February 24, 2023
Excellent book.
First of all Peter Benchley’s 1974 novel Jaws is darker and more complicated than Spielberg’s film. And it was a magnificent motion picture, a work of art with few peers and a production that garnered Spielberg his first high accolades. Benchley’s novel, as are most books, almost by artistic default, is more complex, with characterizations that are developed and interconnected, with a group dynamic that is as interesting as the surface story about a man-eating shark that eats a town.
That was my first, pleasant surprise in reading the novel. I don’t know what exactly I expected, maybe a slightly more expounded storyline, a novelization of the surface film. What I found was a rich, layered, elaborately detailed modern morality play. More than that even, Benchley has created an allegory whereby the surface story of a shark attacking a village is represented as a conflict between Eastern elite monied people and the blue collar folks who work for a living in Amity; the great white is as DNA programmed to attack and feed as the Izod wearing preppies who populated the town in the summer are to an entitled existence at the top of our socio-economic food chain.
More than a class struggle, a distinction between summer and winter people in an Atlantic ocean hamlet, Benchley makes subtle statements about the sharks among us, about those in our culture who reach out and take what they want, consequences and laws be damned, and those of the vast majority who follow rules and who have established expectations about what life has for them.
There is always a bigger fish.
Just as Robert Shaw’s portrayal of Quint stole the show in Spielberg’s classic, so too does Quint in Benchley’s masterpiece. The most obvious, but superficial comparison will be to Melville’s Ahab; both the larger than life, iron wielder of a harpoon, both seeking a white monster from the depths. But contextually, Benchley has cast Quint more closely with Conrad’s Kurtz, London’s Wolf Larson and Hemingway’s white hunter; all rolled into a metaphor for Benchley’s alpha male. Quint is the Nietzchean superman, the zenith predator of our society, pitted against the premier hunter from nature. Benchley’s description of Quint is too similar to Conrad’s Kurtz to be coincidence and so Brody becomes Benchley’s Marlow, our link to the primitive narrative, the chronicler of what has passed, and the bridge back to our world from the brief glimpse into atavistic shadows.
In the end, this is an excellent book, a fascinating story that works on many different levels. Like Bernard Malamud’s The Natural is to the film of the same name and Philip K. Dick’s Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? is to Bladerunner, Benchley’s work is deeper and richer than Spielberg’s film, and a fan of the film will want to read this to discover it’s intricate and fundamental differences.
** 2018 - it is a testament to great literature that a reader recalls the work years later and this is a book about which I frequently think. There is a scene of infidelity that has stayed with me. Benchley is an extraordinary writer to create a work that resonates for years later.
![description](https://cdn.statically.io/img/i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/hostedimages/1580740114i/28897089._SX540_.jpg)
First of all Peter Benchley’s 1974 novel Jaws is darker and more complicated than Spielberg’s film. And it was a magnificent motion picture, a work of art with few peers and a production that garnered Spielberg his first high accolades. Benchley’s novel, as are most books, almost by artistic default, is more complex, with characterizations that are developed and interconnected, with a group dynamic that is as interesting as the surface story about a man-eating shark that eats a town.
That was my first, pleasant surprise in reading the novel. I don’t know what exactly I expected, maybe a slightly more expounded storyline, a novelization of the surface film. What I found was a rich, layered, elaborately detailed modern morality play. More than that even, Benchley has created an allegory whereby the surface story of a shark attacking a village is represented as a conflict between Eastern elite monied people and the blue collar folks who work for a living in Amity; the great white is as DNA programmed to attack and feed as the Izod wearing preppies who populated the town in the summer are to an entitled existence at the top of our socio-economic food chain.
More than a class struggle, a distinction between summer and winter people in an Atlantic ocean hamlet, Benchley makes subtle statements about the sharks among us, about those in our culture who reach out and take what they want, consequences and laws be damned, and those of the vast majority who follow rules and who have established expectations about what life has for them.
There is always a bigger fish.
Just as Robert Shaw’s portrayal of Quint stole the show in Spielberg’s classic, so too does Quint in Benchley’s masterpiece. The most obvious, but superficial comparison will be to Melville’s Ahab; both the larger than life, iron wielder of a harpoon, both seeking a white monster from the depths. But contextually, Benchley has cast Quint more closely with Conrad’s Kurtz, London’s Wolf Larson and Hemingway’s white hunter; all rolled into a metaphor for Benchley’s alpha male. Quint is the Nietzchean superman, the zenith predator of our society, pitted against the premier hunter from nature. Benchley’s description of Quint is too similar to Conrad’s Kurtz to be coincidence and so Brody becomes Benchley’s Marlow, our link to the primitive narrative, the chronicler of what has passed, and the bridge back to our world from the brief glimpse into atavistic shadows.
In the end, this is an excellent book, a fascinating story that works on many different levels. Like Bernard Malamud’s The Natural is to the film of the same name and Philip K. Dick’s Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? is to Bladerunner, Benchley’s work is deeper and richer than Spielberg’s film, and a fan of the film will want to read this to discover it’s intricate and fundamental differences.
** 2018 - it is a testament to great literature that a reader recalls the work years later and this is a book about which I frequently think. There is a scene of infidelity that has stayed with me. Benchley is an extraordinary writer to create a work that resonates for years later.
![description](https://cdn.statically.io/img/i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/hostedimages/1580740114i/28897089._SX540_.jpg)