Of All Things! (Common Reader Editions)

Rating:
Summary: Benchley never fails to please.
Review: This collection of Benchley's writings, appearing in magazines prior to 1920 or so, pleases the reader on several levels. There are articles whose humor hasn't faded in the 80 or more years since they were written such as "Coffee, Megg and Ilk," or "The Passing of the Orthodox Paradox," containing a nice parody of Oscar Wilde's plays. I think these are as funny to us as they were to the readers when they were written. There are others, such as "Lesson Number One," that tells about learning to drive at a time when an automobile was as exotic a possession as, say, a home computer in the early 1990s. These are funny in a different way, and I enjoyed reading them even though the things they laugh at are decades out of date.

Anyone who has suffered through learning to play bridge will enjoy "Not According to Hoyle," and those who sympathize with the record number of Americans finding it hard to pay all their bills will delight in "Turning Over a New Ledger Leaf." Those who read old literature will get a kick out of his pastiche of annotated Shakespeare in "Shakespeare Explained," and anybody who has read a novel in which the plot is advanced by letters exchanged between two viewpoint characters will laugh at "When Genius Remained Your Humble Servant."

All in all, an excellent collection of humor writings not available elsewhere.