Humor & Life Quote by Robert Benchley

Benchley’s joke lands because it pretends to be a mild administrative observation, then swerves into a perfectly mean little escalation: the problem isn’t that permission is required, it’s that permission is too easy to obtain. The target isn’t copyright law so much as the entire culture of public readings, prestige recitations, and dutiful “literary” events where a book becomes a prop for social performance. He’s not defending the author’s rights; he’s defending the audience’s right not to be subjected to someone else’s earnestness.

The line is structured like a polite note passed in the margins of publishing etiquette. “There is a note…” has the fussy tone of a man reading fine print on a train. Then Benchley spikes it with “It ought to be made much more difficult,” implying that the real danger is not piracy but permission. Subtext: authors (and their publishers) are too willing to bless any tasteful-seeming event, and the gatekeeping is aimed at money when it should be aimed at quality.

Context matters: Benchley came out of the Algonquin Round Table world, where genteel culture was prime material for puncture. In an era when “serious” literature carried social cachet, public readings could function like cultural laundering: a mediocre gathering becomes “important” because someone reads aloud. Benchley’s cynicism is affectionate but sharp: he’s skewering the rituals that turn books into performances, and performances into self-congratulation. The punchline is a consumer-protection policy disguised as a joke.