S. J. Perelman (1904-1979) was probably the funniest American writer of the 20th century. He was a master of word-play and a cultural parodist without equal.S. J. Perelman was once described in these ...
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S. J. (Sidney Joseph) Perelman was born in Brooklyn, New York, on 1 February 1904 to a father who had immigrated to the United States twelve years earlier. He grew up in Providence, Rhode Island, wher...
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Sidney Joseph Perelman was born in Brooklyn, New York, to immigrant Joseph and Sophia Perelman. When Perelman was still a child his family moved to Providence, Rhode Island, where his father worked as...
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In the following review, the critic notes Perelman's wit, and places him among the top of American humorists.
Few people would question Robert Benchley's position as the funniest man wri...
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In the following review, Kupferberg calls Perelman's Home Companion, "a quintessence of Perelman. "
The title of this book is a little confusing. Is it a companion for Perelman&#x...
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In the following review of The Road to Miltown, Parker proclaims "Mr. Perelman stands alone in this day of humorists."
It is a strange force that compels a writer to be a humorist. It is...
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In the following excerpted review, Gibson lauds Perelman as a humorist skilled in the use of language, but not as a great writer.
The publication last month of The Most of S. J. Perelman, should remin...
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In the following reviews of The Most of S. J. Perelman and Baby, It's Cold Inside, originally published in 1958 and 1970 respectively, Welty admires Perelman's wit and cast of humorous c...
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In the following review of The Rising Gorge, Flanders comments on the richness of Perelman's humor.
In a world whose serious side is all too insecurely poised over an abyss of absurdity, the hu...
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In the following review, the critic observes that Perelman's jokes, while "imaginative and versatile, " on occasion fail, becoming little more than mechanical gags.
Most of the sk...
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In the following interview, originally published in 1963, Perelman discusses his influences, association with Hollywood, and the seriousness of his humorous style.
S. J. Perelman has an eighty-acre fa...
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In the following essay, Yates characterizes Perelman's fictional narrators—types of the literary Little Man—as "sane psychotics."
As if American fiction thrived on i...
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In the following review, the unsigned critic remarks that the pieces in Perelman's Chicken Inspector No. 23 are "as furiously and fluently disenchanted as ever."
Some people �...
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In the following review of Baby, It's Cold Inside, Freedman finds Perelman's humor, though funny, largely reminiscent of a bygone era.
With Benchley and Thurber long among the archangels...
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In the following review, Sherman discusses the subject matter of The Dream Department, and describes the volume as "lunatic and delightful."
S. J. Perelman is no Peter Bell. A primrose b...
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In the following review, Nordell comments on the "verbal vaudeville" of Perelman's writing.
Publishing this book in 1970 is casting Perelman before swine, to use one of his favori...
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In the following review of Baby, It's Cold Inside, Kanfer comments on Perelman's influences and literary influence, as well as the aim of his humor.
Thirty-two mind-expanding master-wor...
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In the following review of Vinegar Puss, Theroux calls Perelman "a shaping force of comedy " and offers the book high praise.
It is amazing, not to say criminal, that these greedy island...
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In the following review of Eastward Ha!, Theroux examines some of the objects of Perelman's travel satire and calls the humorist "incomparable."
There are at least two distinct ty...
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In the following review of Eastward Ha!, Wood recounts Perelman's skill at pun and wordplay and offers many examples of his wit.
"If one laughs at a joke really heartily," Freud r...
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In the following review of The Most of S. J. Perelman and Eastward Ha!, Fantoni writes approvingly of Perelman's humorous use of language.
Would anyone mind if I take the weight off my dogs for...
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In the following review of The Last Laugh, Brickman observes of Perelman, "his genius defies criticism."
The first time I met S. J. Perelman, the conversation turned to contemporary writ...
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In the following review of The Last Laugh, Teachout finds Perelman's collection lacking the energy and balance of some of his earlier works.
S. J. Perelman's new, posthumous collection&#...
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In the following review of The Last Laugh, originally published in 1981, Sheed examines the ingredients of Perelman's humor, but remarks that this volume lach some of the vigor of Perelman�...
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In the following review, Crowther surveys the stories of That Old Gang O' Mine: The Early and Essential S. J. Perelman.
S. J. Perelman in his time moved more book reviewers to confess incontine...
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In the following review, the unsigned critic recounts Perelman's life and brand of humor.
S. J. Perelman picks up business where he left off with Look Who's Talking. One passage should s...
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In the following essay, Gale studies Perelman's subject matter and comic style.
Take one part American humor tradition, sprinkle in elements from the Yiddish theater, and blend these ingredient...
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In the following review, Welty positively assesses the satire, parody, and wordplay of Perelman's Crazy Like a Fox.
This looks like the unholy work of only one man. Reader, S. J. Perelman has s...
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In the following review of Crazy Like a Fox, Sugrue characterizes Perelman as "the funniest man in America."
The publication of a selection of S. J. Perelman's "best"...
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In the following review, Maloney studies Perelman's Keep It Crisp, calling the book "superb."
It is the traditional fate of great humorists to be admired and praised by vast hosts...
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In the following review of Listen to the Mocking Bird, Gilroy describes Perelman the critic, the world traveler, and the satirist.
Here is a fine, light book, too light to break the nose of a dozing r...
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In the following laudatory review, the unsigned critic examines Perelman's humorous narratives.
In Parlor, Bedlam and Bath the Messrs. Perelman and [Q. J.] Reynolds have collaborated in an amus...
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In the following review of The Ill-Tempered Clavichord, Robinson mentions the usual targets of Perelman's satirical wit.
One of the more interesting mysteries of modern letters, to me, is how S...
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Critical Essay by Benny Green
I doubt if there is a reader anywhere prepared to read 650 consecutive pages of Perelman at a sitting [as found in The Most of S. J. Perelman and Eastward Ha!]; Perelman&...
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Critical Essay by Barry Fantoni
Of the three authors who form the trinity of American humour—Benchley and Thurber being the other two—Perelman is the most complete. His range is wider, a...
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Critical Essay by Russell Davies
In his own country, Perelman was latterly in danger of being cast as little more than a talented eye-witness, wittily recalling the supposed greats of Broadway, Hollyw...
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Critical Essay by Woody Allen
I discovered [Perelman] when I was in high school. I came across certain pieces that he had written and I immediately was stunned by them. I thought they were just the be...
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Critical Essay by Caskie Stinnett
There is a certain uniformity in the Perelman pieces—in the craftsmanship, in the construction. They invariably start off with a highly challenging introductio...
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Critical Essay by John Hollander
A very easy move of a certain kind of middle-brow criticism for the past 40 years has been to call anything you don't understand surrealist, and I dare say ther...
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Critical Essay by The Saturday Review of Literature
Last year, entirely on his own, Perelman perpetrated "Dawn Ginsbergh's Revenge," a fine, mad book…. And now he has produ...
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Critical Essay by Eudora Welty
What I predict now could really be put in the form of a nomination: that S. J. Perelman be declared a living national treasure. This would be a good time for it. He has ...
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Critical Essay by Richard Freedman
Perelman has every right to be a bit bushed by now, forty-one years and eighteen books after his debut, Dawn Ginsbergh's Revenge, which crashed into public no...
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Critical Essay by Tom Wolfe
S. J. Perelman, it turns out, left behind four chapters of an autobiography when he died in 1979. He planned to call it "The Hindsight Saga," a perelmaniacal ...
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Critical Essay by Henry Mitchell
Perelman was never restrained but always reticent. You might think his posthumous book, The Last Laugh, would break new ground, especially since it includes a few sket...
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Critical Essay by R. D. Rosen
[Only] now, reading The Last Laugh, which appears a year and a half after Perelman's death, have I considered the real, concealed value of his work. Parents could ...
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Critical Essay by Wilfrid Sheed
People who came to Perelman late commonly had difficulty understanding the zeal of earlier converts and, by chance, I could see why; I myself read his books in the wron...
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Critical Essay by Philip French
[By the early 1930s Perelman] had found the mature style and the form (the five-page sketch) that he would never desert….
The style eventually proved somewhat in...
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Critical Essay by Eudora Welty
Reader, S. J. Perelman has struck again.
"Great, fatuous booby that I was"—these are the words of Perelman himself—"I imagined adverti...
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Critical Essay by Horace Sutton
As a humorist, Perelman is a pixie. He walks you down the garden path of simple declarative sentences, then smacks you with a load of double-jointed linguistics. He hit...
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Critical Essay by Dorothy Parker
Humor to me, Heaven help me, takes in many things. There must be courage; there must be no awe. There must be criticism, for humor, to my mind, is encapsulated in crit...
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Critical Essay by Steve Allen
Reading S. J. Perelman's latest book "The Road to Miltown," the professional humorist is apt to experience sensations similar to those known to piani...
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Critical Essay by Burling Lowrey
S. J. Perelman is the most durable and, over the long haul, possibly the most brilliant of that familiar group of humorists whose wit fructified in the Twenties and Th...
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Critical Essay by The Times Literary Supplement
Most of the sketches in [The Rising Gorge] have appeared before, in The New Yorker…. [Mr. Perelman] deserves to be mentioned in the same breath w...
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Critical Essay by Melvin Maddocks
S. J. Perelman is one of those humorists—he prefers to think of himself as a writer of "the sportive essay"—who hits the reader on the aft...
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S. J. Perelman
S(idney) J(oseph) Perelman
