Take one part American humor tradition, sprinkle in elements from the Yiddish theater, and blend these ingredients thoroughly in a piping hot comic genius' mind, and the result is S. J. Perelman's style. Not surprisingly, that style is unique and recognizable. As Ogden Nash, one of Perelman's collaborators, says in a review of Chicken Inspector No. 23, "Perelman's style is so uniquely his own that his readers in The New Yorker, which long ago established the peekaboo custom of printing the contributor's name at the tail of the article . . . need only glance at the first paragraph to identify its author."¹

What are the components of this style that combine to make the product so easily identifiable? Rather than devoting a long chapter to an examination of Perelman's style, I have chosen throughout this study to deal with various stylistic components as they occur in his individual pieces. . . . In part this is because, as often as not, how this writer says something is both more interesting and more important than what he is saying. In part, too, because these stylistic elements are so integral to his work, they make much more sense when examined within that context, as opposed to dealing with them in categories. However, a brief review of the elements of his style is valuable as a means of providing a unifying overview of Perelman's canon because that stylistic sum is greater than the technical parts, because his style is in itself interesting to analyze, and because for most scholars that style is the sine qua non for studying his work in the first place.

The attention concentrated on Perelman's use of language is in no way meant to belittle humorous writing or the social functions of his humor; his work is read for enjoyment and to commiserate with a kindred spirit in a vindictive world. Nevertheless, while his work may not be read for its philosophy or grand thoughts, among the numerous elements that contribute to and are characteristic of Perelman's writing, it is useful to start a study of his style with a look at his subject matter. The thematic content of his prose is important, of course, because to a large degree this determines his style and his audience (which in turn influence the author's style).

Ironically, as might be expected with a writer of comedy, Perelman was not studied by scholars during his lifetime, nor is he remembered now for any special or significant thematic hobbyhorse, as Louis Hasley points out in "The Kangaroo Mind of S. J. Perelman."² Though the writer does occasionally imply dissatisfaction with certain governments, agencies, and so forth, with the exception of his "Cloudland Revisited" series, Hasley's assessment is essentially correct. There are certain topics and themes that recur regularly in Perelman's work, yet they are seldom developed to any great extent, and they tend to be less significant than the questions about life, death, and the nature of reality that are usually expected to be addressed in great literature. Perelman observes and comments on the surfaces of life. Even on those occasions when he is concerned with cosmic questions, he does not choose to delve very deeply. One consequence of this is that life seems to catch up with art, as Perelman admits in several interviews. To Cole and Plimpton he states that, "The effort of writing seems more arduous all the time. Unlike technicians who are supposed to become more proficient with practice, I find I've grown considerably less articulate. . . . Also the variety of subjects is restricted the longer I stay at this dodge."³ Although he attributes this latter point to "ennui," he claims in his interview with MacPherson that it has become increasingly difficult to be absurd in a world that itself has become so absurd that his wildest compositions are tame in comparison.⁴

Columnist Hal Boyle describes Perelman as "a man who looks with skepticism on everything in life except the messages he finds in Chinese cookies." "These," Perelman tells Boyle, "I accept literally," and he goes on to deny being a cynic, though he admits the possibility that he is an idealist.⁵ At the base of his writing is a sense of perspective, an ability to see ridiculous or amusing aspects in quotidian experiences through his wire-rimmed glasses. This is coupled with a talent for communicating his discoveries to his audience so that they can share in the laughter. Catastrophe (the Depression, the Coconut Grove fire, politics, World War II, Korea, Viet Nam) is avoided—it is catastrophe enough to be trapped in a restaurant by a former flame who has been caught in compromising situations by a progression of husbands in spite of being "a giantess in an emerald-green frock, trimmed with salmon beads, a veritable grenadier of a woman. . . . Askew on her head . . . a fawn-colored duvetyn turban whose aigrette was secured by the Hope diamond or its rhinestone equivalent . . . [with] the odor of malt pervading her embrace," as the humorist relates in "Call and I Follow, I Follow!"⁶

As an author, Perelman is a society writer rather than a writer about social concerns. His topics are not politics but everyday subjects—films, books, travel, appliances, advertisements—topical but timeless only in the strictest sense of the word in that they represent annoyances of the kind that will always plague mankind, not because they address the largest questions about the nature of existence. "Humor is purely a point of view, and only the pedants try to classify it," he told Zinsser.⁷ "For me its chief merit is the use of the unexpected, the glancing allusion, the deflation of pomposity, and the constant repetition of one's helplessness in a majority of situations. One doesn't consciously start out wanting to be a social satirist. You find something absurd enough to make you want to push a couple of antipersonnel bombs under it. If it seems to have another element of meaning, that's lagniappe. But the main obligation is to amuse yourself." About style, the author's final words are "The only thing that matters is the end product, which must have brio . . . vivacity."⁸

If the critics are right, Perelman's goal in using humor has been met. Ogden Nash writes that Perelman "exposes the fool in his folly not through reduction, but through magnification to the absurd, so that the subject stands larger than life and twice as ludicrous, foot in mouth and egg on his chin, hoist by his own assininity" so that "the rest of us" have "a happy chance to laugh at some of the perfect asses in this imperfect world."⁹ In Sanford Pinsker's opinion this translates into Perelman's adopting the guise of "an irritated innocent, a man of rarified taste and extravagant metaphor who sets his particular 'No!' in thunder against our culture's expectations and its junk."¹⁰

Norris Yates, Walter Blair, and Hamlin Hill place Perelman in that current of the mainstream of American humor typified by the writers for The New Yorker, particularly those of the 1930's and 1940's such as Thurber and Benchley, who created a composite Little Man figure, even if each author's creation was slightly different. What the Little Man characters share is an unsuccessful rebellion against "ancient standards."¹¹ They are average men, victims of an illogical outside world epitomized by that frightful generic monster, woman. Perelman's art and contribution to the Little Man genre is to use that persona as a vehicle for expressing his essential attitude toward modern life, an attitude at once jaundiced and hopeful, expecting the unexpected as well as the expected, and encyclopedic while self-centered. Sex frequently appears in Perelman's writing, but almost always it is alluded to suggestively, not blatantly. It is mentioned, but not seen or realized. It is in the background, but only wistfully. Often the Perelman persona or protagonist observes a woman lasciviously, seemingly like a male chauvinist, yet it is the naive, and certainly ineffectual, lasciviousness of a schoolboy that controls the observation. The longing is not dirty—it is sometimes slightly amazed, and it is doomed to remain unfulfilled. Like comedian Rodney Dangerfield, Perelman's Little Man character "don't get no respect" from the opposite sex. Thus, some of the humor in the stories comes from seeing how the hero will bungle a budding relationship through his lack of experience and misunderstanding of how to behave suavely. The very things that he does and says to impress the woman are better designed to make him appear foolish to her than as an object of sexual desire. One of the ironies that the Perelman persona/protagonist ultimately must face, though, is that even if he does everything exactly right, as unlikely as that would be, the woman probably will not find him attractive anyway. Why this is so varies and may not even be known. He may be too plain, or not dashing enough; in other words, he may be too normal. She may be too stuck up or unperceptive to appreciate him. She may be too bright or too dumb. Whatever the reason, he does not evoke erotic fantasies—and probably he has known all along that this would be so. In any case, Perelman maintains an uneasy kind of stage-struck wonder in his confrontation with women, almost as though he is unable to shed the sense of appreciation of movie-star goddesses that carries over from his youthful film viewing days and which somehow attaches itself like an aura to all women.

The ways in which the Little Man fails in his romantic quest are humorous in themselves, and the expectation of failure permits the distancing that allows both Perelman's persona or protagonist and the reader to laugh at the humor in the situation.

The Perelman persona is interesting in other situations, too. He/she exists in a world tinged with fantasy. The world is near enough to normal to be familiar, but the persona—self-described as broad shouldered, with rugged good looks or the feminine equivalent and possessing special abilities—introduces an unreal quality. The character is what one would wish to be, not what one is. Yet the character cannot be blamed entirely for succumbing to delusion because Hollywood, advertisers, and magazines like Harper's Bazaar not only incite such delusions, they actively foster them. Hence, Perelman is provided with a brace of targets; the sources of delusion and those gullible folks who allow themselves to be ensnared by the illusions—himself and his readers included. For Yates the result is Perelman's "sane psychoses." For Blair and Hill, the bumbling through a universe conspiring against him relates Perelman to Benchley and "earlier comics, such as Artemus Ward, Charles Heber Clark, George Horatio Derby and others. (The performance of the typical American humorist, Harry Levin claimed in 1972, 'is that of an eiron . . . like Socrates . . . Will Rogers . . . or like the accident-prone anecdotists of The New Yorker')."¹² Alone, and slightly insane in a mad, mad world, the protagonist is subdued and humiliated as well. Given the modern world surrounding them, Perelman's readers can identify with his personae easily. Blair and Hill chastise Perelman for not extending himself into the arena of satire, thus permitting his audience to escape "any message" by virtue of being overcome by "waves of banter, frivolity, and whimsy."¹³ These scholars miss an important point, though. Perelman's persona is beaten, but he is not vanquished. Humor offers hope, ultimately, and Perelman's Little Man wanders away from the scene of the accident dazed, but not defeated. He will rise again, grin slightly crooked but in place, to face whatever dragons or windmills await him tomorrow. And, as he waddles Chaplinesquely out of sight, the Perelman protagonist may be a little dusty, but there is a jauntiness to his step as he rounds the corner and disappears into the sunset. At bottom, a sense of humor and, finally, a refusal to take himself seriously become survival traits.

It may be, then, that the writer's choice of topics (travel, appliances with minds of their own, movies, pompous clerks, and so forth) brings him face to face with the human condition in such a way that the condition cannot exert enough force on his psyche to overpower him. There is a significant episode in Perelman's life that lends credence to this thought. One night in March, 1929, Perelman stopped at the Kenmore Hall Hotel to invite Nathanael West to dinner at Siegel's, their favorite restaurant in Greenwich Village. An acquaintance of Perelman's who wrote an advice column for the Brooklyn Eagle under the pen name Susan Chester had promised to show him some of the letters that she had received with the idea that the humorist might be able to "put such material to comic use."¹⁴ Chester regarded the column as a joke, and offered letters like the following as evidence:

Dear Susan:

I have always enjoyed reading your column, and have benefited by your expert advice. Now I must ask you for advice myself. I have been married for twenty years. I have a girl 19 and a boy of 17. From the very beginning I realized that I had made a mistake in marrying my husband. But the children came soon after, and I was obliged for their dear sakes to stand through thick and thin, bitter and sweet. And also for decency sake. . . . ¹⁵

The letter was signed "Broad Shoulders" and had the added note, "Susan don't think I am broad shouldered. But that is just the way I feel about life and me."

The pathos of these pleas for help overwhelmed Perelman, and he declared himself unable to take advantage of Chester's notion. West used the experience as the basis for his most famous novel, Miss Lonelyhearts.

If Perelman's themes do not excite scholars, his mastery of the English language and his manipulation of prose for comic effect have continually drawn praise, and his ability was such that he could apply his style to practically any topic and produce humor. E. B. White, a contemporary, admirer, and friend of Perelman's, tells a story about Perelman's preoccupation with words that sums up both the man and his work: "Sid commands a vocabulary that is the despair (and joy) of every writing man. He is like a Roxy organ that has three decks, 50 stops, and a pride of pedals under the bench. When he wants a word it's there. He and Laura showed up at our house in Sarasota a couple of winters ago. They had been in an automobile accident—a bad one, the car a complete wreck. Laura came out of it with some bruises. Sid with a new word. The car, he learned, had been 'totaled.' I could see that the addition of this word to his already enormous store meant a lot to him. His ears are as busy as an ant's feelers. No word ever gets by him."¹⁶

Most critics concentrate on Perelman's marvelous command of his raw material, words. His sure, deft manipulation of the English language is especially appreciated by the British. Novelist and poet John Wain declares in an Observer article that "most poets will confess a weakness for Perelman," a fact that he attributes to the author's "intimate acquaintance with those 'serious' writers whose handling of language is most obsessively precise."¹⁷ As an example, Wain cites a passage from the scene in James Joyce's Ulysses where Bloom prepares breakfast:

—Milk for the pussens, he said.

—Mrkgano! the cat cried.

He goes on to quote Perelman to establish a linkage: "I let go the turkey wing; with a loud 'Mrkgnao' she obviously had learned from reading Ulysses, the cat straightway pounced on it." John Hollander, another poet-critic, also notes a connection with Perelman's esteem for Joyce: "I think that his metamorphic vision, that is his ability to take some idiotic phrase, some idiotic situation and suddenly let it happen in the full garishness of its ramification, does all come in one sense from the 'Circe' episode of Ulysses. I think that this is a very important text for him, and that one of the things he did was to make the element of instant externalization, instant metamorphosis, available to a great deal of post-World War Two American fiction."¹⁸ Wain disagrees with his American counterparts who claim that the humorist is all form and no content, but like them he finds Perelman's style more appealing than what it contains:

The effects that a great satiric clown like Groucho Marx produces with his voice and appearance, Perelman produces in cold print with the pyrotechnics of his prose. Since language is the richer medium of the two, he is, ultimately, the more interesting. His technical resources are endless, and they have to be, for the one invariable quality of all his work is its fertility in surprises. As a parodist, for instance, he is excellent, but he never parodies one style for long enough to allow the reader to get used to it. Sometimes he will bounce into pastiche and out again within one sentence. His other favourite devices are the ricochet of ambiguity (So-and-so was "a lovable old white-haired character who had fought with Meade at Shiloh—he and Meade just never got along"), and the collapsing vocabulary ("He sprang at me, but with a blow I sent him grovelling. In ten minutes he was back with a basket of fresh-picked grovels".)¹⁹

Among his countrymen Perelman's use of language is accorded like respect. Brooks Atkinson identifies the writer's function as improving "on something that is intrinsically ridiculous," and continues, "Mr. P. is never guilty of literary impropriety. The words he uses are orderly and respectable. But he creates hilarious disorder out of them."²⁰ All of this is done, Atkinson concedes, "with the care and erudition of an English essayist of the old school, rubbing elbows with Arthur Machen and George Gissing." Douglas Fowler points out that Perelman's use of his initials on the printed page is an "Anglophile affection,"²¹ so it would seem that the author shares Atkinson's association of himself and the British belles lettres tradition. Or, there may be no connection at all, which would not be surprising either—Perelman told MacPherson that he "hated" his first name and simply retired it to anonymity.²²

Other critics who comment on Perelman's language include Wilfrid Sheed and Russell Davies. Sheed writes of the author's "tackling language itself, experimenting with it and snarling at it, and using it to flay the barbarian enemy" and later developing a style that "becomes denser, like the later Henry James, and more turned in on itself."²³ Davies remarks that Perelman is "too wordy for some tastes" and warns that "the sheer variety of references and momentarily-assumed tones [might] batter the reader into exhaustion."²⁴ Summing up Perelman's collected works, Davies observes:

There's a complete social commentary on the United States embedded in it: More securely embedded, indeed, than ever it was in works of conscious compilation like Mencken's Americana. Because Perelman's prose must surely be the richest treasury of available levels of discourse, what analysts of style like to call 'registers', that has yet been assembled. And his greatest achievement in organizing it, I rather think, was in resisting the very natural tendency (still displayed by American Jewish humorists two or three generations away from the immigration) to puncture every single pretension, to reveal a grubby stain under every picture on the wall. Perelman never pretended to be the common man. The central thread of his style was smoothly learned, frankly literary.

Hollander credits Perelman with making him "aware that there was such a thing as linguistic sensibility, that there was such a thing as a sense of style . . . a sense of elegance."²⁵ Yates has catalogued many of the individual techniques that are incorporated in Perelman's style. He lists an ironic tone, use of first person narration, a constant sense of values ("integrity, sincerity, skepticism, taste, a respect for competence, a striving after the golden mean, and a longing for better communication and understanding among men"), dramatic frameworks, parody and monologue, "controlled wildness of incident and metaphor," dialect humor, narrators who fight for good causes but are neurotic, an average-man persona that caricatures the author as a wise fool, a range of foes from the mass media, incongruous juxtaposition, a mixture of literal-and-figurative usage, and a combining of two or more fragments by superimposing one upon the other so that the highlights of each and all stand out (a technique the critic dubs "Perelmontage" because of its affinity with the cinematic technique of montage).²⁶ Referring to Perelman's syntax, Melville Maddocks writes that "The Perelman style—its eminent reasonableness, its barely-mock dignity, its subtly staged collisions between gentility and slang—allows him to keep cover until the last possible moment."²⁷ Incidentally, it is interesting that Perelman's style is such that Wain calls him the "characteristic American intellectual," Blair and Hill see his persona as a variation on the Little Man, and Yates labels him a representative of the average man.²⁸ The truth is, Perelman adopts all of these roles at various times, sometimes, indeed, within the same article.

These and numerous other stylistic components have been dealt with in the preceding chapters, but it is useful to look quickly at four elements again because they are so intrinsically a part of Perelman's style. Any analysis of the humorist's work must begin with an acknowledgement of his use of clichés—some of which appear straightforwardly in his prose (that is, they are used as though they are literally true), some of which are used figuratively, and some of which combine the literal and the figurative, starting in one mode and finishing in the other. Next is the wide range of allusions that flow through his writing like a vein of rich ore. Tracking down all of these allusions would provide a scholar with a life's work. The possibility that the "arcane knowledge" involved in Perelman's myriad references to "cultural figures and styles long past, obsolete words, [and] architectural oddities" might limit his audience is answered by the writer's contention that "I write pretty much for myself. If, at the close of business each evening, I myself can understand what I've written, I feel the day hasn't been totally wasted."²⁹ A more valid answer might be that while the allusions are an important and omnipresent element of Perelman's style, the success or failure of a piece does not depend entirely on the recognition of all of the allusions incorporated in the piece. Allusion is only one element, one that adds to the knowledgeable readers' enjoyment, to be sure, but the less well-informed reader will still find plenty to be amused by even without this added fillip. Thus, although allusions are an elitist element, they do not prevent Perelman from being a popular writer.

Related to clichés and allusions are the constant puns, and Perelman's felicity with puns is enhanced by his immense vocabulary and extensive storehouse of cultural tidbits. Many of his puns evolve out of clichés or allusions. Even the very titles of the humorist's articles and book-length collections serve to exemplify this aspect of his style. While many are puns (A Child's Garden of Curses, not verses), almost all of his titles rely on the reader's exposure to a wide range of sources to be able to identify the allusion, some of the sources being fairly esoteric (The Ill-Tempered Clavichord, taken from Johann Sebastian Bach's The Well-Tempered Clavier). At the same time, the titles provide evidence of the author's awareness of current customs and events in modern society (Listen to the Mocking Bird and Baby, It's Cold Inside are based on contemporary song titles).

Finally, there is another foundation upon which Perelman's humor and style rest that usually appears in unobtrusive ways but which serves as a solid underpinning and is always there. This is the Yiddish background, partially derived from American-Jewish culture as a whole and partly from the Yiddish theater specifically, that provides the device of the shlemiel and the stratagem of the shpritz (a "kind of free-form eruption of fantasy, nonsense, and satire, at least theoretically spontaneous and gathering momentum as it goes" that is "the basic form of American Jewish dialogue" according to Fowler) that is mentioned by Yates, alluded to by Ward, and discussed in some detail by Fowler.³⁰ Israel Shenker goes so far as to state that one of the sources of the humorist's comic style "goes back to biblical culture because a great deal of his wit is the wit that you can find emitted in the Bible,"³¹ yet the occasional insertion of Yiddish phrases is one of the few clues evident in Perelman's work that connects him to this tradition. Actually, it should be noted that there is a distinction between literary and American colloquial Yiddish. Perelman relies on Yiddish phrases for effect rather than as an integral component of characterization. His own explanation for using Yiddish words is, "I like them for their invective content. There are nineteen words in Yiddish that convey gradations of disparagement from a mild, fluttery helplessness to a state of downright, irreconcilable brutishness. All of them can be usefully employed to pinpoint the kind of individuals I write about."³²

As was the case with the Yiddish tradition, there are some tangential associations between Perelman's writing and another sub-genre, the American frontier humor tradition. He was well aware of the major authors and works in this tradition, having read many of them during his youth. Most obvious of the connections between his writing and that of his predecessors in the tradition is his fondness for the most outrageous hyperbole delivered in a perfectly straight-faced manner. His attention to the details of life around him might lead to his being classified a local colorisi, even though his wide-ranging eye did not confine him to some readily identifiable location such as the "down East" of Seba Smith but rather made him a local colorist for a nation because he concentrated on those elements that transcend county lines and are national in character—films, advertising, and the like. Ultimately, then, the stylistic similarities are interesting because they are similarities and may represent some minimal influences, not because they are indicators of any conscious or well-defined embracing of the tradition. Perelman, and the humorists whom he emulated, can write their kind of humor because the tradition exists, but this does not make them part of the tradition. Particularly in his early pieces at Brown, for instance, Perelman's style was derivative, echoing the humorous journalistic style of the time, and throughout his career he incorporated into his writing those elements that he enjoyed and could use effectively. But, like other major authors, he converted those elements into something identifiably his own, and he rose above the traditions from which he borrowed.

As a journalist, he was also well within the boundaries established by Mark Twain, Artemus Ward, Henry Wheeler Shaw, Finley Peter Dunne, H. L. Mencken, Ring Lardner, and countless others. There is a convergence between why and where Perelman writes and the American humor tradition. About the impetus behind his writing, he says, "Chiefly, it's commercial, to be very frank about it. And secondly it's the desire to get one's own back. George Orwell listed four principle reasons why people write, the fourth of which was 'revenge.'"³³ Perelman also says, "I regard myself as a species of journalist." The length of his essays, then, is imposed on his writing to some extent by their place of publication. Because of this there are clearly some affinities with journalist-humorists such as Twain and Dunne purely based on what can best be said and how it can be said in the space available. In fact, some of his protagonists display traits similar to those exhibited by various Twain personae or Mr. Dooley. Thus, two elements of Perelman's style coincide. His writing contains the exuberance and the deadpan exaggeration that are common elements in traditional American humor; it has an American tone to it. There is simultaneously a bite in what he writes. "Generally speaking," he claims, "I don't believe in kindly humor." At the same time, journals are his element and Edgar Allan Poe's strictures about the short story are applicable (especially since the short stories referred to appeared in journals). This means that the quick effect is sought. Perelman's recognition of the nature of this type of journalistic writing reflects itself in two areas, technique and compensation. First, "in the technical sense, the comic writer is a cat on a hot tin roof. His invitation to perform is liable to wear out at any moment; he must quickly and constantly amuse in a short span."³⁴ Perelman, recollecting that Benchley "did a column three times a week . . . and ran into deep trouble,"³⁵ postulates that "The fiction writer, in contrast, has much more latitude."³⁶ Whereas the novelist can "side-slip into exposition, [and] wander off into interminable byways and browse round endlessly in his characters' heads," "The development of a comic idea has to be swift and economical." Second, an obvious outcome of writing humor is that "the pieces are shorter than conventional fiction and fetch a much smaller stipend."

"His pieces usually had a lead sentence, or lead paragraph, that was as hair-raising as the first big dip on a roller coaster," reflects E. B. White.³⁷ Coincidentally, White, another acknowledged master stylist, provides an interesting contrast with Perelman. While White's work is quietly polished, Perelman's is full of exuberance and dazzle and is more animated. Critics occasionally refer to Perelman's refinement, perhaps because of the pseudo-British pose adopted by some of his personae and his own bearing, yet in his best work the characteristic that White identifies is frequently an essential element and reflects a journalistic approach that requires an immediate grabbing of the reader's attention and intense packing of a great deal of material into a relatively small space. This pulling the reader by the lapels through the iron gates of life is characteristically Perelmanesque too; the author moves the reader so quickly and with such verve that his piercing social insights have been inserted into the mind with a piccador's precision almost before the reader is aware that instruction has begun. Ironically, the need to be concise led to a use of language that has a British feel to it. Puns and other forms of word play, non sequiturs, clichés (both phrases and situations—which are sometimes taken literally when they are meant figuratively), and literary allusions, all of which have been noted above, Perelman utilized with the sure hand of a superb craftsman. Indeed, it is his knowledge of these tools that makes him such a capable parodist, and it was the necessity of fitting into a journalistic format that caused him to hone them to perfection.

Whether he writes from the point of view of the common man or not, Perelman aptly records the reactions of an American everyman to the world that surrounds him. This is brought out in another link with the American humor tradition, the attitude that he expresses about the rest of the world during his many travels. Almost unceasingly Perelman compares wherever he is at the moment with somewhere in the United States, and the comparison is seldom favorable for the foreign locale. His attitude carries over from physical geography to local custom and inhabitants, too. If he were a little more assertive, he might seem an Ugly American, though it is not in his character to be jingoistic. But, too many things conspire to trip him up or allow him to be taken advantage of, so instead of blatantly parading his disdain for things not American, he spends nost of his time ducking. This happens to him at home, too, of course, but at home he understands some of the motives that lie behind whatever is assaulting him, whereas when he is abroad things simply seem to be in the nature of the place and as an outsider he is destined never to comprehend that nature, just to suffer degradation at its hands. There is definitely a kinship between Perelman's travel volumes and Twain's Innocents Abroad.

Perelman recognizes that his roots are in America and that not merely is his strength here but that he depends upon America for his very essence as a writer. Before leaving the United States in 1970, Perelman claimed that "It doesn't take guts [to leave]. The dubious privilege of a freelance writer is he's given the freedom to starve anywhere."³⁸ The time away from home persuaded him otherwise. In an interview after having returned for his sojourn in the United Kingdom, Perelman says that he will never become an expatriate because "A writer needs the constant conflict, the rush of ideas that happens only in his native country."³⁹

The use of one final device should be addressed, that of including real or imaginary excerpts from magazine or newspaper stories as a means of initiating a short story ("Nesselrode to Jeopardy," which utilizes a quotation from Time, is one of the dozens of pieces in which this stratagem is employed). As indicated in Chapter One, some critics bewail the frequency with which Perelman turns to this device, and they find it heavy-handed besides. However, such a practice is one of the humorist's trademarks, and it became one because it is effective. Beginning a piece in this manner introduces the subject matter, elicits a sense of authority, sets the scene, implies the author's attitude toward his topic, and generally saves time by letting him avoid the otherwise necessary background explanations.

Of those who comment on Perelman's style, one who speaks with uncommon authority is Caskie Stinnett, a former editor of Holiday, a magazine in which a number of the humorist's pieces first appeared. She concludes that "There is a certain uniformity in the Perelman pieces—in the craftsmanship, in the construction. They invariably start off with a highly challenging introduction, a ludicrous statement or something that is made in the very first sentence, that so intrigues the reader that you have to follow through to find out just how this nonsense could possibly end up. It's my conviction that Perelman must labour very hard on his introductions because they must be difficult to do, but they're superb and in many cases flawless. I really don't believe that an editor could improve in any way on a Perelman introduction."⁴⁰

Perelman's polishing of his "lapidary prose" is often mentioned by students of his work. He has said himself that "easy writing makes hard reading."⁴¹ How hard he works at polishing is demonstrated in a story that he tells in his interview with MacPherson. As do many professional writers, Perelman kept files of items and ideas that he might be able to utilize as a stimulant for his imagination. Asked by Cole and Plimpton how often Ross or The New Yorker suggested ideas for his writing, Perelman replies, "Not too often. Most of the suggestions I get originate in mysterious quarters. [Some] drift in from kindly readers. . . . I'm continually heartened by the fact that people take the time to forward a clipping or a circular they feel might inspire me."⁴² To MacPherson Perelman recounted a tale of how one idea struggled on to paper:

"In 1953 I went to East Africa and I had with me a floppy Panama hat. It was a little large. In the East Africa Standard I read about a Norfolk jacket woven in the Scottish highlands, worn by a man his entire life and passed off to a son. I folded it up and used it to tighten the band."

Dissolve: Perelman is back in the United States, takes the hat to be blocked, picks up the hat weeks later, finds the article, retires to a bar, reads it there, then weaves a story about his own Norfolk jacket that was borrowed by the late John O'Hara.

("The Rape of the Drape".)

Total time: 15 years.

"That's the longest I've held a piece. The whole point of comic writers is no matter how hard you work, you must give a sense of vivacity, lightness and speed."

(p. E-4)

That Perelman could keep an element of a possible story alive in his mind over this extended period of time and finally bring it to fruition is an indication of several things. It illustrates the strength and breadth of his intellect (first, keeping one element in mind, and then seeing how it relates to another item), it demonstrates his attention to detail, and it shows his patience and willingness to keep after something until he is satisfied that the result meets his high standard. This incident reveals something of the nature of the man behind the humorist and helps explain why his work surpassed that of other authors and why he was so successful for so long.

Notes

¹ Ogden Nash, "A Precious String of Perelman Pearls," Life (September 23, 1966): 11.

² Louis Hasley, "The Kangaroo Mind of S. J. Perelman," South Atlantic Quarterly 72 (Winter, 1973): 115-21.

³ William Cole and George Plimpton, "The Art of Fiction: S. J. Perelman," Writers at Work: The Paris Review Interviews, Second Series (New York: Viking, 1963), p. 245.

⁴ Myra MacPherson, "Perelman's Rasping Wit Becomes an Anglo-file," Washington Post, October 18, 1970, sect. E, p. 4.

⁵ Quoted in Hasley, p. 118.

⁶ S. J. Perelman, The Rising Gorge (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1961), p. 13.

⁷ William Zinsser, "That Perelman of Great Price Is Sixty-Five," New York Times Magazine (July 22, 1966): 76.

⁸ Cole and Plimpton, p. 249.

⁹ Nash, p. 11.

¹⁰ Sanford Pinsker, "Jumping on Hollywood's Bones, or How S. J. Perelman and Woody Allen Found It at the Movies," The Midwest Quarterly 21, no. 3 (Spring, 1980): 374.

¹¹ Norris Yates, The American Humorist: Conscience of the Twentieth Century (Ames, Iowa: Iowa State University Press, 1964), pp. 335 ff.; Walter Blair and Hamlin Hill, America's Humor: From Poor Richard to Doonesbury (New York: Oxford University Press, 1978), pp. 420 ff.

¹² Blair and Hill, p. 436.

¹³ Ibid.

¹⁴ Jay Martin, Nathanael West: The Art of His Life (New York: Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, 1970), p. 109.

¹⁵ Ibid., p. 110.

¹⁶ Quoted in Zinsser, p. 76.

¹⁷ John Wain, "S. J. Perelman," in Essays on Literature and Ideas (Westport, Connecticut: Greenwood Press, 1978), p. 166.

¹⁸ John Hollander, quoted in Philip French, "Perelman's Revenge or the Gift of Providence, Rhode Island," The Listener (November 15, 1978): 669. MacPherson reports that Perelman had eleven copies of Ulysses when he held the auction at his farm in 1970, and that he could not bear to part with a single one (sect. E, p. 4).

¹⁹ Wain, p. 167.

²⁰ Brooks Atkinson, "S. J. Perelman," in Tuesdays and Fridays (New York: Random House, 1963), p. 225.

²¹ Douglas Fowler, S. J. Perelman (Boston: Twayne, 1983), p. 108.

²² MacPherson, sect. E, p. 4.

²³ Wilfrid Sheed, "The Flinty Eye Behind the Humor," Life (September 18, 1970): 12.

²⁴ Russell Davies, "S. J. Perelman 1904-1979," New Statesman (October 26, 1979): 646.

²⁵ Hollander, quoted in French, p. 667.

²⁶ Yates, pp. 335 ff.

²⁷ Melville Maddocks, The Christian Science Monitor (September 1, 1966): 13.

²⁸ Wain, p. 167; Blair and Hill throughout; Yates, p. 340.

²⁹ Cole and Plimpton, p. 249.

³⁰ Yates, pp. 335, ff.; Ward, p. 661; Fowler, pp. 164-66.

³¹ Quoted in French, p. 668.

³² Cole and Plimpton, p. 250.

³³ Perelman quoted in French, p. 667.

³⁴ Cole and Plimpton, p. 246.

³⁵ Ibid., p. 245.

³⁶ Ibid., p. 247.

³⁷ Quoted in Zinsser, p. 76.

³⁸ Quoted in MacPherson, sect. E, p. 4.

³⁹ Stefan Kanfer, "Perels of Wisdom before an Opening," New York Times, November 3, 1974, sect. 2, p. 1.

⁴⁰ Quoted in French, p. 668.

⁴¹ Quoted in Cole and Plimpton, p. 250.

⁴² Cole and Plimpton, p. 255.