- Paperback: 650 pages
- Publisher: Eyre Methuen (1978)
- Language English
- ISBN-10: 0413455009
- ISBN-13: 978-0413455000
- Product Dimensions: 19.4 x 13 x 3.4 cm
- Average Customer Review: 4.5 out of 5 stars See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
- Amazon Bestsellers Rank: 142,421 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
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Product Description
Product Description
A collection, spanning 30 years, of Perelman's humorous mock-solemn commentaries on the absurdities of our times.
--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
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Customer Reviews
Most Helpful Customer Reviews
14 of 14 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
S. J. Perelman has gone a bit out of fashion so it's wonderful to have this lovely-looking fat book of his writing. Inside, the print quality and typsetting are a bit uneven: it looks like someone just took some old books apart, photographed them and then put them all together. But I ignored this and concentrated on Perelman's stuff. He's very very funny, truthful, wise, silly and SO stylish. And what an enormous vocabulary. Not showing off, he just always has exactly the right word to hand. I was forced to look some up. A wonderful and memorable read. Highly recommended.
Format:Paperback
At its finest Perelman's crazily inventive humour makes me laugh out loud (the only other writers who've done so are Waugh, Wodehouse and David Lodge).
The masterpieces for me in this particular collection are: Acres and Pains; Hell in the Gabardines; Dental or Mental, I Say It's Spinach; Take Two Parts Sand, One Part Girl and Stir; The Hand That Cradles the Rock; Westward Ha! (most of it, anyway); Stringing Up Father (in parts); Hell Hath No Fury...and Saks No Brake (in parts); and Danger in the Drains (though direly weak in parts).
But even when the humour fails, Perelman is worth reading for his prose alone, as in: On Me It Looks Wizard; Cloudland Revisited: Rock-a-bye Viscount in the Treetop; The Saucier's Apprentice; Heat Yegg in Vessel and Sprinkle with Hazard; and This Little Piggy Went to Market. This is consistently imaginative, witty, allusive writing that knocks spots off the output of so many feted modern stylists - Perelman is unjustly neglected today.
Of course, as I've indicated, there is much feebleness in this collection, as how could there not be in a regular production of such pieces over 30 years, but the overall standard is remarkably high for a comic writer.
The masterpieces for me in this particular collection are: Acres and Pains; Hell in the Gabardines; Dental or Mental, I Say It's Spinach; Take Two Parts Sand, One Part Girl and Stir; The Hand That Cradles the Rock; Westward Ha! (most of it, anyway); Stringing Up Father (in parts); Hell Hath No Fury...and Saks No Brake (in parts); and Danger in the Drains (though direly weak in parts).
But even when the humour fails, Perelman is worth reading for his prose alone, as in: On Me It Looks Wizard; Cloudland Revisited: Rock-a-bye Viscount in the Treetop; The Saucier's Apprentice; Heat Yegg in Vessel and Sprinkle with Hazard; and This Little Piggy Went to Market. This is consistently imaginative, witty, allusive writing that knocks spots off the output of so many feted modern stylists - Perelman is unjustly neglected today.
Of course, as I've indicated, there is much feebleness in this collection, as how could there not be in a regular production of such pieces over 30 years, but the overall standard is remarkably high for a comic writer.
Most Helpful Customer Reviews on Amazon.com (beta)
Amazon.com:
9 reviews
6 of 6 people found the following review helpful
This is the place to start
26 Oct 2000
Format:Paperback
To become a devout fan and follower of S.J. Perelman all you have to do is read any one of the stories in this compilation. Scratch that, all you need to do is read the title of one of the stories in this compilation. They all attest to how much Mr. Perelman loved words and how obsessed he was with turning a pretty phrase on its heels and knocking it off its feet.
If you can't find this book, then find this book anyway. If you still can't find this book, then find some of his other books. If you are having a hard time and can't find any of his other books, then go watch "Horse Feathers" or "Monkey Business" by the Marx Brothers. Then start your letter-writing campaign to Simon & Schuster inquiring as to why they haven't re-released more of S.J. Perelman's writing. Do yourself (and the world) a favor, get started today.
6 of 6 people found the following review helpful
even better than Roger Ebert
24 Jan 2000
Format:Hardcover
I too find it deplorable that this is out of print. Besides many well-chosen words (who besides Perelman and the late Robertson Davies uses "tohubohu," a word from the Hebrew Bible that sounds exactly like what it means?), this book has several movie reviews that made me amoeboid with laughter. "The Wickedest Woman in Larchmont"--a review of the movied that gave the world the phrase "Kiss me, my fool"--is itself worth the price of the entire volume (to use a cliche, which Perelman would never do except to make it hilarious).
("Tohubohu," by the way, is a ruckus; it's in Genesis, where the newly created earth is described as formless and void.)
6 of 7 people found the following review helpful
The bible should be out of print more than this book.
2 Feb 1999
Format:Paperback
How can a book that contains the most crafted writing in the English language be out of print?
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