Word: perelman
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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...REVUES : Writers Eric Bentley and S. J. Perelman have contributed presumably literate material to Cut Loose! (Sept. 13), which has dipped elsewhere for its lyricists-to James (From Here to Eternity} Jones, for example. Beyond the Fringe, which has had London round the bend with laughter for two seasons, has been only lightly red-white-and-bluepenciled for American ears...
...quarters as offshoots of Dada and in others as potshots at it, they helped form the Krazy Katechism of the era. With the mere setting of the scene in Clemo Uti-"the Outskirts of a Parchesi Board"-there sounded a note that would tootle and twang and echo from Perelman to Mad Magazine; it was there, too, in the very first lines of I Gaspiri...
...other hand, probably the best pieces in the book are the accounts of Perelman's travels, especially a seven-part series entitled "Dr. Perelman, I Presume, or Small Bore in Africa." The first piece, "This Is the Forest Primeval?" presents the meeting of Perelman, a cringing coward, with the bluff, devil-may-care British explorer group...
Spending the night in a tree house in Kenya, land of the Mau Mau, Perelman, as he so often seems to do, becomes alarmed...
...Perelman's misadventures, his total inability to cope with any given situation, and his slowly slipping grip on sanity make hilarious reading. He is at his best describing his own efforts to come to terms with the world around him, a world swarming with zany people and beyond rational control. And though he introduces many engaging and diverting personalities, his best creation is himself--the craven coward, the hesitant man of the world, the would-be lady killer, who really just wants to finish reading Motley's Rise of the Dutch Republic...