Jaws (novel) - Reception

Reception

Jaws was published in February 1974 and became a great success, staying on the bestseller list for some 44 weeks. By the time the film adaptation debuted in June 1975 the book had sold 5.5 million copies domestically, and eventually reached 9.5 million copies. Benchley's 2006 obituary in The Times says that "Jaws stayed for 40 weeks in the bestseller charts of The New York Times, eventually selling 20 million copies."

Steven Spielberg has said that he initially found many of the characters unsympathetic and wanted the shark to win. Book critics such as Michael A. Rogers of Rolling Stone magazine shared the sentiment but the book struck a chord with readers.

In the years following publication, Benchley began to feel responsible for the negative attitudes against sharks that he felt his novel created. He became an ardent ocean conservationist. In an article for the National Geographic published in 2000, Benchley writes "considering the knowledge accumulated about sharks in the last 25 years, I couldn't possibly write Jaws today ... not in good conscience anyway. Back then, it was generally accepted that great whites were anthropophagus (they ate people) by choice. Now we know that almost every attack on a human is an accident: The shark mistakes the human for its normal prey."