The Last Laugh: The Final Word from the First Name in Satire

by S.J. Perelman

The last of Perelman¿s twenty books, this compilation contains seventeen pieces never before collected, in addition to the opening chapters of the author¿s uncompleted autobiography.

Genres: Humor, Nonfiction, Short Stories

192 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1981

About the author

Sidney Joseph Perelman, almost always known as S. J. Perelman, was a Jewish-American humorist, author, and screenwriter. He is best known for his humorous short pieces written over many years for The New Yorker. He also wrote for several other magazines, as well as books, scripts, and screenplays.

Reviews

[Jerry · Rating 4 out of 5]

I’ve had S.J. Perelman in the back of my mind as someone to read ever since I ran across this amazing quote most likely in some science fiction writer’s foray into science fact:

“Give me an underground laboratory, half a dozen atom smashers, and a beautiful girl in a diaphanous veil waiting to be turned into a chimpanzee, and I care not who writes the nation’s laws.”

I kept this in my quote file decades before such things as quote files existed, which is itself a Sisyphean feat of science fiction.

The Last Laugh is, according to the inside front cover blurb, his twentieth and final book. The first part collects essays from The New Yorker, and the final part, three chapters, are, according to the introduction by Paul Theroux, the only pieces of his autobiography that he managed to finish.

Mike Royko was almost certainly heavily influenced by Perelman. From the rhythm of the language he uses, to the titles, to the habit of making up absurd names to carry absurd true stories, this book reminds me heavily of Mike Royko.

Although, every time I think Perelman has made up a film, it turns out to be real.

I was briefly employed at Warner Brothers-First National studio in Burbank, spot-welding the dialogue on a number of its pictures. Among the dozen or so screenwriters on the assembly line, which included Flotsman and Jetsman, a team that wrote several gangster classics, was one Winston Finston, a scholarly, withdrawn chap with a hearing aid, whose deafness, mercifully, shielded him from our boisterous witticisms. His particular achievement, I learned, was that he had furnished the idea for Dr. Ehrlich’s Magic Bullet, the movie, starring Edward G. Robinson, about the epochal discovery of arsphenamine, the anti-syphilitic compound marketed as Salvarsan.

Yes, there actually was a movie, starring Edward G. Robinson, about the discoverer of arsphenamine. And deservedly so, of course.

Many of Perelman’s essays here, and about one of the three chapters of the autobiographical section, involve the craziness of being a screenwriter for Hollywood. Those that don’t, tend to involve people like Dashiell Hammett and Dorothy Parker.

The collection starts off a bit slowly, probably because I didn’t know what I was in for, and I seriously considered putting it down. But by the time I got to the fifth essay, The Joy of Mooching, in which Perelman imagines (I hope) himself following the example of an author went out begging as a publicity stunt, I was hooked.

[R. · Rating 5 out of 5]

From sexy mermaid hoaxes to movie rewrites gone loco and from remainder bins to the wages of sin, these posthumous pieces of Perelman will delight and tickle even the grumpiest Travis Bickle on your holiday list.

[Christopher Roth · Rating 5 out of 5]

It's Perelman, so of course it's brilliant. The excerpts from the unfinished autobiography are especially fascinating. The more I read of him the more I put him in the top ranks of American humorists, near the very top.

[Pat · Rating 4 out of 5]

Wonderfully wacky. The last section made me wish he'd finished his autobiography.

[Brian · Rating 2 out of 5]

Posthumous works are often iffy. Some are great works of genius that have been hoarded, but more often with an established writer, they are filled with odds and ends that were deemed unpublishable by the author and the estate lacked such discretion. Such is the case with this. Perelman was a great jokester of the Marx Brothers movies and contributed many stories to the New Yorker in his prime. The examples of his writing for the New Yorker here are mostly stale and dated, with a few clever turns of phrase.

Excerpts Perelman's unpublished memoir are mostly Hollywood and Broadway name-dropping, with revelations of how painful and serious it is to be a comic writer, particularly one who gives off a public image of being relaxed and comfortable. The anecdotes about Groucho Marx and Dorothy Parker were hidden gems, but getting to them took patience.

[John Uzzi · Rating 4 out of 5]

Wonderful stylist full of anectodes

[Leew49 · Rating 4 out of 5]

SJ Perelman was one of the foremost humorists in an era that included Dorothy Parker, George S Kaufman Oscar Levant and Robert Benchley. Essayist, screenwriter, frequent contributor to THE NEW YORKER, and the man who put some of those outrageous witticisms into the mouth of Groucho Marx, Perelman is overlooked and underappreciated by modern readers. Many of his books are all but out of print and difficult to find in local libraries. I don't know what characteristic of 21st Century America should get the blame for this, so I'll simply point out that reading him is well worth your time. He was a master of satire without cruelty, vocabulary without pretentiousness and the most insightful nonsense that you're likely to encounter anywhere. THE LAST LAUGH contains not only the enjoyable imaginative spoofs that were his trademark but some very entertaining essays on some of his most notable contemporaries: Dorothy Parker, Nathaniel West and the Marx Brothers.

[David Allen · Rating 3 out of 5]

Up to the usual standard, I think, with the disconcerting benefit of a contemporary reference or two -- the '30s writer citing "Taxi Driver"? The attempts at memoir at the end are opaque and artful enough not to be trusted, but his impressions of the Marx Brothers, Dorothy Parker, Nathanael West and Elizabeth Taylor are fascinating anyway.

[Douglas Wilson · Rating 3 out of 5]

Good stuff.

[Claudia · Rating 3 out of 5]

His wit is razor sharp, no doubt, but I find it laborious to have to use a dictionary when reading in English. Great in small doses.

[Jill Minor]

FALSE

[Nicole Millman]

Very witty and refreshing.

[J.T. Allen · Rating 5 out of 5]

Perelman is a patron saint. Of what exactly, I'm not entirely certain, but I'm positive he is sitting next to the big guy at the pearly gates, keeping things in perspective.