Here Benchley details the first world torments of the bourgeois caught in bureaucratic amber on the deck of a homecoming Transatlantic liner. The indignities of international travel are bad enough, RB says, without the U.S. government making an open question of the sojourner’s right to return to their native shore, or at least to get away from the gang of floating drips they’ve been cooped up with for a few thousand nautical miles. We get a lot more Benchleyan bashing of red tape and protocols designed expressly to catch a man halfway between his favorite speakeasy and the 12-mile limit.

At such times, the defenseless subject of Foucauldian discipline is wont to take solace in any means of distraction handy. But what is handy when you’re quarantined in a queue and your gear is stowed in a steamer trunk? Well… people… certainly… lots of people around, but Benchley has already made short sport of that option – this bunch of Babbitts all paid $3000 to sight-see during the depths of the Depression! All you’ve got, really, in this extremity, is the legalistic fine print and the arcane customs scribblings in your passport, which our author turns to with the desperate gusto of a child absorbing the B Vitamin complex data set on a box of Corn Crackos. You can’t fight city hall, but you can take refuge in its inane publications.   

Favourite Moment:

Standing in line waiting for Uncle Sam to look at your tongue or hanging around on deck waiting for the tide to turn, there is nothing like a little red passport to while away the time. And what a bit of reading-matter that is!