Sidney Joseph Perelman (
1904-
1979) wrote funny stories for
The New Yorker and
screenplays for the
Marx Brothers.
Perelman was born in
Brooklyn, and raised and educated in
Providence, RI. Collections of his humor pieces included
Strictly from Hunger (
1937),
The Road to Miltown; or, Under the Spreading Atrophy (
1957), and
Rising Gorge (
1961). There's something of an
omnibus called
The Most of S. J. Perelman, of which the ever-clever
Modern Library is now
hawking a version
abridged by the trembling hand of
Steve Martin. Why? Who cares? It's in print, buy it.
Perelman was one of the finest
comic writers who ever lived, but his humor was not obvious and his vocabulary was not small.
Stupid people do not enjoy reading S. J. Perelman. In fact, they're totally
baffled by him and they become resentful. He bounced between the
vernacular and
OED words with greater abandon than
H.L. Mencken; but
H.L. Mencken got away with writing well by being
epigrammatic and obnoxious.
He's almost a god among people who've heard of him, and there are several of those still living.
Some titles of stories: "
The Hand that Cradles the Rock", "
No Starch in the Dhoti, S'il Vous Plait", "
Amo, Amas, Amat, Amamus, Amatis, Enough", "
Beat me, Post-Impressionist Daddy".
It's hard to explain. It's just very hard to explain, but S. J. Perelman was a very important man.