Criticism > Short Story Criticism > Perelman, S(idney) J(oseph) - Richard Freedman (review date 1970)

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Richard Freedman (review date 1970)

SOURCE: "Last of the Classy American Humorists," in The Washington Post Book World, September 6, 1970, p. 9.

[In the following review of Baby, It's Cold Inside, Freedman finds Perelman's humor, though funny, largely reminiscent of a bygone era.]

With Benchley and Thurber long among the archangels, and Frank Sullivan emerging from his Saratoga fastness only at Yuletide, S. J. Perelman is the last of the really classy American humorists.

Not that there aren't lots of very funny chaps around—Tom Wolfe and Marvin Kitman pop into mind—but the short, personal, intentionally humorous feuilleton as practiced by the masters of the Thirties and Forties seems to have gone the way of the auk and the haircut.

John Crosby has fled to England, Art Buchwald has gone stale lately, and Russell Baker is engulfed in the marmoreal gloom of the Times format, which would make Mark Twain read...

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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

1. Dorothy Parker