No Poems. Or Around the World Backwards and Sideways

by Robert Benchley

Illustrated by Gluyas Williams. UK publication of 32 of the 45 pieces in No Poems, or Around the World Backwards and Sideways, published by Harper in 1932.

Genres: Humor, Essays

Hardcover

First published January 1, 1932

About the author

Works, including How to Sleep , the film of 1935, and My Ten Years in a Quandary , the book of 1936, of Robert Charles Benchley, humorist, critic, and actor, often pitted an average American against the complexities of modern life.

People best knew Robert Charles Benchley as a newspaper columnist. He began at the Lampoon and meanwhile attended Harvard University and wrote many essays and articles for Vanity Fair and The New Yorker.
From New York City and his peers at the Algonquin Round Table, short style brought acclaim, respect, and success to Benchley to contemporaries in the burgeoning industry.

Benchley contributed best remembered influential topical or absurdist essays to The New Yorker. He also made a name in Hollywood, when his popular success won best short subject at the academy awards of 1935, and his many memorable appearances in such as Foreign Correspondent of Alfred Joseph Hitchcock and a dramatic turn in Nice Girl? . He wrote his legacy in numerous short appearances.

Reviews

[Tosh · Rating 5 out of 5]

Mega-huge volume of writings by Robert Benchley. My edition is from 1932, and not too much information where these essays came from, or who he wrote it for. New Yorker? The beauty of his work is because he takes the everyday and makes it into a surreal-day. Genius like strokes of everyday life but turned into an absurd situation or observation. Also I love the design of this book. The illustrations are done by Gluyas Williams, who I do not know anything about, but he's an important presence in this superb collection. More likely hard to get, but once you do, you'll never give or loan it out to anyone. Too precious!

[David Allen · Rating 4 out of 5]

"And now, with all this work that I have on my hands, along comes the Hoover Dam," begins "More Work Ahead," one of my favorites, as Benchley pretends to have been given the job of building the dam and, like any of us, has no clue where to start. He's at his silliest here, and many of these pieces made me laugh out loud. Even the title is funny.

[Alexandra Petri · Rating 4 out of 5]

I must start by saying (oh you must, must you?) that Benchley is one of those writers with a horrifically contagious style. Just you try reading him and see if you aren't tangled up in parentheses for a good week afterwards (perhaps it won't be such a good week after all, come to consider it.)

If you've ever had the good fortune of reading Benchley, you'll know what this is referring to, and if you have not -- well, what am I saying? Go out and grab yourself a copy post-haste (come, come, none of this pre-haste nonsense!).

Embarrassingly bad pastiches aside, Benchley is great. Especially if you've run out of Thurber. He's methadone to Thurber's heroin. He's a very charming writer. Benchley is so affable and baffled by everything that you don't notice the knife until it's been stuck in.

In praise of this book specifically: the jokes in the chapter on Proust, "Aubergine's Way," were worth reading the entirety of In Search of Lost Time. It's an absolutely spot-on parody. Also delightful: the bit on the Hoover Dam and the chapter about the failures of Benchley's imagination when it came to setting scenes from the literature he was reading in any place other than the yards of his childhood neighborhood.

All in all, effervescent, effortless, and charming. I think it was Thurber -- it was! I just checked -- who said that "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." You can see why.

(Also, does anyone want to play the games Benchley was complaining about in the chapter on parlor games? They sound fun to me.)