One to Grow On

by Nathaniel Benchley

This is fiction about the lives of the people living in a small New York City apartment house. In the beginning no one knows anyone else living in the house. They pass each other in the halls but have no contact.

After something monumental happens to one of the tenants they slowly get to know one another and become involved in each other's lives.

Hardcover

Published January 1, 1958

About the author

Born in Newton, Massachusetts to a literary family, he was the son of Gertrude Darling and Robert Benchley (1889-1945), the noted American writer, humorist, critic, actor, and one of the founders of the Algonquin Round Table in New York City.

Nathaniel Benchley was the highly-respected author of many children's/juvenile books that provided learning for the youthful readers with stories of various animals or through the book's historical settings. Benchley dealt with diverse locales and topics such as "Bright Candles", which recounts the experiences of a 16-year-old Danish boy during the German occupation of his country in World War II; and "Small Wolf", a story about a Native American boy who meets white men on the island of Manhattan and learns that their ideas about land are different from those of his own peoples'.

Film director/producer, Norman Jewison made Benchley's 1961 novel The Off-Islanders into a motion picture titled The Russians Are Coming, the Russians Are Coming for which he received the nomination for an Academy Award for Writing Adapted Screenplay. He was a close friend of actor Humphrey Bogart and wrote his biography in 1975.

Benchley's novel Welcome to Xanadu was made into the 1975 motion picture Sweet Hostage.

His elder son, Peter Benchley (1940-2006), was a writer best known for writing the novel Jaws and the screenplay of the 1975 Steven Spielberg film made from it. His younger son, Nat Benchley, is a writer and actor who has portrayed his grandfather, Robert Benchley, in a one-man, semi-biographical stage show, "Benchley Despite Himself". The show was a compilation of Robert Benchley's best monologues, short films, radio rantings and pithy pieces as recalled, edited, and acted by his grandson Nat, and combined with family reminiscences and friends' perspectives."

Nathaniel Benchley died in 1981 in Boston, Massachusetts and was interred in the family plot at Prospect Hill Cemetery in Nantucket.

Reviews

[Michael · Rating 3 out of 5]

I may have picked this book up used because I had heard that it had a gay character in it and I would have been curious to see how he was handled in 1959. But by the time I read it (now) I had forgotten that and the character Lapham surprised me when I began to suspect he was gay. Eventually he comes out to the major male character by telling him of his Korean War experiences of depression and alienation. It is never specified that it was his homosexuality which depressed him, but the main character figures it out and handles it well. There is no attraction between the men and I think Benchley had no intention of detailing Lapham's current life. Nevertheless, 1959 seems pretty early to have a sympathetic gay character who is alive and happy at the end of the book.

I liked this book because of the portrayal of sophisticated, but poor people living in New York City in the 'fifties. There is a lot of drinking, restaurant meals, and references to the difficulties of life in the theater and journalism. The characters bond in a rather story-book way, but that is Benchley's point - that New Yorkers hunger for comradeship. I enjoyed that aspect of the book as well as the mise en scene. An enjoyable read.

[Astraea · Rating 5 out of 5]

Picked this up at a book sale, I believe, and remember it all these years later. It's about an apartment complex and its different residents who are strangers to each other. Then a young woman who is pregnant out of wedlock (very scandalous in those days) moves in. Planning to keep the child, she starts furnishing and fixing up her place. One by one the neighbors pitch in to help her and gradually get to know one another. This book is also notable for very sympathetic portrayals of gay characters. It is also the only book I know of -- certainly from that era! -- that ends with the word "bitch."

Andy

[JCB · Rating 5 out of 5]

A endearing novel, first read over 50 years ago, about the lives of the people living in a small New York City apartment house. Charmingly dated (Laguardia and toothpaste are still two words; Decoration day is not renamed yet; New York seems almost affordable), yet it still holds most of the appeal it had upon its first reading so long ago.

Not exactly a sprawling story, nor a particularly deep study either. But it still has the ability to leave the reader optimistic about relationships, people, friendship, and family. Still 4+