Criticism > Short Story Criticism > Perelman, S(idney) J(oseph) - Michael Flanders (review date 1962)

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Michael Flanders (review date 1962)

SOURCE: "S. J. Perelman, I Presume," The Spectator, No. 7006, October 5, 1962, p. 519.

[In the following review of The Rising Gorge, Flanders comments on the richness of Perelman's humor.]

In a world whose serious side is all too insecurely poised over an abyss of absurdity, the humorist can barely avoid hitting the truth from time to time.

But for the workaday he remains an entertaining liar: entertaining only in so far as we know he lies, and he knows we know he knows. So it was in the great American folk myths; in the dream world of Paul Bunyan, Johnny Appleseed and Texas-size; of a simple, peasant people and their tall tales of superhuman strength and cunning. And so it is with S. J. Perelman and the other inverted Munchausens in the New Yorker School of humorists; that glossily urbane group of superbly articulate intellectuals and their unlikely tales of simple bewilderment,...

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1. Introduction
2. Principal Works
3. Criticism
   1. The Saturday Review of Literature (review date 1937)
   2. Beatrice Sherman (review date 1943)
   3. Time (review date 1943)
   4. Eudora Welty (review date 1944)
   5. Thomas Sugrue (review date 1944)
   6. Russell Maloney (review date 1946)
   7. Harry Gilroy (review date 1949)
   8. The New York Times Book Review (review date 1950)
   9. Ted Robinson, Jr. (review date 1952)
   10. Herbert Kupferberg (review date 1955)
   11. Dorothy Parker (review date 1957)
   12. Walker Gibson (review date 1958)
   13. Eudora Welty (review dates 1958 and 1970)
   14. Michael Flanders (review date 1962)
   15. The Times Literary Supplement (review date 1962)
   16. S. J. Perelman with William Cole and George Plimpton (interview date 1963)
   17. Norris W. Yates (essay date 1964)
   18. The Times Literary Supplement (review date 1967)
   19. Richard Freedman (review date 1970)
   20. Roderick Nordell (review date 1970)
   21. Stefan Kanfer (review date 1970)
   22. Paul Theroux (review date 1976)
   23. Paul Theroux (review date 1977)
   24. Michael Wood (review date 1978)
   25. Barry Fantoni (review date 1978)
   26. Marshall Brickman (review date 1981)
   27. Terry Teachout (review date 1981)
   28. Wilfrid Sheed (review date 1981)
   29. Prudence Crowther (review date 1984)
   30. Steven H. Gale (essay date 1987)
4. Further Reading
5. Copyright