“Bobbing For Words” (E49)

Originally printed: The New Yorker, July 16, 1932
First reprinted in: Never Reprinted
Original Byline: Robert Benchley

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Comments:

Here Benchley pokes fun at a brand of navel-gazing ethnography that has persisted as a popular timewaster into our own day. In the 1930s, they called it “A Linguistic Atlas of the United States and Canada”; now, it’s a BuzzFeed Quiz. Unnerved by the prospect of having to hear about this study for the rest of the decade (Benchley tells us that these intrepid dialect cartographers have gotten bogged down in Eastern New England, where the quaint residents of Block Island, Rhode Island insist upon calling a seesaw a “tipity-bounce”), the author undertakes to jolly the infernal project along by contributing a few Manhattan-based observations.

As a connoisseur of the Litvokshire dialect and its subvariants, Benchley can pinpoint the exact pier a New Yorker dangled off as a child, based solely on their preferred term for a paper-clip used in lieu of a pipe-cleaner. Having settled that matter, he takes us to Long Island, where the word “fox” has undergone some startling metamorphoses in a misguided effort to avoid the appearance of baby talk.

Favourite Moment:
In the neighborhood of Fifty-second Street, and as far north as Sixtieth, where the speakeasy influence has crept in, vowels and consonants are used interchangeably and whole syllables are lopped off simply to make the going easier.

“A Belated Tribute” (E40)

Originally printed: The New Yorker, November 12, 1932
First reprinted in: Never reprinted
Original Byline: Robert Benchley

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Comments:
Benchley apologizes for being otherwise engaged while the literary world celebrated the life and works of Walter Scott on the 100th anniversary of his death in September of 1932. RB explains that he meant to say something earlier, as his “particular lack of interest in Scott” gives him a different perspective on the 19th century icon’s career. Warming to his subject, RB jestingly scrambles Scott’s Waverley cycle of novels with the, if anything, even more obnoxious “Leatherstocking” books that they inspired on this side of the Atlantic. He then presents his credentials as a teen-aged victim of Ivanhoe poisoning. After being forced into the lists against this medievalist monstrosity at every new high school he attended, the battered Benchley felt compelled to gather a few facts about their creator, if only as a means of self-defense.

Omitting any further discussion of the books themselves, Benchley focuses on the fabulous wealth Scott amassed by dint of his best-selling assault upon the annals of history. Strongly implying that these legendary sums have kept Scott’s name alive long past its aesthetic expiration date, RB digresses into a manic passage trumpeting his discovery of the £ sign on his typewriter. For a moment, the tone becomes genuinely jubilant. But from that point on, the piece proceeds to plot every line of Scott’s prose, poetry and correspondence onto a literary ledger, with the ridiculous expense of Abbotsford on the other side. One finishes this tribute with the sense that the wily old Tory spent wisely on his citadel, which certainly makes a better conversation piece than his reactionary ramblings.

Favourite Moment:
It was here that Scott dined with Coleridge and made his famous remark: “Sam, the more I see of gooseberries, the sicker I get of them. Honest, I do.” He got £15,000 for this.

“Bang Into 1932” (E35)

Originally printed: The New Yorker, February 6, 1932
First reprinted in: Never reprinted
Original Byline: Guy Fawkes

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Comments:
Bang indeed. 1932 finds our media critic in fine Fawkesian form as he tears into a new outbreak of nationalist hysteria, this time focused on the Pacific. Naturally, Benchley finds Hearst’s blowhard organs (Journal, American and Mirror) in the vanguard of this crusade to foment anti-Japanese sentiment, but the issue takes on additional urgency when more cautious papers like the New York Times see fit to wade into the miasma stirred up by fantasies of a potential “race war” in Hawaii. The triggering incident for this escalation of editorial blood pressures around the country appears to have been a random street assault dubbed “The Honolulu Murder Case”. Fawkes disdains delving into the details of the case, keying his analysis to the wild jingoistic oats sown from made to order material which involved “national honor, race hatred, Anchors Aweigh, and a multitude of unprintable, but easily indicated, details of criminal assault.”

The author links the Mirror’s point of view on this case to an approving editorial on Lynch Law which appeared in the paper on the same day as its puerile Pacific reportage (January 12, 1932). Fawkes comes right out and calls the Hearst entity a Klan paper, or just about; but he baits his wryest barb for the Times, which “touched a new low in news value” with a non-story about Honolulu residents Mr. and Mrs. William Laurens Van Alen, who called some relatives in Pennsylvania to tell them that they were fine and nothing had happened to them.

Moving on from the sabre-rattlers, Benchley heckles the holiday editions of various papers all attempting to convince their readers that every American woke up happy and well fed on Christmas morning, 1931, even if there were a few less presents under the tree that year. We also get some animus aimed at yet another totally unnecessary addition to the roster of Sunday papers (the ever-offensive Mirror) and a discussion of the miserable state of collective bargaining in the journalistic field, where all glory comes posthumously.

The final paragraphs of the piece deal with The Journal’s odd write-up on Democratic Presidential hopeful Newton D. Baker, which neglected to inform its readers of the politician’s revised 1932 stance against joining the League of Nations. Of course, since this statement was made at a press conference, every other paper in America splashed the news on page 1, as Baker had been an ally of Woodrow Wilson and was expected to be at odds with Hearst’s preferred candidate (isolationist John Nance Garner) on this issue. Read multiple papers, Fawkes concludes, no matter how much it hurts.

Favourite Moment:
“A good reporters’ union might suggest that a little more money, or a little more security, during life would be welcomed in exchange for half a column of obituary recognition, but a good reporters’ union seems to be out of the question, Journalism being a Career and not a Job.”

“As I Understand It” (E25)

Originally printed: DAC News, October 1932
First reprinted in: The Athletic Benchley
Original Byline: Robert Benchley

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Comments:
Benchley concluded a very profitable twelve year run in the pages of the Detroit Athletic Club News with this disinterested observer’s guide to the 1932 Presidential election. The only trouble with “As I Understand It” is that, unlike the 1924 iteration of the rite (see E5), the Hoover/Roosevelt face-off actually promised to have consequences. RB is having none of that in this article, which, it must be said, was never intended to influence anyone to do or think anything. What does come across, however, is the author’s very real mistrust of representative democracy, at least insofar as it had been practiced up until his time, and his scorn for bureaucratic “expertise” (always synonymous in the Benchleyan imagination with abject incompetence traveling under the cover of incomprehensible bar charts).

Benchley correctly identifies the two main points of contention between the Democrats and the Republicans that political season – 1. The Depression, and 2. Prohibition. He goes a little over the line into smugness in his discussion of taxes and the inadvisability of pushing “soak the rich” programs in a nation newly shorn of plutocrats (ha ha). But perhaps this was inevitable, given the upscale readership of the DAC News. He shows more investment in the grand task of freeing the country’s parched throats from ol’ Volstead’s killjoy grip, but here too, he sees little evidence that America’s deliberately obstructionist institutions will be able to crank out an anti-amendment any time during the remaining years allotted to him.

Favourite Moment:
“If I have diagnosed Currency Inflation correctly, the same thing if practiced by a little group of individuals is called ‘counterfeiting’…”

“Around the World Backward” (E20)

Originally printed: Liberty Magazine, March 12, 1932
First reprinted in: The Best of Robert Benchley
Unable to compare reprint with original text – Liberty Historical Archives not available at Toronto Public Library
Original Byline: unknown

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Comments:
A touch of proto-gonzo journalism from Benchley, who describes life on the sensation-seeking trail with swashbuckler Douglas Fairbanks Sr. and director Lewis Milestone. With a well-earned reputation for sedentary living, RB makes a fine foil for the determinedly vigorous silent icon. By all biographical accounts, this fit of truncated globe trotting was no Joe Doakes daydream. The trio really did set forth for Paris, Russia, Manchuria, Japan, and points beyond, as part of the research phase of a travelogue picture project Fairbanks aimed to finance. They don’t appear to have gotten very far, and our calorie conserving author gives us a pretty good understanding of the dysfunctional group dynamics involved. Benchley probably never took refuge in the dresser drawer of a fellow ship passenger, but the rest of the events here recounted verge on the veridical.

Milestone’s role in all of this emerges as the most mysterious aspect of the abortive adventure. He does not appear to have been any more hell bent on ship deck hurdling than Benchley was, and one is tempted to conclude that he suckered the writer into joining the party as a means of deflecting the ring leader’s roughhouse demands.

Unusual in drawing material from RB’s actual celebrity associations, rather than from his reading or his sitcom-style suburban side, the piece also references the author’s famed knee injury (sustained during Donald Ogden Stewart’s wedding festivities) and his genuine admiration for Milestone’s masterful film treatments of All Quiet on the Western Front and The Front Page.

Favourite Moment:
“I used to stand in front of an open window and breathe deeply – oh, well, pretty deeply – and cheat a little on some bicep flexing, and, when I was young and offensive, I used to bang a tennis ball against the side of the house…”