ON OLD REFERENCE BOOKS

I PONDER OCCASIONALLY, AMIDST SCADS OF BOOKS, whether a few clicks of the computer keyboard wouldn’t replace them all. This, in a sense, is the idea being LLM, large language models that scoop up scads of knowledge and then identify what you’re looking for, sans hallucinations, one hopes.

Recently, though, I believe I’ve found a compelling counterexample. Searching for one thing or another (I forget the original intent), I sought information in one of my references conveniently located in a pile on the arm of my Stickley Prairie Settle: The Oxford Book of Literary Anecdotes.

The Oxford Book of American Literary Anecdotes, edited by Donald Hall, Oxford University, 1981. 

Here are tidbits gleaned from this “old” reference book, which, by the way, AbeBooks lists for $4.21 (free shipping within U.S.A.) My general theme, if indeed one is required, is Great Tales of Familiar Humorists. (A similar Google search is abundant, but not nearly as fruitful.)

Robert Benchley. Benchley was a writer, comedian, newspaper man, and frequenter of the Round Table at the Algonquin. A favorite Benchley line is “Drawing on my fine command of the English language, I said nothing.” 

Robert Benchley, 1889–1945, American humorist.

A great tale related in the Oxford concerns one of Benchley’s drinking adventures: “Late one winter evening, he and a friend were leaving Tony’s, and when they got outside a soft, silent snow was falling. Then, suddenly, under the Sixth Avenue Elevated, they saw a line of elephants, trunk to tail, padding through the snow, and on the tail of the last elephant hung a red light.” 

“Quietly, Robert and his friend turned and went back inside, clutched the edge of the bar, and ordered two double brandies. For a while, neither of them spoke. Then Robert cleared his throat.” 

“ ‘Did you—ah—see anything?’ he asked. ‘Anything out of the ordinary?’ ”

“ ‘You mean outside?’ his friend said, hopefully.”

“ ‘Yes,’ said Robert. ‘Over toward Sixth Avenue, sort of.’ ”

“It turned out that what they had seen were the Hippodrome elephants, on their way downtown for a new show….”

Benchley Dines With His Son. His son Nathaniel recalls: “When, in the course of events, we left to go home, he went to a uniformed man at the door and said, ‘Would you get us a taxi, please?’ ”

“The man turn, and regarded him icily. ‘I’m very sorry,’ he said. ‘I happen to be a rear admiral in the United States Navy.’ ”

“ ‘All right then,’ said my father. ‘Get us a battleship.’ ” 

Benchley on Writer’s Block. Son Nathaniel shares another tale: “Once he had been trying to start a piece but couldn’t get it under way, so he went down the corridor to where a poker game was in progress, just to jolt his mind into starting up. Some time later, he returned to his room, sat down to the clean sheet of paper in the typewrite, and pecked out the word ‘The.’ ”

“This, he reasoned, was as safe a start as any, and might possibly break the block. But nothing else came, so he went downstairs and ran into a group of Round Table people, with whom he passed a cheerful hour or so.”

“Then, protesting that he had to work, he went back upstairs, where the small, bleak ‘The’ was looking at him out of the expanse of yellow paper. He sat down and stared at it for several minutes, then a sudden idea came to him, and he finished the sentence, making it read ‘The hell with it,’ and got up and went happily out for the evening.” 

And, having finished this for today’s SimanaitisSays, I too went on happily to other things. ds 

© Dennis Simanaitis, SimanaitisSays.com, 2023