The Best of Robert Benchley

by Robert Benchley, Peter Arno (Illustrator)

Included are seventy-two timeless pieces of wit, wisdom, and whimsy by the renowned drama critic and humorist that touch on subjects ranging from political conventions to pigeons, vitamin E to relative art to Christmas cards

Genres: Humor, Nonfiction, Essays, Literature, Short Stories, Comedy

353 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1990

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

[Teresa]

Robert Benchley's essays are a must read if you are graduating from single joke tweets to longer forms of comedy. Studying the structure of his essays on British horse racing [key difference: you don't see the horses through the fog until the race is over, also there are meat pies] and turn of the century penny candy was an immensely helpful practice and gave me much inspiration for the first humor essay I wrote that I could actually be proud of.

I wouldn't exactly call these essays timeless, as they were written during the '30s and '40s and make references to culture dating back to the Victorian era. There are some politically incorrect references here and there. But his observations about people ARE timeless, and references to horse drawn carriages, raccoon coats, and the building of the Hoover Dam make me want to look up the relevant history.

Perhaps my favorite of these essays was the one about New York taxi cabs when the cabs were new and the streets were mostly mud. He makes observations about how the seats smell like they were removed from a farmer's wagon and that there really need to be a place to hang one's hat and cane, as well as a proper sign so prospective passengers can tell when the cab is engaged and avoid instead catching a private car.

If you are curious about what creative writing actually came out of the Algonquin Round Table regulars, Mr. Benchley's essays are an excellent place to start looking.

[H. P. Reed]

Reading doesn't get much better than this.

[Amy]

Some very amusing short stories. I love the self-depreciating humor that simultaneously mocks and accepts. A good sense of the ridiculous too

[We Are All Mad Here]

Very funny in places, utter nonsense in others.

[Mark Woodland]

Forget Peter Benchley, his son, Jaws and everything else. Robert Benchley is a REAL writer and deserves much more attention. This is a very fine collection of his work, and I'd almost call it a must-read. Perhaps not, but it may be something that a lot of people overlooked in passing by seeing "Benchley" and associating it with Jaws or Peter's other books. This book contains a nice variety of RB's writing, including some very funny stuff.

[p]

I skimmed through it, I had a hard time completing any of the essays. Good writing, but he's mocking a world that no longer exists with references that I don't fully get. Interesting as a time capsule, but not beyond that.

[Sue]

Hilarious.

[zoya]

Eh, what to say? He's Benchley of the New Yorker. Has its comic moments. But you're better off reading Mark Twain's mini marvels, he didn't have to try as hard.

[Wrpainting]

I read this to lower my blood pressure.

[Trueboardman]

Loved it, run out and buy this. I never fully got his appeal in the film shorts but this book explains it all - laugh out loud funny. The illustrations are also wonderful.

[Kathleen Brown]

Pretty awful. Dated and trite.

[Alivia]

In my opinion, between 80%-90% of the content still felt fresh, relevant, and wonderfully funny -- a stunning success rate for essays written in the 1930s and 40s.

[Troy Soos]

Not very insightful, not very funny.

[Bob Koelle]

Intermittently funny only. Benchley is an arid Dave Barry.

[Sue Dounim]

This is an excellent collection of 72 Benchley essays apparently from the mid 1920s to the early 1930s. Without a doubt the references and mores of the time might seem alien and even offensive to modern eyes. Even though some of the articles have to be written during at least the beginning of the Great Depression, you wouldn't know it.

The pieces average about 5 pages each and most have perfect period drawings (or scrawls in some cases) from some of the most popular illustrators of the time such as Peter Arno and Herbert Roese. I don't know how the order was decided; I'm not perceptive enough to be able to detect any stylistic change from the beginning of the book to the end.

It's incredibly odd to think that these are going on to 100 years old at this writing. Although the references are dated, I enjoyed them all to some level, and some are more funny than others. Benchley's writing is deft, breezy, erudite, self-effacing, with the occasional sharp left turn.

Benchley wasn't Thurber, and he wasn't trying to be. On the other hand, neither was Thurber trying to be Benchley.

OK, to be fair I got this book for a dollar at my local library's remainders sale, but I still regard it as a fine edition.

If you're into early 20th Century humor writing, this is 5 stars or maybe 6, I docked it a star since it's really not going to be to most peoples' taste. No fault of Benchley. I know this is going to sound very ageist, but it would be interesting to correlate the folks who found this collection from hilarious to unreadable according to their ages.

[Isha]

Robert Benchley your words are the reason I may never like a man’s brain again

[Fabianna Himet]

I have no idea how I came across this book, but I enjoyed it. Don't expect each of Benchley's essays to be on the same level, and instead, appreciate his witty approach to describing life's commonalities. It was entertaining to compare how much still holds and the parallels. Granted, you can't exactly relate to how the world was during the early twentieth century, but you might laugh at how 100 years later, people have remained relatively the same. I laughed at the quirky way he described making a line at a postal office and how the workers appear to have always been a little cranky.