The Most of S. J. Perelman

About The Most of S. J. Perelman

 

The definitive collection of the great American humourist.

 

Now reissued in paperback with an introduction by Bill Bryson, this definitive collection brings together Sidney Joseph Perelman's comic writings, satires and parodies, from The Customer is Always Wrong and Boy Meets Gull to Is there an Osteosynchrondroitrician in the House? and The Pants Recaptured.

 

Those new to Perelman's work will find a feast of intelligent, unpredictable comedy, as sharp today as it was on its first publication; for his lifelong fans, this is a treat.

The Author

S. J. Perelman

 

Satirist and parodist S. J. Perelman (1904–1979) began his career as a cartoonist but found his captions getting longer and longer, until at last he realised he had become a writer.

 

Perelman co-wrote screenplays for the Marx Brothers, including Horse Feathers and Monkey Business, and was the author of countless humour pieces for The New Yorker. His many books include Eastward Ha!, Acres and Pains and The World of S. J. Perelman. Perelman lived in New York for most of his life.

Reviews

 

'Perelman is the supreme lunatic humorist in the language British or American. He seems to know the vocabulary of every English writer from Macaulay to Woody Allen and uses the most unpredictable mixtures of them to produce mock-solemn commentaries on the absurdities of our times'

The Good Book Guide

 

'S. J. Perelman was a uniquely gifted comic writer who perceived that we live in mad, bad and dangerous times, and helped make them a little more bearable for his readers'

Philip French, The Observer

 

'Feel a touch of Yulophobia coming on? What you need is one book and one only... guaranteed to burst your stuffing with chortles. How can you not want to read a story beginning thus: "It was ten days after my arrival in Penang in British Malaya that I first became postive I was talking to myself"? Happy chortling.'

Simon Schama, The Guardian