In 1973, the first chapter of an unpublished novel was photocopied and distributed around the Manhattan offices of Doubleday & Co. with a note. “Read this,” it challenged, “without reading the rest of the book.”
According to the criteria of
Those who took up the challenge were treated to a horror story that begins with a young woman swimming in the waters off Long Island, New York. While her lover dozes on the beach, a great white shark attacks her. “The great conical head struck her like a locomotive, lifting her out of the water,” the passage read. “The jaws closed around her torso, crushing bones, flesh and organs, turning them into gelatin.”
Tom Congdon, an editor at Doubleday, had circulated the gory excerpt to drum up excitement for his latest project: a thriller about a giant cetacean lurking in a small island town, written by a young author named Peter Benchley. The tactic worked. No one who read the opening could put it down. All he needed was a title. Benchley had spent months mulling over possible names (“White Dark”? “Edge of Darkness”?). Finally, just hours before the deadline, he found it. “Jaws,” he scrawled on the manuscript’s cover.
When it was released in 1974, “Jaws” spent months on best-seller lists, made Benchley a literary celebrity and became the basis for Steven Spielberg’s hit 1975 film.
While most readers were drawn to its shark-centric plot, “Jaws” rode multiple cultural waves of the mid-1970s: It was also about a frayed marriage and a corrupt local government — released at a time of rising divorce rates, mass unemployment and a U.S. presidential scandal.
“Jaws” functioned as an allegory of what scared the reader. Even Fidel Castro was a fan, describing “Jaws” as a “splendid Marxist lesson,” demonstrating that “capitalism will even risk human lives to keep markets running.”
The success of “Jaws” had unforeseen consequences. In the late 1970s, Benchley watched in frustration as sharks were labeled public enemies. A lover of the sea, he spent decades reminding readers that “Jaws” was fiction.
“A lot of people took ‘Jaws’ as a license to go out and kill sharks,” said Wendy Benchley, his widow. “We tried to use ‘Jaws’ in every way possible to raise the alarm about sharks and how important they are to the ecosystem.”
Benchley’s infatuation with sharks began during his childhood summers in Nantucket, Massachusetts. He would go fishing with his father, novelist Nathaniel Benchley, and notice the numerous fins slicing through the water. The young Benchley was just beginning his writing career when, in 1964, he saw a newspaper story about a man who had caught a giant great white shark in the waters off Long Island that measured more than 17 feet long and weighed an estimated 4,500 pounds.
Benchley clipped the article and kept it in his wallet for several years.
By the early 1970s, interest in great white sharks was on the rise, thanks to a series of underwater dives captured in the documentary “Blue Water, White Death” and the book “Blue Meridian,” both published in 1971. That same year, Benchley approached Congdon with the idea of a book about a shark ravaging a coastal community. Congdon agreed to pay $1,000 for the first four chapters.
Benchley’s first attempt was rejected.
Kate Medina, now executive editorial director at Random House, was an editorial assistant at Doubleday when she was recruited to help guide Benchley through the revision process. “I don’t think the beginning of ‘Jaws’ ever changed,” she recalled.
With their help, Benchley developed the novel’s unlikely heroes: Martin Brody, the beleaguered police chief; Matt Hooper, an oceanographer; and Quint, a seasoned fisherman tasked with killing the cetacean.
In February 1974, “Jaws” hit the shelves. The film adaptation, co-written by Benchley and Carl Gottlieb, was released in 1975.
Not long before his death in 2006, Benchley recalled “Jaws” with what seemed a hint of regret. “I could never write that book today. Sharks don’t attack humans and they definitely don’t hold grudges,” he said.
But Wendy Benchley said the author remained proud of “Jaws” and its impact — not only on readers and moviegoers, but also, ultimately, on raising awareness about sharks. “He was at peace with it,” she said.
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