S. J. Perelman

Adam Gopnik presents the very best of S. J. Perelman, America's zaniest humorist. S. J. Perelman (1904-1979) wrote for the Marx Brothers films Horse Feathers and Monkey Business and won an Oscar for his screenwriting on Around the World in Eighty Days, but he remains best known for his many sketches and essays penned for The New Yorker during its golden age of humor. In these short comic pieces--Perelman called them feuilletons--his penchant for wordplay, witticism, spoofery, self-deprecation, and plain zaniness are on full display. The New York Times once noted his ability in these magazine pieces to transform the common clich or figure of speech into an exploding cigar. Author and New Yorker staff writer Adam Gopnik has selected the very best of them, including his parodies of books and films, his biting social satire, autobiographical pieces, and a selection from the celebrated Cloudland Revisited series, in which Perelman reminisces nostalgically about books and movies encountered in youth before describing in his inimitable hyperkinetic style the rude shock of revisiting them as an adult. Also included in this volume are the acclaimed play The Beauty Part (1963) from Perelman's Broadway career; profiles of the Marx Brothers, Dorothy Parker, and his brother-in-law Nathanael West; a selection of letters written to correspondents such as Groucho Marx and Paul Theroux; and a garland of Perelman's witticisms strung together by Adam Gopnik.

Gathered for the first time: one of America's great humorists revisits the books and movies from his youth--often with some embarassment--in this complete, 22-piece collection From October 1948 to October 1953, The New Yorker published humorist S. J. Perelman's "Cloudland Revisited" series: 22 reviews of once-popular books and silent films whose expiration dates had passed. All but forgotten even at the time, they were nonetheless part of Perelman's youth and made an indelible mark on him. In the comic genius's biting satire they live once again: Gertrude Atherton's sensationalist fantasy Black OxenSax Rohmer's supervillain blockbuster The Mystery of Dr. Fu-Manchuthe "underwater" silent film adaptation of Twenty Thousand Leagues under the SeaEdgar Rice Burrough's 1914 novel Tarzan of the Apesand George Barr McCutcheon's 1901 historical fantasy novel Graustark--the Game of Thrones of its era--which launched numerous sequels and film adaptations The complete series is collected here for the first time. With self-deprecating humor and frequent embarrassment, Perelman reflects on how rereading and rewatching brings us in contact with how we, like an old book or film, have both changed and remained the same. This paperback includes a tribute to Perelman's art by another beloved New Yorker writer, Adam Gopnik.