Jaws (novel) Jaws (novel) Jaws is a 1974 novel by American writer Peter Benchley. It tells the story of a great white shark that preys upon a small resort town and the voyage of three men trying to kill it. The novel grew out of Benchley's interest in shark attacks after he learned about the exploits of shark fisherman Frank Mundus in 1964. Doubleday commissioned him to write the novel in 1971, a period when Benchley struggled as a freelance journalist. Through a marketing campaign orchestrated by Doubleday and paperback publisher Bantam, "Jaws" was incorporated into many book sales clubs catalogues and
Jaws (film) staged and lumpily written." Marcia Magill of "Films in Review" said that while "Jaws" "is eminently worth seeing for its second half", she felt that before the protagonists' pursuit of the shark the film was "often flawed by its busyness". William S. Pechter of "Commentary" described "Jaws" as "a mind-numbing repast for sense-sated gluttons" and "filmmaking of this essentially manipulative sort"; Molly Haskell of "The Village Voice" similarly characterized it as a "scare machine that works with computer-like precision. ... You feel like a rat, being given shock therapy". The most frequently criticized aspect of the film has been the