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Westward Ha!
More madcap travel chronicles from S.J. Perelman, heading west this time on a satiric romp from Hollywood to China, Singapore, Thailand, India, Egypt, and several luckless cities in Europe.
128 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1948
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About the author
S.J. Perelman
104 books99 followersSidney 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.
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Displaying 1 - 22 of 22 reviews
April 20, 2017
As follow-up to Twain’s Innocents Abroad, I recently read Westward Ha! in the globe-trotting vein. Soon after WWII, a magazine named Holiday actually suggested and financed a year-long jaunt around the world for two, shall we say, neurotic New Yorkers. What a world!
One had recently scripted several Marx Brothers movies, the other was a caricaturist, two more unlikely and unfit men for the job not having been found. The year was 1947, with the dollar supreme and the U.S. economy contributing half of the world’s. While the intended audience may have needed humoring, was this really the time to parade around two funny-ugly Americans while most of the globe, including Europe, were still reeling from the war’s destruction?
S.J. Perelman would go on to become a regular for The New Yorker, contributing a light touch and an exhaustive vocabulary to every page. His cohort, Al Hirschfeld, became New York’s in-town cartoonist, hiding his daughter Nina’s name in the wavy folds of his drawings.
They leave from the west coast, after an appropriately surreal time in Hollywood, and to their credit take cargo ships for much of the journey. (This was not as bad as it sounds; many were outfitted to take a handful or more passengers, before the death of this travel mode by a hundred insurance cuts.) The saltiness of sea language, which of course has permanently since berthed throughout this fair land, astonishes even our Hollywood-hardened narrator, with the
The book is billed as a laugh a minute, including a blurb from Gore Vidal gushing, “The funniest writer in America since – himself.” Bill Bryson, in a forward to a re-issued collection called The Most of S.J. Perelman, calls him “the most brilliant comic writer of his generation.”
Perelman is often funny, with the da-boom mode of humor, jolting you at sentences’s end, such as this one:
But there were few belly-laughs in it for me, as I found the jokes relentless and too precious.
In a dancing scene which could be straight out of a Marx Brothers movie, he writes:
The self-deprecating humor, and the endless insults traded between our buddy-team of S.J. and Al, are endearing, such as this time when the author mistakes a banana peel which caught him sleeping on a train in Malaysia:
One has to sympathize when he complains of the heat in Bombay:
Bryson calls the humor “zany, snappy, self-mocking, often wonderfully vicious,” which is true to a point, but oddly opines:
Perhaps Bryson spent too much time living in England, but hasn’t he read much Mark Twain?
Neither Bryson nor Perelman make any reference or allusion to his Innocents Abroad, which is so obviously the antecedent to Westward Ha! as to be the elephant on the boat.
Perelman suffers from the comparison. While he is “vicious” at times as Bryson claims, Twain, especially with his group of traveling buddies found on their circumnavigating ship, are bemused, while being wonderfully politically incorrect. While Perelman makes fun of Al and himself, Twain skewers himself and many of his fellow American pilgrims, far better capturing what it was like to be naive Yankees loose in a world of crazily un-American people. Twain takes aim at our own pretenders and sophisticates (roughly speaking, the New England elite at the time), while inviting them to laugh at the human nature absurdity of dealing with people so obviously unlike us. Instead, Perelman is practically one of those pretenders and sophisticates of his time, telling jokes for the Hollywood-Manhattan crowd. (Hirschfeld’s cartoons, many self-deprecating, are worth the book price.)
For Bryson, this bygone era is an enticing one,
Whereas Twain is often filled with genuine emotion at visiting the Holy Land and European sites of his childhood dreams, Perelman only expresses true admiration towards book’s end, for the Italians and the Brits:
Too bad Perelman took so long to get real. It makes one think: what if, going the other way, it had been Eastward Ha! (The name, coincidentally, of a book he wrote 30 years later.)
(While no doubt a master craftsman, perhaps there’s a reason why Perelman is out of print.)
The tradition of American humor and, while traveling outwards, the shock of cognition is indeed a long and illustrious one. It struck me that an afterword to my old copy of Innocents Abroad calls the narrator “a schlemiel- or clown-Westerner.” How varied and deep is America’s cultural roots that Twain, a Protestant, could be called the Yiddish schlemiel, that would blossom into both the Marx Brothers and Perelman – even if some don’t recognize it.
[S.J. Perelman, Westward Ha!, or Around the World in Eighty Clichés, Burford Books, Short Hills, NJ, 1998]
One had recently scripted several Marx Brothers movies, the other was a caricaturist, two more unlikely and unfit men for the job not having been found. The year was 1947, with the dollar supreme and the U.S. economy contributing half of the world’s. While the intended audience may have needed humoring, was this really the time to parade around two funny-ugly Americans while most of the globe, including Europe, were still reeling from the war’s destruction?
S.J. Perelman would go on to become a regular for The New Yorker, contributing a light touch and an exhaustive vocabulary to every page. His cohort, Al Hirschfeld, became New York’s in-town cartoonist, hiding his daughter Nina’s name in the wavy folds of his drawings.
They leave from the west coast, after an appropriately surreal time in Hollywood, and to their credit take cargo ships for much of the journey. (This was not as bad as it sounds; many were outfitted to take a handful or more passengers, before the death of this travel mode by a hundred insurance cuts.) The saltiness of sea language, which of course has permanently since berthed throughout this fair land, astonishes even our Hollywood-hardened narrator, with the
...ability to interthread every third word with one of the breezier copulative verbs, but soon ennui supervened and we set off listlessly for the ship. [p.59]
The book is billed as a laugh a minute, including a blurb from Gore Vidal gushing, “The funniest writer in America since – himself.” Bill Bryson, in a forward to a re-issued collection called The Most of S.J. Perelman, calls him “the most brilliant comic writer of his generation.”
Perelman is often funny, with the da-boom mode of humor, jolting you at sentences’s end, such as this one:
...his hand shook and a drop of perspiration glinted on his forehead, almost obscuring it. [p.70]
But there were few belly-laughs in it for me, as I found the jokes relentless and too precious.
In a dancing scene which could be straight out of a Marx Brothers movie, he writes:
...Mrs. Ledyard suddenly gave way to an excess of animal energy. She caught up a springy iron clapper, and, since I am always in the trajectory of people like that, fetched me a lethal blow on the sconce, causing a goose-egg. I overlooked it at the time, realizing the woman was in wine... [p.128]
The self-deprecating humor, and the endless insults traded between our buddy-team of S.J. and Al, are endearing, such as this time when the author mistakes a banana peel which caught him sleeping on a train in Malaysia:
...when I felt the clammy embrace, I naturally assumed a fer-de-lance was pitching woo at me. [p.85]
One has to sympathize when he complains of the heat in Bombay:
The reader may get some approximate notion of the discomfort we underwent if he dons a cable-stitch sweater, swallows three gallons of hot lemonade, and locks himself in his shoe-closet on an August afternoon. [p.110]
Bryson calls the humor “zany, snappy, self-mocking, often wonderfully vicious,” which is true to a point, but oddly opines:
It is a strange thing, but in the early 1920s, for no very obvious reason, America suddenly got funny. Before that time American humour [sic] had nearly always brought to mind the musings of an amiable rustic sitting on a rail fence...
Perhaps Bryson spent too much time living in England, but hasn’t he read much Mark Twain?
Neither Bryson nor Perelman make any reference or allusion to his Innocents Abroad, which is so obviously the antecedent to Westward Ha! as to be the elephant on the boat.
Perelman suffers from the comparison. While he is “vicious” at times as Bryson claims, Twain, especially with his group of traveling buddies found on their circumnavigating ship, are bemused, while being wonderfully politically incorrect. While Perelman makes fun of Al and himself, Twain skewers himself and many of his fellow American pilgrims, far better capturing what it was like to be naive Yankees loose in a world of crazily un-American people. Twain takes aim at our own pretenders and sophisticates (roughly speaking, the New England elite at the time), while inviting them to laugh at the human nature absurdity of dealing with people so obviously unlike us. Instead, Perelman is practically one of those pretenders and sophisticates of his time, telling jokes for the Hollywood-Manhattan crowd. (Hirschfeld’s cartoons, many self-deprecating, are worth the book price.)
For Bryson, this bygone era is an enticing one,
...a world where people wear reefers and leggings and carry reticules, where officers [sic] are filled with stenographers and mimeograph machines, subway rides forever cost a nickle, people dine at Lindy’s and the Stork Club and Schrafft’s...
Whereas Twain is often filled with genuine emotion at visiting the Holy Land and European sites of his childhood dreams, Perelman only expresses true admiration towards book’s end, for the Italians and the Brits:
No monument or shrine I saw in central Italy, and I was fated to see nearly all of them, was half as impressive as the dogged industry with which the people were restoring their homes and workshops. [p.129]
Nevertheless, there were a couple of traits I observed often enough in my stay to believe that they must be basic national characteristics: courage and serenity. It needed plenty of both have endured the rigors of the foregoing seven years and to face an extremely dubious future... [p.144]
Too bad Perelman took so long to get real. It makes one think: what if, going the other way, it had been Eastward Ha! (The name, coincidentally, of a book he wrote 30 years later.)
(While no doubt a master craftsman, perhaps there’s a reason why Perelman is out of print.)
The tradition of American humor and, while traveling outwards, the shock of cognition is indeed a long and illustrious one. It struck me that an afterword to my old copy of Innocents Abroad calls the narrator “a schlemiel- or clown-Westerner.” How varied and deep is America’s cultural roots that Twain, a Protestant, could be called the Yiddish schlemiel, that would blossom into both the Marx Brothers and Perelman – even if some don’t recognize it.
[S.J. Perelman, Westward Ha!, or Around the World in Eighty Clichés, Burford Books, Short Hills, NJ, 1998]
September 10, 2015
This was #6 of my read-through-the-bookshelf challenge, and it might be the best of the bunch so far.
The "50 Funniest Writers" anthology included a private-eye spoof from 1946 that left me dying with laughter. I tucked the author's name away in the back of my head; lo and behold, later that day the name jumped out at me from a bright yellow spine on my bookshelf, and I was like, "WHAT?!?"
S. J. Perelman may be my new favorite comedy writer, edging out both Dave Barry and Max Shulman. It's unfortunate that Westward Ha! appears to be his only full-length book, but... got two collections of his shorts in the mail to me as we speak. So we'll see.
Also, the book I have is the 1948 second edition; there's something special about holding the hardcover in your hands while the smell of nearly seventy years of tobacco and musty paper wafts up to you...
The "50 Funniest Writers" anthology included a private-eye spoof from 1946 that left me dying with laughter. I tucked the author's name away in the back of my head; lo and behold, later that day the name jumped out at me from a bright yellow spine on my bookshelf, and I was like, "WHAT?!?"
S. J. Perelman may be my new favorite comedy writer, edging out both Dave Barry and Max Shulman. It's unfortunate that Westward Ha! appears to be his only full-length book, but... got two collections of his shorts in the mail to me as we speak. So we'll see.
Also, the book I have is the 1948 second edition; there's something special about holding the hardcover in your hands while the smell of nearly seventy years of tobacco and musty paper wafts up to you...
February 12, 2014
One of the funniest books I've ever read. I'm writing this a good twenty years since reading this travelogue of Perelman's travels around the world, I still can vividly remember many parts of the book. It's Perelman's ability to string together an amazing set of words, seemingly unconnected otherwise, that was his magical writing ability.
This book would be impossible to sell today due to the cut of the average reader. Many trying to get through the book these days will be lost at, what were at one time, ten dollar words. Ten million dollar words would be a better description today.
If you don't mind having a dictionary handy, even for the most astute vocabulist, this is a must-read for anyone loving humor.
Bottom line: Definitely read!
This book would be impossible to sell today due to the cut of the average reader. Many trying to get through the book these days will be lost at, what were at one time, ten dollar words. Ten million dollar words would be a better description today.
If you don't mind having a dictionary handy, even for the most astute vocabulist, this is a must-read for anyone loving humor.
Bottom line: Definitely read!
February 19, 2020
This book held a prominent position on my NYC-born father’s book shelves. I remember tracing the illustrations and when presented to my dad, he would discuss more of Hirschfeld’s career with me. That was m introduction to a book I never read until now, although I have been a life-long Hirschfeld fan.
This book, loosely categorized as a travelogue, describes the travels and misadventures of a NY satirist/journalist and an already-revered illustrator, who are commissioned by an upscale magazine to gallivant around the world and write about it. Trouble is, it’s only two years after WWII, and a lot of the world hasn’t fully recovered.
The writing seems dated but surely of a higher caliber than what most of us read today. Perelman tells a good story, uses words not even found on an SAT, and evokes quite a few belly laughs. His chapter on India is hilarious.
Still, his literary legacy left with this book is one of American arrogance, racism and misogyny. Keep the writing within the context of the time (Americans were high on victory) and the magazine’s targeted demographic in 1947 (rich, white men) and you may be able to work past it.
Hirschfeld’s drawings are identifiable as Hirschfeld, but don’t rise to his iconic work, which came later, of course. Several illustrations are offensive by today’s “woke” standards.
I’m happy to have the book in my collection, but I consider it a strong reminder of how much American society has evolved and that the goal of “Great Again” is a very narrow and backward vision.
This book, loosely categorized as a travelogue, describes the travels and misadventures of a NY satirist/journalist and an already-revered illustrator, who are commissioned by an upscale magazine to gallivant around the world and write about it. Trouble is, it’s only two years after WWII, and a lot of the world hasn’t fully recovered.
The writing seems dated but surely of a higher caliber than what most of us read today. Perelman tells a good story, uses words not even found on an SAT, and evokes quite a few belly laughs. His chapter on India is hilarious.
Still, his literary legacy left with this book is one of American arrogance, racism and misogyny. Keep the writing within the context of the time (Americans were high on victory) and the magazine’s targeted demographic in 1947 (rich, white men) and you may be able to work past it.
Hirschfeld’s drawings are identifiable as Hirschfeld, but don’t rise to his iconic work, which came later, of course. Several illustrations are offensive by today’s “woke” standards.
I’m happy to have the book in my collection, but I consider it a strong reminder of how much American society has evolved and that the goal of “Great Again” is a very narrow and backward vision.
July 10, 2017
Curious about Perelman based on his work with the Marx Brothers, I thought I'd start with his early work. Though overall humorous, parts felt forced, as if every sentence needed to be wrung for comic effect. I'm looking forward to reading some of his later work. Note: Some readers might be offended by the vernacular of the day referring to other cultures.
June 19, 2017
It's been years since I read it, but I remember loving this book! Hilarious essays with wonderful illustrations.
October 25, 2017
It's very rare that I won't finish a book but I found I could not finish this one. I couldn't find any humor amongst all the sexism and racism. But then again I don't have a sense of humor.
January 11, 2025
Very funny. Perelman is at his best when he’s detailing his exaggerated real-life misadventures, and what could be better/worse than an awful, prolonged trip around the world. The Hirschfeld illustrations are icing on the cake.
August 11, 2016
Travel provides rich material for satire. From the misinformed plans, to the mishaps en route, to the boring photographic record foisted on friends, journeys offer boundless scope for mockery—of oneself (the traveler), of others, of the ways of the world, and of travel itself.
S. J. Perelman takes all of these on in his wild romp Westward Ha!, the story of the world tour he and his friend Hirschfeld— theatrical caricaturist for the New York Times—undertook for Holiday magazine in the 40s. In 9 months, they visited 27 countries, “all the areas celebrated by Kipling, Conrad, and Maugham,” including Shanghai, Hongkong, Thailand—Siam at the time—Malaya, India, Egpyt, Italy, France, and England.
Everywhere, they suffer, and always extremely: from seasickness, heat, wretched food, horrid lodgings, rude bureaucrats, greedy vendors, and even homesickness that has them craving hot pastrami sandwiches and strawberry cheesecake. All this suffering, of course, is described with lively humor that is captured in Hirschfeld’s delightful drawings: one of my favorites shows our heroes boarding their ship “ingloriously,” crawling on hands and knees across a gangplank.
Perelman does find (a few) places he likes—but I can’t imagine reading this book as a guide. You’d read it for the depictions of the awful experiences—the author slithering through the tunnels of the pyramids, “enriching every medical concept of claustrophobia,” and dragging behind him the deadweight of another terrified tourist who is clutching his ankles; or racing through Naples, Pompeii, Rome, Siena, Florence, Pisa, and Genoa in 4 days, an expedition that the guide himself considers “unmitigated lunar idiocy” and that leaves the author so zonked that only when his mouth is “pried open with a sharp stick and a shakerful of martinis introduced” does he revive.
This is broad humor—slapstick, really—but Perelman handles it cleverly. If some of the comedy seems dated, much remains funny, and the author’s astute critique of tourism—the inanities of our travels, the exaggerations of our stories—remains pertinent today. We seem to think that all the rushing about, the seeing and doing is self-improving. Is it? Back home in New York, sitting with Hirschfeld one year later, the two reflect on their journey:
“Looking at the whole thing in retrospect, we saw with incredulity that we had come through our adventure absolutely unscathed. In our faces was none of that rich harvest of serenity and wisdom, that fund of mellow philosophy to lighten the daily burden, and that broad tolerance for human frailty guaranteed to shine forth from the countenance of the returned traveler. If anything, we were more crabbed, pettifogging, and ornery than before we had set off.”
So much for the idealized virtues of touristic travel—but after all, there is always the human comedy it provides.
S. J. Perelman takes all of these on in his wild romp Westward Ha!, the story of the world tour he and his friend Hirschfeld— theatrical caricaturist for the New York Times—undertook for Holiday magazine in the 40s. In 9 months, they visited 27 countries, “all the areas celebrated by Kipling, Conrad, and Maugham,” including Shanghai, Hongkong, Thailand—Siam at the time—Malaya, India, Egpyt, Italy, France, and England.
Everywhere, they suffer, and always extremely: from seasickness, heat, wretched food, horrid lodgings, rude bureaucrats, greedy vendors, and even homesickness that has them craving hot pastrami sandwiches and strawberry cheesecake. All this suffering, of course, is described with lively humor that is captured in Hirschfeld’s delightful drawings: one of my favorites shows our heroes boarding their ship “ingloriously,” crawling on hands and knees across a gangplank.
Perelman does find (a few) places he likes—but I can’t imagine reading this book as a guide. You’d read it for the depictions of the awful experiences—the author slithering through the tunnels of the pyramids, “enriching every medical concept of claustrophobia,” and dragging behind him the deadweight of another terrified tourist who is clutching his ankles; or racing through Naples, Pompeii, Rome, Siena, Florence, Pisa, and Genoa in 4 days, an expedition that the guide himself considers “unmitigated lunar idiocy” and that leaves the author so zonked that only when his mouth is “pried open with a sharp stick and a shakerful of martinis introduced” does he revive.
This is broad humor—slapstick, really—but Perelman handles it cleverly. If some of the comedy seems dated, much remains funny, and the author’s astute critique of tourism—the inanities of our travels, the exaggerations of our stories—remains pertinent today. We seem to think that all the rushing about, the seeing and doing is self-improving. Is it? Back home in New York, sitting with Hirschfeld one year later, the two reflect on their journey:
“Looking at the whole thing in retrospect, we saw with incredulity that we had come through our adventure absolutely unscathed. In our faces was none of that rich harvest of serenity and wisdom, that fund of mellow philosophy to lighten the daily burden, and that broad tolerance for human frailty guaranteed to shine forth from the countenance of the returned traveler. If anything, we were more crabbed, pettifogging, and ornery than before we had set off.”
So much for the idealized virtues of touristic travel—but after all, there is always the human comedy it provides.
April 25, 2016
Just two years after World War Two ended, the upscale travel magazine Holiday sent S.J. Perelman and Al Hirschfeld on a (non-Communist) world tour.
The idea of a leisurely survey of Asia--particularly Indonesia, Vietnam, and India--was certainly timely. With Japan defeated and the European colonial powers in retreat, and with Communism's advance in China, the US was expanding its reach into Asia to confront the only remaining rival for power, the USSR; as in Latin America and Africa, the Cold War took the form of competing for the attention of emerging independent states which, no matter what they said about military non-alignment, were seen as facing a clear-cut choice between superpower patrons. (And if wartime liberation movements formed governments in those states, it was likely they’d choose neutrality, which the US State Department considered just as bad as actual affiliation with China or the USSR.) Tourism had barely touched this part of the world, but visitors with dollars were more than welcome, and if they needed reassurance that they were safe, a series of vivid, lighthearted reports could provide it. The European tourist trade needed rebuilding too, so the Holiday tour included stops in France and England.
But it was a very odd idea to send Perelman, whose general outlook is captured in the titles of his collected New Yorker pieces: "Old Vinegar Puss," "Baby, It's Cold Inside," "The Rising Gorge" etc. What Holiday got was a couple of chapters devoted to leaving the US--including a devastatingly funny riff on LA and the movie business--and a series of very entertaining grumbles about nightmare hotels, repellent food, horrible colonials (the Dutch in Indonesia come in for special scorching), venal border officials, sniffy French intellectuals, and unbearable fellow-tourists. Perelman fell in love with Bangkok, but the rest of the time seems to have been unremitting misery; if this was the white man's postwar burden, he implies, he would be glad to unshoulder it.
It is funny, in the line of later travel whines like "Around the World in a Bad Mood" and "Music in Every Room," and if you like the way Perelman uses language (as I do) you can try to ignore the steady grinding of teeth and the benighted attitude toward Asian peoples. I grew up reading Perelman in the New Yorker, and I'm still an admirer of his "Cloudland Revisited" pieces about movies and books he liked as a kid, before he adopted the sourpuss persona (which, according to his biographer, fit him more and more closely as the years went by.) So I give it four stars, waveringly, because three and a half isn't an option.
The idea of a leisurely survey of Asia--particularly Indonesia, Vietnam, and India--was certainly timely. With Japan defeated and the European colonial powers in retreat, and with Communism's advance in China, the US was expanding its reach into Asia to confront the only remaining rival for power, the USSR; as in Latin America and Africa, the Cold War took the form of competing for the attention of emerging independent states which, no matter what they said about military non-alignment, were seen as facing a clear-cut choice between superpower patrons. (And if wartime liberation movements formed governments in those states, it was likely they’d choose neutrality, which the US State Department considered just as bad as actual affiliation with China or the USSR.) Tourism had barely touched this part of the world, but visitors with dollars were more than welcome, and if they needed reassurance that they were safe, a series of vivid, lighthearted reports could provide it. The European tourist trade needed rebuilding too, so the Holiday tour included stops in France and England.
But it was a very odd idea to send Perelman, whose general outlook is captured in the titles of his collected New Yorker pieces: "Old Vinegar Puss," "Baby, It's Cold Inside," "The Rising Gorge" etc. What Holiday got was a couple of chapters devoted to leaving the US--including a devastatingly funny riff on LA and the movie business--and a series of very entertaining grumbles about nightmare hotels, repellent food, horrible colonials (the Dutch in Indonesia come in for special scorching), venal border officials, sniffy French intellectuals, and unbearable fellow-tourists. Perelman fell in love with Bangkok, but the rest of the time seems to have been unremitting misery; if this was the white man's postwar burden, he implies, he would be glad to unshoulder it.
It is funny, in the line of later travel whines like "Around the World in a Bad Mood" and "Music in Every Room," and if you like the way Perelman uses language (as I do) you can try to ignore the steady grinding of teeth and the benighted attitude toward Asian peoples. I grew up reading Perelman in the New Yorker, and I'm still an admirer of his "Cloudland Revisited" pieces about movies and books he liked as a kid, before he adopted the sourpuss persona (which, according to his biographer, fit him more and more closely as the years went by.) So I give it four stars, waveringly, because three and a half isn't an option.
September 11, 2014
CNN listed this as one of the funniest travel books ever written and they were right. This was a funny, laugh out loud book chronicling a trip made in 1947 by S.J. Perelman (a New Yorker columnist) and caricaturist Al Hirschfeld. They left New York City, traveled to Hollywood, and went by boat, train, plane, and other through China, Singapore, Siam (Thailand), India, Egypt, Italy, Paris, and London.
S.J. Perelman has a wry, ironic, wit with his writing that is filled with satire and the unexpected. Al Hirschfeld peppered the short novel with his funny caricatures and sketches of life on the road through post WWII Asia and Europe. Both were a great compliment to this supposed travel log that had less to do with the scenery and spoke more about the people, climate, and just getting from one point to the other.
S.J. Perelman has a wry, ironic, wit with his writing that is filled with satire and the unexpected. Al Hirschfeld peppered the short novel with his funny caricatures and sketches of life on the road through post WWII Asia and Europe. Both were a great compliment to this supposed travel log that had less to do with the scenery and spoke more about the people, climate, and just getting from one point to the other.
April 13, 2010
This book is from the 50's or 60's, but it is still hilarious. The author's use of the English language along with preposterously exagerated but still possible situations provides most of the laughs. Mr. Perelman uses a lot of clever word play and I read the book again and found a lot of great lines I had overlooked.
S. J. Perelman used to work with the Marx Brothers on their movies and a lot of his writing has that same fun element to it.
S. J. Perelman used to work with the Marx Brothers on their movies and a lot of his writing has that same fun element to it.
March 4, 2015
I haven't read Perelman in many many years and he is classic humorist. When I was young, a husband used to read him to me aloud and I always like him read that way. Great NY literary characters and a good story (some of it true) but sad to say that I found the writing dated this time. The world has changed so much.
November 13, 2009
Purposefully pretentious writing, and satire that made me laugh out loud at times. Although this book is short, I filled several lists of words to look up in the dictionary. This is a classic of high-brow humor.
August 3, 2007
Decent subway reading. Some really funny descriptions, though much of the narrative felt a bit dated, and some a bit dashed off.
October 23, 2012
If you've never read SJ Perelman, you're in for such a treat! One of the wittiest, funniest curmudgeons ever...I never get tired of reading his pieces.
June 25, 2013
I guess I just didn't "get" the humor
August 11, 2013
Enjoyable travelogue from a writer who once put words into Groucho's mouth. (Hirschfeld's drawings made the book for me).
September 15, 2014
If you read one Perelman book, this should be it.
November 21, 2009
Around the world with a grumpy old ugly American. In a good way.
January 29, 2015
I remember borrowing this from my hometown library when I was in junior high.
May 15, 2017
A top humorist, by anyone's standard.
Displaying 1 - 22 of 22 reviews