"Love Conquers All" by Robert Benchley (The Akadine Press)

ISBN 9781888173710

For the last ten years or so, when I think of writers who are important to me, as a writer, I think of Robert Benchley.  Which may be an odd choice, but the reasons why I like him are very sane to me.  I have to presume that Benchley had to write his essays/reviews regularly and all due to the deadline.  I sense that is what inspired his work (and his paycheck) and opened up his imagination.  He also writes about everything under the sun and stars.  Social manners, theater, eating, family life, and so on.  His topics are vast, yet, he covers it all with his 'character,' and that's important for a writer to have a certain amount of character when one writes. I learned from his books. 

And even more critical, Benchley is a great prose writer as well as a fantastic wit.  I'm a fan of literature that was written in the 1920s/1930s that come off charming, but I damn know well that things were for sure not charming outside Benchley's world or mind.  Yet, he made a choice to write about his subject matters with a strong subjective point-of-view that doesn't show him being smarty-pants, but one with an intense curiosity of how things work.   I think of him often when I type on a blank screen or a pen on paper.  If he can come up with the goods, then so can I!