Swinging it
Mark Ford, 7 July 1988
S.J. Perelman: A Life
by Dorothy Herrmann.
Simon and Schuster, 337 pp., £14.95, November 1987,0 671 65460 8 Show More
by Dorothy Herrmann.
Simon and Schuster, 337 pp., £14.95, November 1987,
Don’t tread on me: The Selected Letters of S.J. Perelman
edited by Prudence Crowther.
Viking, 372 pp., £14.95, October 1987,0 670 81759 7 Show More
edited by Prudence Crowther.
Viking, 372 pp., £14.95, October 1987,
“... pieces, and many of his letters too. In the introduction to her selection from his correspondence, Prudence Crowther relates how he once spent a whole day writing a postcard. There is something specially satisfying about a writer whose effects are so hard-earned, whose comic persona is so deliberately assumed. One can sense him rationing his jokes in a ... ”