JAWS by Peter Benchley
In most cases when a book receives a film adaptation, I prefer the source material. But then there are examples like Peter Benchley’s novel Jaws, which reveal that just because someone has the original vision for something, that doesn’t mean they were able to realize the full potential of the story. Benchley came up with a great, intriguing, simple idea for a book – but the story of Jaws didn’t reach its full potential until Benchley’s ideas were filtered through director Steven Spielberg, producers Richard D. Zanuck and David Brown, and screenwriter Carl Gottlieb (as well as the people who did uncredited work on the script) on their way to the screen in the film adaptation.
Benchley’s novel is set in the small Long Island community of Amity (which became a separate island in the film), where a large great white shark starts munching on people who venture into the water. While the movie indicated that there was something unusual about the strength and behavior of this killer shark, Benchley includes moments that show this is just your average fish. It isn’t attacking people because it has a taste for human flesh, it’s not a malevolent being, it’s just a fish that eats people because it mistakenly thinks they’re its usual prey, thrashing through the water in distress. At least, that’s the case until the last couple chapters, where the shark no longer behaves like a typical fish. Those last chapters kind of read like Benchley wrote them in a rush to finish – which would make sense, because he admittedly procrastinated on writing the book for a while after setting up a publishing deal, and only hustled to complete the first draft after his agent warned him that the publisher would take back the advance they paid him if he didn’t deliver the manuscript. Then a good bit of rewriting went on, but some underwhelming elements still made it to publication.
The characters are the same in the book as in the film... in name and occupation, anyway. Spielberg wasn’t impressed with the way Benchley had written them, though, and was able to bring much more humanity to these people in his film. Martin Brody is the Chief of Police in Amity, and there isn’t a whole lot to him other than his struggle to do his job of keeping the people safe while this hungry fish swims around. There’s career fisherman Quint, who was inspired by a real Long Island shark hunter named Frank Mundus, but doesn’t have the film Quint’s U.S.S. Indianapolis background. He only gets involved toward the end of the book. Ichthyologist Matt Hooper is called in to give his opinion on the shark issue, and he’s a wealthy fellow who happens to be in a different class than Brody is. He’s more like the rich people who come to Amity for summer vacation – and in the book, Brody’s wife Ellen is also of that class. She was a summer person who met Brody and ended up staying in the area, which has left her unhappy because she misses her rich summer person past. Which leads to the worst section of the book, where a few chapters are entirely devoted to Ellen trying to relive her past, just for a moment, by seducing Hooper and having a one day affair with him.
The Ellen/Hooper affair is in the book because Benchley was told to drop some sex into it. He first attempted to accomplish this by including a scene where Ellen has sex with her husband... then he was told by the editor at the publishing house that there was no place for “wholesome marital sex” in a book like this, there had to be an extramarital affair. So Ellen and Hooper hook up, something that thankfully did not make it into the movie.
There is some good shark action and suspense in this book, but it’s still surprising how many of its 278 pages are focused on things other than the shark. Like the Ellen/Hooper affair, or Brody finding out that that Mayor Larry Vaughn is so insistent that the beach remain open not because he’s worried about the town’s finances but because he has been making real estate deals with a mobster and can only pay off his debts if the beach is open and summer people are coming to town. This is completely unnecessary, and another thing that was rightfully left out of the movie. For the middle stretch of the book, the shark fades into the background while we learn things about people that lessen our opinions of them. Then Benchley wraps things up by sending Brody, Hooper, and Quint out on a boat together. Not for a multiple day adventure like in the movie, but a series of day trips.
Benchley had a great idea, and Jaws is an interesting, if not entirely satisfactory read. The way it plays on the page just pales in comparison to the film version, as Spielberg turned Benchley’s idea into one of the greatest movies ever made.
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