Critical Essay | Critical Essay by Norris W. Yates

Critical Essay by Norris W. Yates

SOURCE: "The Sane Psychoses of S. J. Perelman," in The American Humorist: Conscience of the Twentieth Century, Iowa State University Press, 1964, pp. 331-50.

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 impending disaster, 1929, the year of the Great Crash, saw the appearance of Hemingway's A Farewell to Arms, Wolfe's Look Homeward, Angel, Faulkner's The Sound and the Fury, and Sinclair Lewis' Dodsworth. The production of "light" literature was no less interesting than that of "heavy." Three "first" books of humor were published by writers destined for prominence in that field: Is Sex Necessary? by Thurber and White, How to Be a Hermit by Will Cuppy, and Dawn Ginsbergh's Revenge by S. J. Perelman.

Sidney Joseph Perelman was born in Brooklyn (1904), but grew up mainly in Rhode Island. At the Classical High School in...
(read more)