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Peter Benchley's 1974 best seller, Jaws, starred the shark that ate Long Island, became a smashing film and inspired a school of sequels. After some dry runs, the novelist has taken the plunge again. Beast (Random House; 350 pages; $21) features tentacles rather than mandibles. Otherwise it is the familiar mixture: lethal creature, relentless pursuers and vast quantities of saline solution. When waters off Bermuda become the killing grounds of a giant squid, tourism collapses. Whereupon an Ahabian fisherman, Whip Darling, clambers into a submarine and leads the hunt. All the old ingredients are present, from aqua horror...
Samuel Johnson should be living at this hour; the English language has need of him. Though he was never at a loss for words, the great lexicographical drudge would probably be confounded to read the new Random House Webster's College Dictionary. It is bugled as "the New Definition of Dictionary," the "newest, biggest and best...
Those who believe dictionaries should not merely reflect the times but also protect English from the mindless assaults of the trendy will find that the Random House Webster's lends authority to scores of questionable usages, many of them tinged with "politically correct" views. Purists will fume, but what is worse is that such permissiveness can only invite a further tattering of the language -- and already...
...core, the Random House Webster's is a laudable achievement, the work of many excellent minds. It is in the core's wrapping that trouble lies and English suffers erosion, mainly because the editors choose to be "descriptive, not prescriptive." As a result, numerous entries and usage notes, wafting in the sociological winds and whims of the day, are inconsistent and gratuitous, undermining any pretense of rigor, let alone authority...
...Random House; 260 pages...