Sunday 2 August 2015

Book: 'The Most of SJ Perelman' by S.J. Perelman (1958)

It's fascinating how so much literature falls through the holes in the net of history. You would think that the prose of Woody Allen, 'The Ascent of Rum Doodle' by Bowman, and 'Three Men In A Boat' by Jerome would live immortally in the minds of all who read, but in actuality they just drift into the hands of the select few who seek out such things, the bunch who read about what to read: The hard core. What a wacky world this is that you have to actively find out about Rum Doodle! SJ Perelman doesn't quite fit into that golden cohort but he does come close, if this collection is at all representative. Perelman was a literary antecedent of Woody Allen, a prolific creator of short humorous stories, and someone so articulate and erudite that you can't help but salute him even as he makes his written somersaults through the rubber rings of humour.

More than Woody, Perelman was a satirist, but one with a palpable sense of 'heart', that quality which permeates the best of most media. What does it mean to have 'heart'? It would be a three hour essay, but for now let us say it an absence of cynicism and a commitment to the thing being made that demands quality beyond itself, with a healthy dose of humour thrown in. Or, less incoherently, a deep sense of caring somewhere in the making. Perelman had that in his writing, in a dog-eared and mock-cynical way. Did the man have it himself? It's hard to say, and reports are contradictory, but it's a shame his work never jumped to my attention before. It's fascinating. 'Fascinating' is a funny word to use for a humorist, isn't it? Does it mean something?

A lot of 'The Most' is filled with references that no-one has seen made for more than fifty years, and as such might fall upon stoney ground. The writing is wonderful, though, and rich with a quality of prose that would make many modern authors green with envy. Ultimately your enjoyment will be based on your level of historical awareness, and your ability to appreciate things in their own context, which two things are sometimes very rare indeed. Due to immense training and a willingness to jump into the grand historical archive, it's not wasted at all on this ground, and is at times highly amusing indeed.

'The Most' collects from many periods of Perelman's career, including the highly notable 'Cloudland' articles, wherein he revisited various old movies and books from his youth and recounted his newer reactions in rigorous anecdotal form. The whole collection is amusing, but the 'Cloudland' episodes are the ones that stick in the mind, although not as forcefully as the highpoints of Woody in his own scribblings. It's a shame, but as much as I like Perelman, for his wittiness and intelligence, he doesn't hit the peaks or the lows of Woody Allen. Perelman is a far more reliable beast, and one with a thousand stories to tell, most of them untrue. The average is high, higher than you'll find with many other writers of short prose. It's also highly chauvinistic at times, as it would be from that time period.

Ultimately, somehow it's not quite recommendable. Not quite. Seek ye 'Rum Doodle' instead.

O.

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