Subject: REVIEW: "White Shark", Peter Benchley

From: "Rob Slade, doting grandpa of Ryan and Trevor" <[email-masked]>
Date: 04 Feb 2000 18:02:30 -0500

"White Shark" by Peter Benchley
	Review Copyright 2000 Rob Slade

Peter Benchley can do *way* better than this.  I mean, look at "Jaws,"
which everybody was reading on the beach that summer since they were
afraid to go into the water because of possible shark attacks.  Not,
perhaps, the Great American Novel, but it had a rather astonishing
sensitivity to good and evil for a modern work.

Let's look at the technology, first.  Actually, there are too many missing
pieces in the technology, and biology, to say much for sure.  That part of
the story seems to be complicated and convoluted beyond all belief, and
seems to indicate that Benchley changed his mind several times about
things without bothering to go back and revise the narrative.  At one
point it is quite clear that a certain process has been taught and
practiced, while not too far away it is unequivocally stated that the
procedure was never taught.

I suppose I don't have too much difficulty with the idea that cognition
could be reduced to minimal levels while metabolism was slowed or
suspended.  However, the disparity between the phenomenal feats of
strength and the lack of returning thought and memory seems excessive.

Speaking of suspended, this is one of the uncertain areas of the book.
The story seems to indicate that "Der Weisse Hai" is locked in a kind of
pandora's box for fifty years, opened only by the foolish intervention of
explorers.  At the same time, there seems to be evidence that the thing
could have exited at any time.  Neither construction really makes much
sense: a fifty year hibernation is clearly excessive, and a failure to
escape is inconsistent with the later activities.

Benchley also seems to be feeling a little guilty about his role in
portraying sharks as monsters of the deep, and gives us a rather facile
conservationist thread in this book.

The big technical blowout (literally) comes in the climax of the book.  I
can quite believe that a rapid pressurization would cause excruciating
pain in the ears.  However, any diver knows that dissolving enough
nitrogen in the tissues to create severe bends takes hours, not seconds.
This is why divers have decompression tables.  Explosive decompression
just simply does not happen like that.

The technical problems are not the only ones with the work.  Many items in
the book are introduced and then forgotten, giving the piece a ragged
feel.  As noted before, the author seems to have changed his mind on a
number of issues and then seems to have felt that the reading public
simply didn't deserve the courtesy of a little cleanup.  One of the
changes seems to have been the length of the book.  The setup takes a long
time, and a number of important characters are introduced way too late for
a story of this size.  Benchley appears to have intended to write a novel
and then, half way through, decided that he was too bored and that a pulp
paperback was good enough.

%A   Peter Benchley
%C   175 Fifth Ave., New York, NY   10010
%D   1994
%G   0-312-95573-1
%I   St. Martin's Press
%O   U$6.50/C$7.50 212-674-5151 fax 800-288-2131
%P   340 p.
%T   "White Shark"

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