Criticism > Short Story Criticism > Perelman, S(idney) J(oseph) - Terry Teachout (review date 1981)

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Terry Teachout (review date 1981)

SOURCE: "Farewell, Vinegar Puss," in National Review, Vol. XXXIII, No. 23, November 27, 1981, p. 1427.

[In the following review of The Last Laugh, Teachout finds Perelman's collection lacking the energy and balance of some of his earlier works.]

S. J. Perelman's new, posthumous collection—titled, with a pleasantly black flourish, The Last Laugh—is chiefly made up of pieces Perelman wrote for The New Yorker during the last five years of his life, padded out with four "fragments" from an unfinished autobiography that was to have been called The Hindsight Saga. These chapters (which deal with the Marx Brothers, Nathanael West, Dorothy Parker, and the writing of three screenplays) are brief, comparatively slight reminiscences which sound like typical Perelman essays written with a firmer-than-usual grasp on reality; they suggest that a completed Perelman memoir, whatever...

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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