SOURCE: "Themes and Techniques," in S. J. Perelman: A Critical Study, Greenwood Press, 1987, pp. 175-91

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 ingredients thoroughly in a piping hot comic genius' mind, and the result is S. J. Perelman's style. Not surprisingly, that style is unique and recognizable. As Ogden Nash, one of Perelman's collaborators, says in a review of Chicken Inspector No. 23, "Perelman's style is so uniquely his own that his readers in The New Yorker, which long ago established the peekaboo custom of printing the contributor's name at the tail of the article . . . need only glance at the first paragraph to identify its author."¹

What are the components of this style that combine to make the product so easily identifiable? Rather than devoting a long chapter...