Word: perelmans
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WESTWARD HA! (159 pp.)-S. J. Perelman & Albert Hirschfeld-Simon & Schuster...
...Perelman was just leaving a little specialty shop in the Forties (he had been buying "a black girdle with rose panels and a bias-cup brassière" for his mother) when he ran slap into Cartoonist Al Hirschfeld-a man whose "cunning ferret eyes" share pride of place with a beard as frothy as "a zabaglione." The pair of them were eventually put under contract to make a trip round the world for Holiday magazine, and the result, excellently illustrated by Artist Hirschfeld, is one of the funniest books that Perelman has written. Subtitled "Around the World...
...have an odd copy of The New Yorker around at the time and it, too, had a Steuben Glass ad on page three. Naturally this aroused us somewhat and the case was settled when we found an article on page 19 by Sidney Namlerep. Namlerep, of course, is Perelman spelled backwards...
Perhaps one of the greatest faults in "Acres and Pains" is Mr. Perelman's singularly bad choice of an illustrator. R. Osborn appears much more at home snarling at the backside of an Army Brass Hat than attempting to convey the tone of Perelman's brand of humor. The vicious, Stieg-like cartoons that made his fame in "War Is No Damned Good" have no place beside Perelman's cutting, though entireless harmless, wit. Some of the drawings are excellent, particularly a picture of two bloodthirsty children, but for the largest part they misfire and confuse the effect. These badly...
Although "Acres and Pains" lacks the speed and lightness to place it among his earlier productions, there is enough excellent material to give Perelman fans a small, if not wholly satisfying, stitch in the side...