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, and no one gets a piece off the ground with greater panache and keeps it going….

Thinking about Perelman instead of just laughing at him is tough work. There is a true irreverence in his early years [as evidenced in The Most of S. J. Perelman] which is wildly funny and closer to Private Eye at its best than the New Yorker or Punch, where his extremely pale imitators hang out. But, whatever the period, Perelman's trick of employing the most juste is beyond compare.

If there is a fault it is in that the mot is so juste as to leave those of us who are a touch sluggish with our word power feeling a little left out of the...