Word: benchley
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...Peter Benchley's 1974 best seller, Jaws, starred the shark that ate Long Island, became a smashing film and inspired a school of sequels. After some dry runs, the novelist has taken the plunge again. Beast (Random House; 350 pages; $21) features tentacles rather than mandibles. Otherwise it is the familiar mixture: lethal creature, relentless pursuers and vast quantities of saline solution. When waters off Bermuda become the killing grounds of a giant squid, tourism collapses. Whereupon an Ahabian fisherman, Whip Darling, clambers into a submarine and leads the hunt. All the old ingredients are present, from aqua horror...
Sometimes O'Rourke adopts an air of bemusement, reminiscent of Robert Benchley in mid-quandary. But most of his entries could not be written by any other satirist at any other period: "The most delightful introduction you can make is to introduce an important person to someone he or she is going to find sexually interesting . . . you march Kiki over to your well-known friend. 'Antonio, you're going to love this girl. She once made Warren Beatty bleed out the ears...
...found in Sylvia Thompson's Feasts and Friends (North Point Press; $21.95), a beautifully evocative memoir recounting the author's dining adventures in California and Europe. The daughter of actress Gloria Stuart, Thompson learned good cooking at home in Hollywood, where dinner guests included Groucho Marx and Robert Benchley. Traveling around Europe, cooking while in and out of love, she developed an eclectic repertoire: from Russian fish soup to French vegetable soup with white wine, from Southern "transparent pie" -- made with quince jelly -- to an opaque Dutch apple pudding. The icing on the cake is a foreword by the incomparable...
...YEAR LUNCH (PBS, Aug. 15, 9 p.m. on most stations). Dorothy Parker, Robert Benchley and the other literary legends who traded bons mots around the Algonquin Round Table are fondly recalled in this Academy Award-winning documentary...
...argument did not sway Gottlieb, who lunched next day with Shawn at the Algonquin Hotel, the fabled watering hole of such bygone New Yorker wits as Robert Benchley and Dorothy Parker. The two men had never met. As they settled at Shawn's regular table, Gottlieb gave Shawn his reply to the petition, a three-sentence note that expressed sympathy but declared his intention "to take up this new job." As Gottlieb toyed with his omelet and Shawn ate an English muffin, the two decided that Gottlieb should take over in mid- February, after a week spent working with Shawn...