This new Robert Benchley Society is...

...the most pleasant news I've gotten via unsolicited email--well, probably ever. A very cordial Bostonian named David Trumbull has gotten it into his head to collect the fans of Benchley, the writing of Benchley, and let them mix it up themselves. It will be interesting to see which side survives.



Membership is free, and truly a sign of good taste undaunted by throbbing modernity. Check the website out here. Meanwhile, here's their Christmas Reading List:



(1) "A Christmas Garland of Books" by Robert Benchley

What better gift for that hard-to-buy-for person than a book? "...A man's whole life could be changed by such a fortuitous slip of the rubber..."

(2) "Why I Love Christmas" by John Waters

Blue collar Baltimore meets rainbow colored Provincetown when John Waters

takes on American commercialized Christmas traditions. "...Why hasn't Bloomingdale's or Tiffany's tried a fancy Santa. Deathly pale, this never-too-thin-or-too-rich Kris Kringle, dressed in head-to-toe unstructured, over-size Armani, could pose on a throne, bored and elegant, and every so often deign to let a rich little brat sit near his lap before dismissing his wishes with a condescending "Oh, darling, you don't really want that, do you?..."

(3) "A Bum's Christmas" by H. L. Mencken

A jaundiced look at Christmas charity from another Baltimore writer. "Despite all the snorting against them in works of divinity, it has always been my experience that infidels--or freethinkers, as they usually prefer to call themselves--are a generally estimable class of men, with strong overtones of the benevolent and even of the sentimental. This was certainly true, for example, of Leopold Bortsch, Totsaufer [customers' man] for the Scharnhorst Brewery, in Baltimore, forty-five years ago..."

(4) "Duel in the Snow, or Red Ryder Nails the Cleveland Street Kid" (from the book "In

God we Trust: All Others Pay Cash") by Jean Shepherd

Great American original made into the movie The Christmas Story. "...You'll shoot your eye out kid..."

(5) "Some Damnable Errors About Christmas" from "A Christmas Garland" by Sir Max Beerbohm

Hyper-orthodox friends--of which we have many--will enjoy this parody of G. K. Chesterton: but be warned, graduates of the public schools will likely think it is in earnest. "...as seekers after truth we should be compelled to regard with a dark suspicion, and to check with the most anxious care, every fact that he told us about isosceles triangles..."

(6) "The Three Wise Guys" by Damon Runyon

Like the classic John Ford Western Three Godfathers, it puts three bad (but not horribly bad) men in the roles of the Magi, with humorous/sentimental effects. "...Miss Clarabelle Cobb comes of very religious people back in Akron, Ohio, and she is taught from childhood that rum is a terrible thing, and personally I think it is myself, except in cocktails..."

(7) "Joyeux Noël, Mr. Durning" by James Thurber

Will be be enjoyed by anyone who has ever received a gift which was a "project." "...the joli cadeau de Noël had arrived at my home five days after Pâques..."

(8) "The Gift of the Magi" by O. Henry

Perhaps we stretch the meaning of humor with this inclusion, but we recommend it nevertheless. It's in the public domain. "...The magi, as you know, were wise men--wonderfully wise men--who brought gifts to the Babe in the manger. They invented the art of giving Christmas presents. Being wise, their gifts were no doubt wise ones, possibly bearing the privilege of exchange in case of duplication..."

(9) "The Office Party" by Corey Ford

A gem from the days before political correctness and ubiquitous lawsuits took all the fun out of the holidays. "...The annual Office Party starts along about noon on December 24 and ends

two or three months later, depending how long it takes the boss to find out who set fire to his wastebasket, threw the water cooler out of the window, and betrayed Miss O'Malley in the men's washroom..."

(10) "Christmas Afternoon" by Robert Benchley

Done in the Manner, if Not the Spirit, of Dickens. "...And as Tiny Tim might say in speaking of Christmas afternoon as an institution, 'God help us, every one.'"