A grind. The reader keeps waiting for this alleged "humor" writing to be humorous. It never is.
S.J. Perelman wrote most of these short pieces in the 1930s and 1940s, and they read like the semi-witty half-page pieces you'd find sprinkled here and there in The New Yorker. Some are absurdist, some are kitschy, some are unreadable. The least bad was "Physician, Steel Thyself"--unfortunately, out of the fifty essays in this collection it was the forty-seventh.
If you're curious about this author, read that story. If you don't think it's that great, you know what to do.
A structural problem with these pieces is there are too many in-jokes and facetious callbacks to forgotten and irrelevant cultural events--films, movies, plays, magazines, even ad campaigns, all of which died out generations ago. Even the wittiest sub-reference means nothing to readers today, because no one remembers the magazine, movie or play referenced. When something doesn't survive humor about it won't survive either.
In good writing, the author leaves you with something: something that sticks in your mind, something that makes you think. These stories are generally unremarkable, unmemorable and after dozens and dozens of them, they tend to blur together. It is far harder than it looks to be funny.
Notes:
Introduction:
ixff The author of this introduction, the palidromically-named "Sidney Namlerep," attempts humor but mostly fails. Not a good sign...
xii "With fiendish nonchalance and a complete lack of reverence for good form, he plucks words out of context, ravishes them, and makes off whistling as his victims sob brokenly into the bolster."
Kitchen Bouquet
3 The first paragraph is all "this is all just made up" type of authorial indemnification. The story is an absurdist tale of the author's house servants/cooks, starting with an African-American servant of the author who is a 6'3" female Paul Bunyan, with rippling muscles, but who can't cook; his next cook was an Australian vegetarian who the author was afraid would murder him; next was a Latvian woman, a fugitive from justice after murdering her husband in Canada.
Somewhere a Roscoe...
This is the satire of a really bad detective magazine called Spicy Detective, which appears actually to be a thing if you Google it. There are references here to other detective stories of the era, including Mark Tid (an early 1900s boy detective) and Dashiel Hammett. Pererlman mocks these detective stories for their terrible turns of phrase, like "I don't like dames to be rubbed out when I'm flinging woo at them."
13 I do like this one: "And then, from an open window beyond the bed, a roscoe coughed 'Ka-chow!'...I said, 'What the hell--!' and hit the floor with my smeller... A brunette jane was lying there, half out of the mussed covers...She was as dead as vaudeville."
Waiting for Santy: A Christmas Playlet
15ff This takes place in Santa Claus's sweatshop, where seven gnomes are working furiously to fill orders, with the noise of lathes and machines running in the background. It's supposed to be a facetious satire on Marxist labor situations under exploitation by capitalist ownership, but it falls very flat.
The Idol's Eye
19ff An absurdist scenelet: a group of friends get together and one tells a story of his great-grandfather seeking out a famous flawless ruby in India, while "living almost entirely on cameo brooches and the few ptarmigan which fell to the ptrigger of his pfowlingpiece..." The story turns out to be a tall tale.
Beauty and the Bee
25ff The author sees strange bedfellow magazines next to each other at a newsstand: the magazine Corset and Underwear Review displayed next to the American Bee Journal. He attempts (and fails) to make witty about what he sees inside the magazines.
Is There An Osteosynchrondroitrician in the House?
31ff The author makes jokes about how writers never have money; as he's walking down Lexington Avenue, he sees a skeleton foot in a bookstore window, and then starts having a sort of sympathetic problem with his own foot; this creeps him out and he starts plotting ways to get rid of the skeleton foot, including fantasizing about blowing up the store with grenades. It's not funny, the story misses.
Abby, This Is Your Father
35ff About the Saturday Evening Post and its apparent prophesying ability, as it wrote a biography of Will Rogers right before he died, and then forecast a marriage between two important public figures right before it happened. Then the rest of the story is a fictitious wealthy grandmother writing to her granddaughter sharing obviously fictitious and facetious details about the granddaughter's father:
38 "Abby Dear:
"By the time your daddy was eleven, he had made enough money to retire and give up all his time to translating the works of Elbert Hubbard, the Sage of Aurora, into Armenian, which he claimed would outsell The Trail of the Lonesome Pine. [This isn't funny even if you get the references, it's certainly not funny if you don't.]
39 More "humor":
"Your uncle Hosea--you remember, he was a famous oarsman at New Haven--came to visit us. As he alighted from the train, the Yale crew was having its annual banquet there and they recognized him. A cheer went up, and one of their number swung Uncle Hosea over his shoulder and bore him, kicking and screaming, through the streets. I was naturally alarmed at Hosea's tardiness in arriving, and expressed my anxiety. 'We tried to keep it from you,' remarked your daddy, 'but poor Uncle Jose was carried off by a stroke.'"
Buffalos of the World Unite!
42ff The author tortures the reader here as he has a flight of fancy, complaining to a British author in a sporting magazine who claimed that one should whistle (rather than shouting and waving your arms and hat) to break up a stampede of buffaloes. He "dares undermine an institution as hallowed as waving one's hat at buffalos."
Sauce for the Gander
46ff The author describes women in corsets in various women's magazines, claiming that he looks at them out of the purest motives; he tries to describe humorously their poses and attitudes and expressions. "If you hold your ear close enough to the printed page, you can almost hear the throbbing of the temple drums and the chant of the votaries. Those sultry, heavy-lidded glances, those tempestuous Corybantic gestures of abandon--what magic property is there in an ordinary silk-and-Lasttex belly band to cause a housewife to behave like Little Egypt?
The narrator then imagines how male underwear could be marketed at least as skillfully; he envisions a scene in a psychiatrist's office treating men for baggy underwear, where the doctor forces a patient into form-fitting underwater and he emerges suddenly a changed man, in totally different clothes, youthful and powerful. And then drops dead trying to dance with the doctor's assistant.
[Here's a test to gauge whether you find the author's turn of phrase funny or not]" (Scene: The consulting room of Dr. Terence Fitch, an eminent Park Avenue specialist. The furniture consists of a few costly, unusual pieces, such as a kidney-shaped writing desk, a pancreas-shaped chair, and a spleen-shaped spittoon. As the curtain rises, Miss Mayo, the nurse, is at the telephone-shaped telephone.)"
Frou-Frou, or Vertigo Revisited
53ff [This is the least bad story so far.] The author can't help but keep reading a high style column in the magazine Harper's Bazaar, he is confused or anger by the various suggestions and he mocks them, somewhat humorously.
Scenario
57ff The story is literally a wall of text consisting of disjointed movie-industry comments; it's like a collage of different things actors, directors and screenwriters might say or do, combined with visual images of extras in costume from various eras; there are dozens of references to various Hollywood and New York theater figures; and then more comments that producers, promoters, assistants and special-effects people might make: "Get Anderson ready with the sleighbells and keep that snow moving." This story will be unreadable unless you are a closet geek about 30's- and 40's-era Broadway and Hollywood.
A Farewell to Omsk
64ff "(The terrifying result of reading an entire gift set of Dostoievsky in one afternoon.)" I assume the title of this short story is a pun on Hemingway's book A Farewell to Arms and the Russian city Omsk; the author scripts a little scenelet in a tobacco store where Russian novel-type characters parody Dostoyevsky.
Nothing But the Tooth
68ff The author combs through the magazine Oral Hygiene in his dentist's office and attempts humor about how dentists overtreat their patients: "For years I have led dentists ride roughshod over my teeth; I have been sawed, hacked, chopped, whittled, bewitched, bewildered, tattooed, and signed on again; but this is cuspid's last stand. They'll never get me into that chair again. I'll dispose of my teeth as I see fit, and after they're gone, I'll get along. I started off living on gruel, and, by God, I can always go back to it again."
Woodman, Don't Spare That Tree!
73ff Another unamusing short story satirizing a new fashion among wealthy families of purchasing dead but artful-looking trees, digging them up, and replanting them in concrete outside their homes.
Strictly From Hunger
79ff An absurdist story about the author taking a train from New York to Hollywood to be a scenario writer (e.g., he sees a suttee/funeral pyre made out of a failed film, its producer and the actors).
P-S-S-T, Partner, Your Peristalsis Is Showing
92ff The author sounds off on a pamphlet against tobacco, written by a writer from Elizabeth, New Jersey; the pamphlet includes an imaginary conversation between a person's brain and stomach, and Perelman takes this and makes a gag out of it, dressing the body parts in clothes, exaggerating the scene, etc. Perelman demonstrates how the pamphleteer could have done a much better job capturing his audience's attention.
A Pox On You, Mine Goodly Host
98ff Another satire, this time of New York's writing glitterati; the piece is about how Perelman as well as other forgotten/forgettable writers can't get into the good restaurants.
Slow--Dangerous Foibles Ahead!
103ff On a discussion in a Vogue article about "The Girl of Tomorrow"; the author makes snarky remarks about it.
Footnote On the Yellow Peril
109ff A series of puns and witticisms on Chinese names, likely influenced by events in China at the time. Not funny.
Midwinter Facial Trends
113ff A story about a writer called back to Hollywood to solve a script problem, which then morphs into the author's musings after reading a journal on cosmetic surgery.
Counter-Revolution
118ff The author makes witty remarks as he reads from a leaflet wrapping a bottle of glue; he imagines an absurdist scenelet. The lead paragraph of this short piece gives the reader a typical example of the writer's "humor":
"The other night a forty-five-year-old friend of mine, after ingesting equal portions of Greek fire and artillery punch, set out to prove that he could walk across a parquet flooring on his hands while balancing a vase on his head. As a consequence, about eleven o'clock the following morning he was being trepanned at the Harkness Pavilion and I was purchasing a bottle of Major's Cement."
The Love Decoy
124ff Another allegedly witty story where the author describes a coed seducing a professor. She traps him in his room, then the dean comes in and the two men fight for the love of the coed.
More examples of the author's humor:
"'I'm sorry,' he added Quigley.
'Why did you add Quigley?' I begged him. He apologized and subtracted Quigley then divided Hogan. We hastily dipped the slices of Hogan into Karo, poured sugar over them, and ate them with relish."
And:
"I tried to resist his overtures, but he played me with symphonies, quartets, chamber music and cantatas."
To Sleep, Perchance to Steam
130ff A piece about insomnia and electric blankets, and the author's neurosis about getting shocked. Off-hand pop reference here to Paul Muni, a major stage and screen actor from the first half of the 20th century (again this would only make sense if you were a total geek about early 20th century Hollywood and Broadway).
Down With the Restoration
135ff An attempt to satirize people who remodel farmhouses. "All these remodeling articles are written by the remodelers themselves and never by the ruined farmer or the man who didn't get paid for the plastering, which accounts for their rather smug tone." Reference here to Arthur Machen, a Welsh horror writer who influenced Stephen King.
The Body Beautiful
146ff On Hygeia, a health magazine published in the 40s by the American Medical Association. "Unlike other soporifics, Hygeia does not affect the heart; I have even read a copy without any ill effects other than a feeling of drowsiness the next day... From the opening essay on flat feet down to the very last article on diabetic muffins, it is a guaranteed yawn from cover to cover." The author attempts to make humorous banter referring to letters to the editor by readers, then satirizes a different publication, Estes Back to Nature Magazine. The story isn't just unfunny, it is structured poorly: it really should be two separate stories, the two parts have nothing to do with each other and don't fit together.
Poisonous Mushrooms
145ff "Only yesterday I happened to fall into conversation with a stranger in the subway, an extremely well-made woman of thirty-one with Dresden-dainty hands and feet. I noticed that she was eating a small umbrella-shaped object and asked her what it was.
'An umbrella,' she replied shortly, descending from the train at Seventy-second Street."
Button, Button, Who's Got the Blend?
149ff A scenelet about Hostess Cup Cakes, and the theft of "the secret chocolate blend."
Boy Meets Girl Meets Foot
155ff About a foot doctor who writes bad short stories about his patients.
What Am I Doing Away From Home?
161ff An attempt satirize a magazine about hotels and the hotel industry, the author tells a tale about a horrible hotel stay he once had.
Hold That Christmas Tiger!
166ff The author makes fun of silly household decoration ideas from magazines like Mademoiselle, Vogue and House & Garden.
Smugglers in the Dust: Or, Hollywood Hits Back
171ff A failed attempt at facetiousness here as the author tries to make light of efforts to stop people from smuggling tourists into the major Hollywood film studio lots.
Beat Me, Post-Impressionist Daddy
178ff Satirizing the letters of Gaugin from Tahiti--in the letters he describes literally beating off all the Tahitian women who are coming on to him.
Tomorrow--Fairly Cloudy
185ff In which the author mocks the decline of the advertising industry; he writes a nearly unreadable absurdist scenelet where everything anyone says is an advertising testimonial on some product.
Sweet and Hot
192ff The author shares letters to the editor from industry magazines The Cracker Baker and Metronome. and makes witty repartee about them.
Seedlings of Desire
198ff A Broadway producer goes to Wilkes-Barre to try and sign a new girl; he sends her to fencing lessons. "All that afternoon under Beppo's watchful supervision, Gaby learned something of the art of fencing; how to drill the holes, the proper way to string barbed wire and, finally, a few choice words to write on board fences."
Kitchenware, Notions, Lights, Action, Camera!
205ff "The day is dawning when film and department store may fuse into a single superb medium, with mighty themes like "Resurrection" and "Gone with the Wind" harnessed directly to the task of merchandising winter sportswear and peanut-fed hams." The author imagines yet another scenelet, it is not funny.
Captain Future, Block that Kick!
210ff Commenting on the pulp sci-fi magazine Captain Future.
Adorable, Taxable You
218ff On the book Income Tax, in which the author's case histories come alive "with a vigor and bounce unmatched in Freud." "This is presumably Mr. Joseph's first book, and if he has his faults, so did Poe and Henry James. His prose is childish, his grammar unspeakable, and his point of view materialistic, but I loved every word, even the ones that made me sleepy."
A Couple of Quick Ones: Two Portraits
223ff 1. Arthur Kober (apparently this is a fellow screenwriter/comedy writer/humorist)
A full page and then some of a wall of text describing a man followed by the sentence "Picture to yourself such a man, I say, and you won't have the faintest conception of Arthur Kober." This essay is almost unreadable.
230ff 2. Vincente Minnelli (film and theater director, also father of Liza Minnelli)
Typical of the wit here is when Minnelli persuades two producers to let him design costumes for them, they said to each other: "'But--but he's a mere tyro!' wailed Balaban when Katz told him of the offer. 'Wisht,' returned Katz in the County Leitrim accent he loved to affect, 'let's give him a try-o."
Avocado, Or the Future of Eating
238ff The author mocks and makes remarks at a drug store fountain menu.
You Should Live So, Walden Pond
242ff Another absurdist piece about the author's attempt to own a country house near the Delaware River, this unfunny piece proves that New York City slickers have always been clueless about anything outside their city, even back in the 1930s and '40s.
Swing Out, Sweet Chariot
246ff The author mistakenly receives a copy of The Jitterbug magazine, "devoted to the activities of alligators, hepcats and exaltés of swing everywhere."
Second-Class Matter
252ff Another unreadable story. A free-association of different things. I think the author is trying to satirize some of the advertising language used in his era, mixing it with actors and actresses and scenes from Broadway and Hollywood. The sentences run into each other kind of like a dreamscape: the first half of a sentence might be talking about hygiene, and the second half starts talking about tires; another sentence starts talking about coffee and then launches into "and from our own Pennsylvania coal-fields comes the delicious gritty anthracite dust which is making this obscene little candy the lunch-substitute of millions." You could also perhaps read into the title "Second-Class Matter" as pun on either the author mocking his own writing, or categorizing this story as one of his second-rate ones, or mocking the language of the advertising world as uniformly second-rate. Either way it's unreadable.
Wholly Cleaning and Dyeing
259ff Witty banter here about dry-cleaning industry magazines.
Well, Roll Me in a Turkish Towel!
264ff Satirizing laundry instructions on the tags of a sweater, and then a polo shirt takes on a life of its own.
Physician, Steel Thyself
270ff I think this actually might be the least bad story in the entire collection. On being a technical supervisor on a million dollar movie. "You may be a bore to your own family, but you're worth your weight in piastres to the picture business." The author imagines a psychiatrist imported into Hollywood to be a technical expert, where he runs into another former colleague who likewise is a technical expert; the two therapists talk about their lives. "You're inhibited, you won't let yourself go. Infantile denial of your environment." The one psychiatrist talks about a screenplay he's writing.
Pale Hands I Loathe
279ff The author can't help but notice several articles and discussions of hands, one in an issue of the magazine Woman's Home Companion, and then he imagines a mid-level manager with a hand fetish, trying to navigate a day at the office.
Insert Flap "A" and Throw Away
285ff The author loses his shit in two instances of trying to assemble things he purchased, first a mini-closet and then a children's toy.
Farewell, My Lovely Appetizer
291ff Satire in the style of Raymond Chandler's detective novels. This was the second-least-bad of all the stories.
To Read:
George Horace Lorimer: Letters of a Self-Made Merchant to His Son
Arthur Machen: The Great God Pan
Arthur Machen: The Bowmen
Arthur Machen: The White People
Arthur Kober: Pardon Me for Pointing