Brooklyn born S. J. Perelman, 1904-1979, was a prolific voice of the American literary scene, considered the first surrealist humor writer of the USA. Aside from screenplays and plays, he wrote non-fiction almost exclusively. He collaborated on two Marx Brothers films,
Monkey Business (1931) and
Horse Feathers (1932). He won an Oscar for his screenplay of
Around the World in 80 Days (1956). Despite those resounding successes, he is best known for the hundred of pieces he contributed to magazines, most notably the
New Yorker. Many of those have been compiled into books. One,
The Rising Gorge, came my way amidst a massive donation to the floating book shop. It contains 36 short pieces written in the period 1942-1961. The writing is as good as its gets. Very few writers attain such mastery of style and, although the vocabulary is sophisticated, the content is far from pretentious. It is too zany to be so. I'd guess Perelman drew from real life and went off on tangents, assigning facetious pseudonyms and exaggerating to a large extent. At least 90% of the cultural references were foreign to me. I was also frequently puzzled by the circumstances, lost. He earned a degree from Brown in an era when education was infinitely more challenging than today, so his level of intelligence was much higher than mine. I guess I'm saying the book would appeal mostly to really smart folks. I have no idea what the title refers to, as there is no piece under it in the collection. There is a question mark after the last one in the Table of Contents. Maybe it was an inside joke. I ran a search on it and failed to find an explanation. Surprisingly, given his vivid imagination, Perelman attempted only one novel,
Parlor, Bedlam and Bath, a collaboration with Q J Reynolds that is regarded as a failure. There are 20 screenplay titles under his name at IMDb, none nearly as significant as those already mentioned. He also wrote at least five plays, sometimes collaborating with his wife, Laura West. He wrote the book for
One Touch of Venus. for which Ogden Nash wrote the lyrics and Kurt Weill did the music. It ran 500 performances on Broadway. Here's a telling quote from him: “If, at the close of business each evening, I myself can understand what I've written, I feel the day hasn't been totally wasted.” And here's one from Groucho Marx, cited in a Perelman bio by Dorothy Herrmann: "From the moment I picked up your book until I laid it down, I was convulsed with laughter. Someday I intend reading it." Three users at Amazon have rated it, each giving it five stars. They must be a lot smarter than I (me?).
The Cleveland Indians have set the modern standard for consecutive wins in a season - 22. Kudos. The organization and its fans hope the following scene will be repeated at the World Series:
My thanks to the kind folks who purchased books today, and to the lady who donated three handsome, small, hardcover poetry collections and
How to Tell If Your Cat Is Plotting to Kill You by The Oatmeal and Matthew Inman, as enticing a title as there is.
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