Hardcover
-
PICK UP IN STORECheck Availability at Nearby Stores
Available within 2 business hours
Related collections and offers
Overview
S. J. Perelman (1904-1979) wrote for the Marx Brothers films Horse Feathers and Monkey Business and won an Oscar for his screenwriting on Around the World in Eighty Days, but he remains best known for his many sketches and essays penned for The New Yorker during its golden age of humor. In these short comic pieces—Perelman called them feuilletons—his penchant for wordplay, witticism, spoofery, self-deprecation, and plain zaniness are on full display. The New York Times once noted his ability in these magazine pieces "to transform the common cliché or figure of speech into an exploding cigar." Author and New Yorker staff writer Adam Gopnik has selected the very best of them, including Perelman's parodies of books and films, his biting social satire, autobiographical pieces, and a selection from the celebrated Cloudland Revisited series, in which Perelman reminisces nostalgically about books and movies encountered in youth before describing in his inimitable hyperkinetic style the rude shock of revisiting them as an adult.
Also included in this volume are the acclaimed play The Beauty Part (1963) from Perelman's Broadway career; profiles of the Marx Brothers, Dorothy Parker, and his brother-in-law Nathanael West; and a selection of letters written to correspondents such as Groucho Marx and Paul Theroux.
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9781598536928 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | Library of America |
| Publication date: | 08/24/2021 |
| Pages: | 604 |
| Sales rank: | 653,099 |
| Product dimensions: | 5.10(w) x 8.15(h) x 1.15(d) |
About the Author
Adam Gopnik is a staff writer at The New Yorker; he has written for the magazine since 1986. He has three National Magazine awards, for essays and for criticism, and also a George Polk Award for Magazine Reporting. In 2013, Gopnik was awarded the medal of Chevalier of the Order of Arts and Letters. The author of numerous best-selling books, including Paris to the Moon, he lives in New York City.
Read an Excerpt
From "Farewell, My Lovely Appetizer
Add Smorgasbits to your ought-to-know department, the newest of the three Betty Lee products. What in the world! Just small mouth-size pieces of herring and of pinkish tones. We crossed our heart and promised not to tell the secret of their tinting.
— Clementine Paddleford's food column in the Herald Tribune.
The "Hush-Hush" Blouse. We're very hush-hush about his
name, but the celebrated shirtmaker who did it for us is famous
on two continents for blouses with details like those deep yoke
folds, the wonderful shoulder pads, the shirtband bow!
— Russeks adv. in the Times.
I came down the sixth-floor corridor of the Arbogast Building, past the World Wide Noodle Corporation, Zwinger & Rumsey, Accountants, and the Ace Secretarial Service, Mimeographing Our Specialty. The legend on the ground-glass panel next door said, "Atlas Detective Agency, Noonan & Driscoll," but Snapper Driscoll had retired two years before with a .38 slug between the shoulders, donated by a snowbird in Tacoma, and I owned what good will the firm had. I let myself into the crummy anteroom we kept to impress clients, growled good morning at Birdie Claflin.
"Well, you certainly look like something the cat dragged in," she said. She had a quick tongue. She also had eyes like dusty lapis lazuli, taffy hair, and a figure that did things to me. I kicked open the bottom drawer of her desk, let two inches of rye trickle down my craw, kissed
Birdie square on her lush, red mouth, and set fire to a cigarette.
"I could go for you, sugar," I said slowly. Her face was veiled, watchful. I stared at her ears, liking the way they were joined to her head. There was something complete about them; you knew they were there for keeps. When you're a private eye, you want things to stay put.
“Any customers?”
“A woman by the name of Sigrid Bjornsterne said she’d be back. A looker.”
“Swede?”
“She’d like you to think so.”
I nodded toward the inner office to indicate that I was going in there, and went in there. I lay down on the davenport, took off my shoes, and bought myself a shot from the bottle I kept underneath. Four minutes later, an ash blonde with eyes the color of unset opals, in a Nettie Rosenstein basic black dress and a baum-marten stole, burst in. Her bosom was heaving and it looked even better that way. With a gasp she circled the desk, hunting for some place to hide, and then, spotting the wardrobe where I keep a change of bourbon, ran into it. I got up and wandered out into the anteroom. Birdie was deep in a crossword puzzle.
“See anyone come in here?”
“Nope.” There was a thoughtful line between her brows. “Say, what’s a five-letter word meaning ‘trouble’?”
“Swede,” I told her, and went back inside. I waited the length of time it would take a small, not very bright boy to recite “Ozymandias,” and, inching carefully along the wall, took a quick gander out the window. A thin galoot with stooping shoulders was being very busy reading a paper outside the Gristede store two blocks away. He hadn’t been there an hour ago, but then, of course, neither had I. He wore a size-seven dove-colored hat from Browning King, a tan Wilson Brothers shirt with pale-blue stripes, a J. Press foulard with a mixed-red-and-white figure, dark blue Interwoven socks, and an unshined pair of ox-blood London Character shoes. I let a cigarette burn down between my fingers until it made a small red mark, and then I opened the wardrobe.
“Hi,” the blonde said lazily. “You Mike Noonan?” I made a noise that could have been “Yes,” and waited. She yawned. I thought things over, decided to play it safe. I yawned. She yawned back, then, settling into a corner of the wardrobe, went to sleep. I let another cigarette burn down until it made a second red mark beside the first one, and then I woke her up. She sank into a chair, crossing a pair of gams that tightened my throat as I peered under the desk at them.
“Mr. Noonan,” she said, “you — you’ve got to help me.”
“My few friends call me Mike,” I said pleasantly.
“Mike.” She rolled the syllable on her tongue. “I don’t believe I’ve ever heard that name before. Irish?”
“Enough to know the difference between a gossoon and a bassoon.”
“What is the difference?” she asked. I dummied up; I figured I wasn’t giving anything away for free. Her eyes narrowed. I shifted my two hundred pounds slightly, lazily set fire to a finger, and watched it burn down. I could see she was admiring the interplay of muscles in my shoulders. There wasn’t any extra fat on Mike Noonan, but I wasn’t telling her that. I was playing it safe until I knew where we stood.
Table of Contents
Introduction: Perelman, the Pearl of Providence Adam Gopnik xiii
Sketches and Satires
Puppets of Passion: A Throbbing Story of Youth's Hot Revolt Against the Conventions 3
Those Charming People: The Latest Report on the Weinbloom Reptile Expedition 7
Scenario 9
Strictly from Hunger 14
The Love Decoy: A Story of Youth in College Today-Awake, Fearless, Unashamed 23
Waiting for Santy: A Christmas Playlet 28
Frou-Frou, or the Future of Vertigo 31
Captain Future, Block That Kick! 34
Midwinter Facial Trends 40
Counter-Revolution 44
Beat Me, Post-Impressionist Daddy 48
A Pox on You, Mine Goodly Host 53
Bend Down, Sister 57
Beauty and the Bee 61
Button, Button, Who's Got the Blend? 65
Swing Out, Sweet Chariot 69
A Couple of Quick Ones: Two Portraits 74
Hell in the Gabardines 85
Farewell, My Lovely Appetizer 91
Hit Him Again, He's Sober 98
Physician, Steel Thyself 103
Take Two Parts Sand, One Part Girl, and Stir 110
Sleepy-Time Extra 116
Amo, Amas, Amat, Amamus, Amatis, Enough! 121
Send No Money, Honey 126
Acres and Pains: Chapter One 131
Acres and Pains: Chapter Twelve 133
Don't Bring Me Oscars (When It's Shoesies That I Need) 135
Rancors Aweigh 141
Mama Don't Want No Rice 149
Columbia, the Crumb of the Ocean 157
Whenas in Sulks My Julia Goes 166
Cloudland Revisited: Why, Doctor, What Big Green Eyes You Have! 174
Chewies the Goat but Flicks Need Hypo 182
Salesman, Spare that Psyche 188
The Song Is Endless, but the Malady Lingers On 195
A Girl and a Boy Anthropoid Were Dancing 201
Cloudland Revisited: Rock-a-Bye, Viscount, in the Treetop 208
Cloudland Revisited: When to the Sessions of Sweet Silent Films 216
No Starch in the Dhoti, S'il Vous Plaît 224
Cloudland Revisited: The Wickedest Woman in Larchmont 232
Swindle Sheet with Blueblood Engrailed, Arrant Fibs Rampant 238
Cloudland Revisited: I'm Sorry I Made Me Cry 244
Sorry-No Phone or Mail Orders 250
Next Week at the Prado: Frankie Goya Plus Monster Cast 256
You're My Everything, Plus City Sales Tax 261
Eine Kleine Mothmusik 268
Where Do You Work-a, John? 276
Portrait of the Artist as a Young Mime 282
This Is the Forest Primeval? 290
Impresario on the Lam 299
Revulsion in the Desert 307
Are You Decent, Memsahib? 314
Tell Me Clear, Parachutist Dear, Are You Man or Mouse? 322
Sex and the Single Boy 328
A Soft Answer Turneth Away Royalties 335
Hello, Central, Give Me That Jolly Old Pelf 343
The Sweet Chick Gone 351
Nobody Knows the Rubble I've Seen/Nobody Knows but Croesus 357
Three Loves Had I, in Assorted Flavors 365
Be a Cat's-Paw! Lose Big Money! 371
Moonstruck at Sunset 377
The Beauty Part: A Comedy in Two Acts 385
The Hindsight Saga: Three Fragments from an Autobiography
The Marx Brothers 469
Nathanael West 481
Dorothy Parker 490
Selected Letters
To Edmund Wilson (September 2, 1929) 497
To I. J. Kapstein (October 9, 1930) 498
To Groucho Marx (April 7, 1943) 499
To Frances and Albert Hackett (August 14, 1949) 501
To Abby Perelman (April 15, 1954) 504
To Leila Hadley (August 21, 1955) 506
To Leila Hadley (September 16, 1955) 508
To Betsy Drake (September 28, 1955) 510
To Leila Hadley (August 25, 1956) 511
To Leila Hadley (November 22, 1956) 513
To Paul Theroux (October 18, 1976) 515
To Paul Theroux (December 24, 1976) 517
Chronology 521
Note on the Texts 535
Notes 540