After 1903 - What?

by Robert Benchley

Collection of short humor pieces by Robert Benchley, illustrated by Gluyas Williams. Includes the classic, "Ladies' Wild."

Genres: Humor, Fiction, Essays

271 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1938

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

[Roger · Rating 4 out of 5]

Every New Years this title comes to mind, since it seems as though the current year is the apex of existence. Benchley's title puts this apparently inevitable but egocentric notion into perspective.

The book is Benchley's usual pleasant grab-bag of personal observations with humor that manages to be both manic and low key at the same time and that relaxes in its utter ambitiouslessness (my computer tells me that this is not a word, but you know what I mean).

Benchley never manages, like James Thurber or Woody Allen, to make his squibs, family satires, or random observations into anything larger or iconic. That's why it's easy to like him. There will be no quiz on this material, no intellectual stance to live up to—or to analyze. It also explains why when he more or less grew tired of writing prose he headed to Hollywood, where the main character of the films he devised was...Robert Benchley. He's at it again, only in a different medium.

As legend has it (the truth is more complicated, of course), after an early life of abstinence, Benchley drank one fatal "orange blossom," some 1920's cocktail, that led him into alcoholism. He died of cirrhosis at 56, a not faithful husband, a consummate sophisticate, a talented and delightful companion, avuncularly lost.

I can never read his warm and delightful take-offs without a twinge of sadness, and this knowledge has become part of my experience of reading Robert Benchley. It adds the depth and seasoning that a Benchley piece by itself does not possess and that he achieved at the cost of his life.

[Kurt · Rating 4 out of 5]

Here we have a bountiful collection of Robert Benchley’s gentle witted humor with about 100 short pieces teasing at absurdity. Benchley famously of the Algonquin Round Table, and close friend of personal icon Dorothy Parker, also appeared in movies—including creating and writing a series of humorous shorts. The version of himself that you will see on screen is the version you get through his writing—gentle self-effacing rib poking with subtle depths. With this many pieces the quality is bound to fluctuate but mostly I enjoyed them. I recommend you read them few at a time—read too many in a row and their gentility will melt in your hands. If you like James Thurber or S. J. Perelman or even Stephen Leacock (if you don’t know them try them), then you will find this a very nice ride.

[Joyce Roderick · Rating 4 out of 5]

I've been a huge Benchley fan since high school. And, did you know he appeared in and wrote screenplays for Hollywood movies? I most recently saw him in Foreign Correspondent. It had me heading for my Benchley-Thurber-Perelman shelf which reminded me how much I enjoy Benchley's illustrator, Gluyas Williams. The humor may change clothes, but never its humanness.

[David Allen · Rating 3 out of 5]

There seem to me to be fewer classics in this collection than others I've read, but the pieces, which appear to have been written for newspapers rather than magazines, certainly go down with the customary Benchley smoothness. Amusing more than hilarious, but amusing is good.

[Andrew · Rating 3 out of 5]

Several very funny essays, and not too many that fell flat. Not bad for a collection of topical humor from 1938!