Word: perelman
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...Perelman and the Angels...
...read about S.J. Perelman's death [Oct. 29] shortly after I had discovered and was still reading A Child's Garden of Curses. There's no doubt about the man's ingenuity, and the death of such an amusing character is a pity. I'm sure that now even the saints won't be able to keep a straight face with him and his writing around...
...Perelman's cosmopolitan imagination had a definite surreal twist to it. In "low dudgeon," he viewed the world's quirky moving parts as threats to his safety, sanity and solvency. Acres and Pains was a 1947 collection of mock-Thoreauvian japes inspired by the author's four dec ades of semirustication on 100 stony acres in Bucks County, Pa. His definition of a gentleman's farm: "An irregular patch of nettles bounded by short-term notes, containing a fool and his wife who didn't know enough to stay in the city...
Though he was born in Brooklyn, the city of Perelman's childhood and youth was Providence. His parents were Jewish immigrants from Russia. At Brown University one of his best friends was Nathanael West, the future author of Miss Lonelyhearts and The Day of the Locust, and a future brother...
...Perelman married West's sister Laura in 1929. He began his career drawing and writing for Judge and College Humor; the Depression found him in Hollywood writing gags for the Marx Brothers. He also co-authored a number of plays, including One Touch of Venus with Ogden Nash, and in 1956 shared an Academy Award for his work on the film Around the World in 80 Days...