Review written for ClubReading.com by Susan

The best collection of pieces written by the father of all modern humor columnists. Benchley was a Harvard graduate who considered himself a failure because he never became a social worker or wrote a history of England during the reign of Queen Anne. Yet in his lifetime he achieved success as an editor, actor, filmmaker, and writer of brilliant short satire on the morals and foibles of the human animal, all from a perspective of pleasant, off-center wit, non-sequitur, and parody. In fact when he died in 1945, his colleague James Thurber called him “the world’s least embittered satirist.” Modern readers who find themselves a bit sick at stomach with the current obsession over so-called “family values” will particularly enjoy his phlegmatic disinterest in canonizing children. Other collections include My Ten Years in a Quandary and How They Grew; and No Poems: Or Around the World Backwards and Sideways.

EXCERPT FROM Inside Benchley:

Family Life in America Part 1

The naturalistic literature of this country has reached such a state that no family of characters is considered true to life which does not include at least two hypochondriacs, one sadist, and one old man who spills food down the front of his vest. If this school progresses, the following is what we may expect in our national literature in a year or so.

The living-room in the Twillys’ house was so damp that thick, soupy moss grew all over the walls. It dripped on the picture of Grandfather Twilly that hung over the melodeon, making streaks down the dirty glass like sweat on the old man’s face. It was a mean face. Grandfather Twilly had been a mean man and had little spots of soup on the lapel of his coat. All his children were mean and had soup spots on their clothes.

Grandma Twilly sat in the rocker over by the window, and as she rocked the chair snapped. It sounded like Grandma Twilly’s knees snapping as they did whenever she stooped over to pull the wings off a fly. She was a mean old thing. Her knuckles were grimy and she chewed crumbs that she found in the bottom of her reticule. You would have hated her. She hated herself. But most of all she hated Grandfather Twilly.

“I certainly hope you’re frying good,” she muttered as she looked up at his picture.