is now most likely selling vacuum cleaners door to door. The more astute reader who brought this to the studio's attention deserves rich praise indeed, because this was a blockbuster and continues to be, on screen. Not to denigrate the book too much, the shark encounters are fantastic, and the descriptions of the attacks are fabulous, and you really feel for the poor people trapped in the territory of the unseen monster...From the first chapter and the first attack, you are mesmerized, and on the run with Brody, Hooper and Quint (based on the real life shark hunter, Frank Mundus, who landed the largest Great White ever caught on line; 17 feet in length and almost 4000 pounds!!!!)The REAL Quint: "Frank Mundus, born in Brooklyn, NY in 1925, is the most famous shark fisherman of all time. Since taking his boat CRICKET II on it's maiden voyage in 1947, Capt. Mundus has caught some of the largest great white sharks on record. He pioneered the sport of sharkfishing and was the innovator of many of the fishing techniques used today. Although Peter Benchley has never publicly acknowledged him, it is generally known that he was the inspiration for the character "Quint". Much of the action in JAWS is based on Capt. Mundus' real-life experiences. In 1961 Capt. Mundus caught a 3,000lb great white off the bathing beach of Amagansett (Amity?), NY. The following year he caught a larger great white off Block Island. His greatest claim to fame came in 1964 when, after a 5 hour struggle, he captured a 17 1/2', 4,500lb great white 10 miles off Montauk, Long Island. The shark required 5 harpoons, each attached to a beer barrel by a 400' rope, before it could be towed to shore. Benchley refers to this incident during his interview on the 20th anniversary edition of JAWS, but doesn't mention Capt. Mundus by name. In 1986 Capt. Mundus and Capt. Donnie Braddick caught the largest fish ever taken on rod and reel, a 17', 3,427lb great white. Capt. Braddick was the angler, while Capt. Mundus baited the shark, drove the boat, and supervised the capture of the shark." The book, being the prelude to a whole new genre of shark books, and caused a simultaneous "shark ephiphany" world-wide, is the forerunner of such books since it's publication, and how glad I am it was published! Well worth reading, if you haven't (how come you haven't?) yet had the expereince, and you can still enjoy it and be frightened by it even if you've only seen the movie...
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7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Without this there may never have been a "Summer Blockbuster", May 19, 2006
JAWS the novel will never live up to JAWS the movie, but anyone who loves the movie would be more than rewarded for chomping into Peter Benchley's deep blue vision of a shark terrorizing the local holiday resort of Amity Island. Jaws topped the bestseller list for 44 weeks and had massive appeal. It is a well written horror story about a shark attack and a local cop, Chief Brody, who needs to restore order to a town that is quickly loosing its summer trade. There are many different plot elements not found in the movie, like the Amity rapist, the mafia connection, several variations in the shark attacks, Ellen Brody's character is more fully developed and she even tries to have an affair with Hooper. Vaughn is up to his eyeballs in dept. There is also the character of Whitman, the newspaper editor. Yes there are many elements in the movie that are not in the book and similar scenes are not played out as good. You are forgiven to pass on the lengthy dinner sequence or the Ellen Brody / Hooper after flirt. However the ending is so very different that it will have you extremely surprised in the final 30 pages that are just as shocking as the movie. In fact it is the variation in how it was originally conceived that should make any fan happy. There are some very shocking things that Quint gets up to in his boat with sharks and dolphins. The man versus beast element is very strong and the book is considerably violent in many ways other than just shark attacks. It is much darker than the movie which was aimed at a family audience. The book is a lot harsher and doesn't shy away from some stuff that will have you look away from the page. It is absolutely shocking stuff at times and so lives up to its hype.
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