The Most of S J Perelman (pdf)

The Most of S. J. Perelman (Simon and Schuster, 1958). 656 pages.

New scan. Searchable pdf (clearscan) with contents in bookmarks, accurate pagination and metadata, etc.

Perelman, though almost forgotten today, was once known as being among the best, if the THE best, humor writer in America. His highly influential columns from the New Yorker are collected in this fat volume, as well as several other book-length works. If you're not familiar with him, check out his entry in wikipedia as well as some of the essays that appear when his name is googled. This guy is really not to be missed -- the day of his rediscovery by a wider audience will surely come before too long.

This book is now out of print, apparently because the publisher believed it was TOO MUCH Perelman. Now the only book you can get new is called "Most of the Most of S. J. Perelman," an abridgment of the volume here offered.

back cover:

This is the biggest, best and funniest of S. J. Perelman's work ever assembled between two covers. Described in the New York Times as a "living national treasure," Perelman's prose is so distinctively humorous, so elegantly hilarious, it practically constitutes a literary category unto itself.

[Scanner's note: that's literally true -- this stuff is often downright surreal.]