Book Review: The Most of S.J. Perelman.

Scholars attempting to wrest knowledge from the skimpy shelves of the Marshall-University High School library in Minneapolis in the year of our Lord 1970, would be sadly taxed by the giggles of a slender youth who just happened to bear a remarkable resemblance to myself.

This bean pole of an adolescent, all Adam's apple and beaky proboscis, was bent over a tome entitled "The Most of S.J. Perelman" and enjoying himself tremendously with such classic pieces of literary insanity as "The Idol's Eye" or the numerous manic memoirs prefaced as "Cloudland Revisited".

He cared not that most of the pieces involved a vocabulary that would baffle a Rhodes Scholar -- the sheer insanity of the word play and blistering sarcasm shone through like a beacon on a murky night.

There has never been, nor can there ever be, another writer of the ilk of Sidney Joseph Perelman. But I refuse to try to cajole you into reading his work. If ever a writer were an acquired taste, it is Mr. Perelman. He disdains to use a simple word when a ten-dollar whopper is available. He uses French, Italian, German, and Yiddish phrases extensively, with no translation. His references are archaic and obscure to the point of Gnosticism. I still need to have a dictionary at hand when I read him.

So who wants to bother with such a shovboat? Me, for one -- and anyone who admires an artist of the first water. For Perelman is undoubtedly a virtuoso with the English language. He makes it do his manic bidding with deceptive ease.

You want I should give you an example, boychick?  Here's all the example you'll get from me, boyo: Perelman co-wrote several of the early Marx Brothers movies. So, if you've always been a closet Grouchophile, you'll realize just what kind of magical stuff Perelman is capable of. Nuff said.

Sadly, I've never been able to interest my family or friends in the brilliant work of S.J. Perelman. The common complaint is always: "He's too hard to read!"

Well, gold and diamonds are hard to find -- that's what makes them valuable. Anyone who will go to the trouble of exploring Perelman for even a half hour, wading through his coruscating prose with an encyclopedia in one hand and a LaRousse in the other, will be rewarded with lapidary writing the likes of which no longer exist in American literature.

I recently picked up a used copy of The Most of S.J. Perelman on Amazon.com for two dollars, plus shipping and handling.