SOURCE: "No Buff for the Briefalo," in The New York Times Book Review, October 2, 1977, p. 9.

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 types of laughter that the writing of S. J. Perelman produces in the reader, the Honk and the Yurble. Of these, the Honk is the more frequent. It might be the effect of a line of dialogue ("He opened a vein in his bath." "I never knew baths had veins.") or one of his intricately bizarre openings ("Every so often, when business slackens up in the bowling alley and the other pin boys are hunched over their game of bezique, I like to exchange my sweatshirt for a crisp white surgical tunic, polish up my optical mirror, and examine the corset advertisements in The New...