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

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Roderick Nordell (review date 1970)

SOURCE: Review of Baby, It's Cold Inside, in The Christian Science Monitor, September 24, 1970, p. 11.

[In the following review, Nordell comments on the "verbal vaudeville" of Perelman's writing.]

Publishing this book in 1970 is casting Perelman before swine, to use one of his favorite words. The world has changed more than Perelman has. If I don't laugh out loud at his pages as often as I used to, the deficiency has got to be mine, not his.

For four decades the books have been coming, adding up to a fabulous rococo monument of comic invention. In this first collection of pieces since 1966, the wordmanship remains dazzling.

But it sometimes suddenly seems more and more about less and less. One admires the edifice of fantasy rising from a tiny news item, for example, appreciating the exactitude of the hyperbolic detail. Only it isn't so much fun anymore. It includes topical...

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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