Criticism > Short Story Criticism > Perelman, S(idney) J(oseph) - Russell Maloney (review date 1946)

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Russell Maloney (review date 1946)

SOURCE: "From Park Avenue to Opium Den," in The New York Times Book Review, August 25, 1946, pp. 4, 25.

[In the following review, Maloney studies Perelman's Keep It Crisp, calling the book "superb."]

It is the traditional fate of great humorists to be admired and praised by vast hosts of people who misunderstand them. The classic example, of course, is Dean Swift, who hardly intended Gulliver's Travels to be a children's book. Mark Twain, a fairly embittered man in reality, is fondly remembered by his readers (even the readers of Huckleberry Finn) as a kind of forerunner of Bob Hope. And of course everybody remembers Ring Lardner, who wrote those baseball stories.

By good luck or good management S. J. Perelman has escaped this slack-jawed mass adoration. People who understand him like him, and people who can't understand him don't like him. His writing is hundred-proof humor,...

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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