Criticism > Short Story Criticism > Perelman, S(idney) J(oseph) - Michael Wood (review date 1978)

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Michael Wood (review date 1978)

SOURCE: "Separating the Chypre from the Ghosts," in The New York Review of Books, Vol. XXV, No. 5, April 6, 1978, pp. 10-12.

[In the following review of Eastward Ha!, Wood recounts Perelman's skill at pun and wordplay and offers many examples of his wit.]

"If one laughs at a joke really heartily," Freud remarks rather earnestly in his work on that subject, "one is not in precisely the best mood for investigating its technique." Freud is perfectly right, of course, but his tone should not mislead us. He has obviously been laughing heartily himself at his own most recent example, and I picture him as flinging his pen down, wiping his eyes, and all but falling off his chair. The specimen which seems to have started this thinly disguised unscholarly mirth concerns two East European Jews who meet near the bathhouse. The first one says, "Have you taken a bath?" and the other one replies, "What, is there...

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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