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This was no boating accident. We’re dealing here with a miracle of evolution
— a writing machine, if you will. All this machine does is eat and sleep and
write formulaic thrillers.
White Shark is obviously the work of a large scribbler, genus
Benchley. The bite radius indicates its standard habits. Notice the factual
portions of the narrative read as though they’ve been swallowed whole from
encyclopedias.
What’s strange about this attack is the cannibalistic feeding it indicates.
That’s nothing new, but it used to be camouflaged better. You’ll remember
that Jaws was basically a rewrite of Moby Dick. Traces of
those same habits show up in this specimen, too. One character, Tall Man, is
just Ishmael’s old confederate Queequeg with a fresh coat of paint. But this
Benchley has been feeding on some pretty hackneyed plots as well. Look what
we found in its stomach, practically undigested: old Nazis and a plan for
world domination.
Of course its work seems strange to us. That’s because we’re omnivores when
it comes to our reading material. We need variety. The Benchley doesn’t. It
writes for two simple reasons: to sustain its lifestyle and satisfy the
demands of its publisher. If you had a brain — or a publisher — like the
Benchley, you probably wouldn’t vary your subsequent writing much either.
You’d keep using the same nasty predator plot, and you’d stick with it
because nothing in your environment would force you to evolve.
There have been some negligible alterations in this instance: these portions
here, for example; where the ecological warnings have been clumsily wedged
into the narrative; and here’s a subplot with the protagonist and his
estranged son reconciling. But look at our gnathodynamometer (a device for
measuring bite-pressure). You can see from these impressions that the
Benchley only snapped at the subplots half-heartedly.
Now,
I know you’re wondering if this new Benchley attack is any reason to close
the beaches. Of course not. The Benchley is essentially harmless, despite
its fearsome appearance. The most you’ll experience if you encounter it is
the occasional mild, predictable shock and the desire to keep reading, even
while kicking yourself for persisting. Stretched out on the sand in the hot
sun is probably the only place you can safely grapple with a Benchley
without suffering the guilt you’d expect from reading its work. |
