Books, Arts & Manners: Farewell, Vinegar Puss

The Last Laugh By S. J. Perelman

Simon & Schuster, 192 pp., $12.95 S. J. Perelman’s new, posthumous collection—titled, with a pleasantly black flourish, The Last Laugh—is chiefly made up of pieces Perelman wrote for The New Yorker during the last five years of his life, padded out with four “fragments” from an unfinished autobiography that was to have been called The Hindsight Saga. These chapters (which deal with the Marx Brothers, Nathanael West, Dorothy Parker, and the writing of three screenplays) are brief, comparatively slight reminiscences which sound like typical Perelman essays written with a firmer-than-usual grasp on reality; they suggest that a completed Perelman memoir, whatever its other virtues, would probably have supplied little insight into its author’s private life and concerns.

The Last Laugh By S. J. Perelman

Simon & Schuster, 192 pp., $12.95 S. J. Perelman’s new, posthumous collection—titled, with a pleasantly black flourish, The Last Laugh—is chiefly made up of pieces Perelman wrote for The New Yorker during the last five years of his life, padded out with four “fragments” from an unfinished autobiography that was to have been called The Hindsight Saga. These chapters (which deal with the Marx Brothers, Nathanael West, Dorothy Parker, and the writing of three screenplays) are brief, comparatively slight reminiscences which sound like typical Perelman essays written with a firmer-than-usual grasp on reality; they suggest that a completed Perelman memoir, whatever its other virtues, would probably have supplied little insight into its author’s private life and concerns.

About the Author

Terry Teachout

Terry Teachout is the drama critic of the Wall Street Journal and the critic-at-large of Commentary. Satchmo at the Waldorf, his 2011 play about Louis Armstrong, has been produced off Broadway and throughout America.