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If you don't know Robert
Benchley
"None excel
Robert Benchley in the ingenious technique of verbal humour. As a writer
of nonsense for nonsense sake, he is unsurpassed." - Stephen
Leacock
"A good,
stuffy way to describe Benchley would be to say that ‘he occupies a unique
position in American humor.’ He occupies nothing of the sort. He is top
dog!" - S.J. Perelman
“Benchley
changed my life, from the shell of a man I was at age 8 to what I am
today.” – Horace J. Digby, winner of the 2005
Robert Benchley Society Award for Humor.
One reviewer
of Benchley Roundup said of Benchley, “his influence--on contemporaries
such as E. B. White, James Thurber, and S. J. Perelman, or followers
like Woody Allen, Steve Martin, and Richard Pryor--has left an indelible
mark on the American comic tradition.”
In a recent
book, Seriously Funny, The Rebel Comedians of the 1950s and 1960s, by
Gerald Nachman, Benchley was named most often by some of America’s most
original comic talents – Bob Newhart, Jonathan Winters, Steve
Allen and Shelly Berman among others – as the American humorist
who had the greatest influence on them. And many of today’s
humor writers for The New Yorker magazine, from Woody Allen, Russell Baker
and Calvin Trillin to Dave Barry, have acknowledged their debt
to Benchley’s innovative work and his influence on them.
Many not so
well-known writers of humor today also continue this tradition – many are
listed as finalists in the Benchley contest. Take a moment for
a good laugh break and check out the website (www.robertbenchley.org) and all the contest entries from the past two
years.
If you
aren’t reading Horace J. Digby, you are missing a special treat. His gifts
are natural and quite engaging. How can you overlook the man who
said: “We run a home for women who want to become unwed
mothers.” – Ed Tasca
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A Toast from
Ed
Maybe one day they’ll teach humor-writing in university. Curriculum
should start with Alice in Wonderland. Finish with Robert
Benchley's autobiography:
“Personally, I would rather have written
Alice in Wonderland than the whole Encyclopedia
Britannica.” - Stephen Leacock
About Alice in
Wonderland, Robert Benchley wrote, “Of course, it is true that many
present-day situations have parallels in the situations of the Alice
books, but I like to believe that this is not because Carroll put sense
into his nonsense but because the present-day situations are sheer
nonsense in themselves. Why monkey around with Nonsense? It can stand well
enough on its own feet.”
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----- Original Message -----From: Horace J. DigbyTo: Ed TascaSent: Tuesday, August 08, 2006 2:45 PMSubject: changes to Ed's Essays