LES DENTS DE LA MER
By Nat Benchley
Illustration by ARNOLD ROTH in The American Bystander #15
[If you’re on a desktop or tablet, and would prefer to read this piece as it appears in Bystander #15, you can download a PDF here. The first two pages are a spread. — The Editors]
“Well, what the hell are you going to call it?”
“A Stillness in the Water? I’m not sure.”
“Not sure?” Tom Congdon, my brother Peter’s editor at Doubleday, was beginning to run out of patience. “The book goes to press in half an hour.”
“Let’s keep thinking.”
Tom tried to stay calm. He and Peter had worked for months through the birthing of a novel about a fish, fought off a less-than-sterling first draft and persevered right up to the final moment without giving up. But here, in a Midtown steakhouse, the fuse was lit, and he and his young author were about to be hoist with their own petard if they couldn’t come up with a catchy title.
Thirty minutes.
Tom sipped his drink. And Peter thought.
• • •
The whole thing had started, as most panics do, innocuously. Several years earlier Congdon had taken a 32-year-old ex-presidential speechwriter to lunch and popped the usual question: “Got any ideas for a novel?”
Peter had been bouncing around, doing a variety of jobs since Lyndon Johnson had turned the keys over to Richard Nixon’s gang. “I’ve got two outlines I like,” Peter said. One was about pirates in the modern-day Caribbean; and the other was about a giant shark which establishes residence around a beach community. Although his wife, Wendy, had gently said she thought that a story about a giant shark was “a bit far-fetched,” he still clung to the possibility.
Congdon didn’t leap at either option—but there were reasons to take a small gamble on the young writer. Before writing speeches and toasts for The leader of the free world, Peter had been the first TV editor at Newsweek and had published a nonfiction book and a children’s book. He was now freelancing for a collection of reputable newspapers, magazines and TV stations.
And, for what it was worth, Peter had a pedigree. Our grandfather was Robert Benchley who, if you’re reading this magazine, needs no introduction. Our father, Nathaniel Benchley, was also a successful writer with dozens of books to his name, and a few movies to boot. His biggest hit had been a 1961 novel called The Off-Islanders, which was turned into the 1966 hit movie The Russians Are Coming, The Russians Are Coming.
Congdon thought it worth a modest advance to turn this latest Benchley loose upon the world of arts and letters. He offered the struggling writer $1,000 to produce the first few chapters about a ravenous, man-eating shark.
After several patient months waiting for…anything, Congdon let it be known that the chapters were due, or the advance should be returned. Unfortunately, nothing spends faster than a book advance in the hands of a growing family. In a panic, Peter went to work…and it all went wrong. Peter’s upbringing had instilled in him a love of wordplay and sophisticated humor, neither of which was remotely appropriate for the job at hand: his first draft was half Melville-esque sea yarn, half Robert Benchley-esque diversion. Congdon’s strong rejection produced an epiphany in Peter: “A funny thriller about a shark eating people is, I soon realized, a nearly perfect oxymoron.”
Back to the typewriter Peter went and, after more than a year, the second draft turned out much better. So well, in fact, that Doubleday sent their salespeople out to book clubs and movie producers armed only with the first eight exciting pages. The clubs and producers were, as they say, hooked.
So, the book would at least be published. But Peter knew it had no chance of success. It was, after all, a first novel. And about a fish! Let’s be real. Sure, the Benchleys were lucky—Robert had stumbled into success after success, being described once as “rather than a master of his own fate, he was more a stowaway aboard it.” But surely there were limits, and as the clock wound down to zero, Peter saw those limits approaching. (There’s a two-note phrase of John Williams’ music that would be appropriate here, but it hadn’t been written yet.)
The title had always been a problem. During the process of producing his “fish book,” Peter and Wendy had endlessly noodled. Peter had a wealth of material inside him from growing up on the water in Nantucket, seeing that ominous fin cutting through the water, cleaning sharks’ jaws on the roof of the garage…But what summed the book up? And what would sell?
Peter was fascinated by some of the names of the towns on the island, old Native American names like Squam; Shimmo; Madaket; Polpis; Miacomet; Siasconset. He began riffing on those. He also (by his own admission) concocted titles “reminiscent of French novels in vogue at the time, like A Stillness in the Water and The Silence of Death.” Biblical references crept in, too: Leviathan, Leviathan Rising and The Jaws of Leviathan.
Totally frustrated, Peter turned to his father. After he heard the premise, Nathaniel suggested Wha’s That Noshin’ on My Laig? and (for the X-rated version) Cunna Linga Here No Longa.
On and on the search went. White Death? The Jaws of Death. Summer of the Shark. Which one was better? Are we getting anywhere? I don’t think we’re getting anywhere…
• • •
As the months rolled along with no title, Peter took solace in obscurity. Who cared what they called it? It was just a first novel, a throw-away, a warm-up. Nobody would read it. Then Tom told him that it was pre-selling at a furious pace, and the cold sweat began again. Friends were enlisted, and it became a community effort. Peter saved many pages of notes, scribbled in his and Wendy’s handwriting: Great White; White Night; Shimmo Night; Death in Shimmo; A Night in Shimmo; Death in Squam; Shimmo Bay; Dark Water/White Dark; The Shark of Shimmo; The Grinning Fish; The Visitor to Shimmo; Polpin Rock; The Beast of Shimmo; Squam Head; Moon’s Neck; Shimmo White; Esau; Hooper/Clasper; Adrenalin; Peter Ginkel; Leviathan Rising; Throwback; The Coming; Horror; Haunt; The Fish; Phosphorescence; Looming; Clam Bay; Spectre; The Edge of Gloom; Maw; Endurance; Tumult; Shadow; The Survivor; The Unexplained; Penance; Hunger; Survival; Messenger; Dues; Ripple; Death From the Sea; Apparition; What Have We Done?; Stranger Summer; One Summer; Desserts; Tiburon [the eventual title in Spanish]; The White; Fluke; Monimoy; Requin; White; Why?; Quidnet; Off the Beach; Instinct; Arrival; Early Summer; Moon (Town name); Ravage; Warning; Despair; Shadows of Despair; Alarm; Beware; Giant; Portent; Menace; Scourge; Devastation; The Great Fish; A Question of Evil; Anthropophagus; Omnivore; Havoc; White Evil; White Menace; Jaws of Despair; Terror; Anguish; The Fish; In With Stillness; Amity; Hiram; Requiem White; Dread; Fury; Chill; Harpoon; A Dreadful Stillness; An elegant (splendid) presence; Man Eater; Out of the Stillness; An Awful Stillness; Leviathan; The Image of Evil; The Presence of Evil; Presence; Primeval; Infinite Evil; Primordial; Evil Infinite; Survival; Sacrifice; Vision; Brute White; Vengeance; A Question of Vengeance; Rollie; Tristram; The Scourge of Amity; Dreadful Silence; Jaws Over Amity; The Fish at Amity; Pisces Redux; Past…
Nothing was sticking. After the first ten, it all sounded like mush. After the first thirty, it wasn’t even English anymore.
And time was most definitely running short.
Congdon took Peter to lunch at The Dallas Cowboy steakhouse to put the figurative gun to his head and make him decide. Half-hour to lift-off. You can’t print a book without a title.
In his own words, Peter described the lunch:
“Finally, when we had finished lunch and Tom had paid the check, I said, “Look, there’s no way we’re gonna agree on a title. There’s only one word we agree on, so let’s make that the title. Let’s call it Jaws.”
Tom thought for a moment, then agreed. “At least it’s short.”
I called my father and told him the title.
“What’s it mean?” he asked.
“I have no idea,” I said. “But at least it’s short.”
• • •
From this remove, with the benefit of not only hindsight but hysteria, it is hard to imagine any other title working. Or fitting as well on a T-shirt.
Sometimes desperation provides genius.
The old Benchley luck might have had something to do with it, too. ◊
NAT BENCHLEY is a former performer/informer currently dividing his time between quarantine and sequestration.
This article appears in The American Bystander #15. Buy it here.
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