I am fascinated with a type of writing that took place in the early part of the 20th century, especially from writers who wrote for publications on a weekly or monthly basis. S.J. Perelman is such a writer of excellence, and I imagine he had to think about what to write about; for example, in his column in the New Yorker, Cloudland Revisited. Robert Benchley is my other favorite writer and actually a mega-influence on my writing or headset. And now I think I will include Perelman in that small, tight room of influences.
Cloudland Revisited is an intriguing premise for his writing about literature and films that inspired or tickled his fancy as a child or teenager. Perelman revisits these books and films from his forties, and in a sense, he uses his early exploration of the pop arts to see where he is now. In a nutshell, this is pretty much how I approach my columns here on Substack. I recently found a soul brother. I believe that what one reads in their youth never leaves us, and we have a different opinion of that work at an older age; it is still a strong presence that is placed in our past, yet still very much alive in our present time.
One can say that S.F. Perelman is a humorist who wrote short stories, essays, plays, and pieces for The New Yorker and other publications. He also wrote the film scripts for The Marx Brothers’ Monkey Business and Horse Feathers. It seems that the relationship between Groucho Marx and Perelman was not good, nor was it a mutual love for each other. He wrote the musical One Touch of Venus, with music by Kurt Weill and lyrics by Ogden Nash. Even more impressive is that his brother-in-law was Nathanael West, the great novelist of the Depression.
What impresses me about Perelman is his writing, which is very dense and 19th-century-like but grounded in the contemporary culture of the early 20th century. His prose is beautiful and funny at the same time. Perelman spent a great deal of time in the cinema, and in his manner, he is very much a cineaste, but, at least in these writings, he avoids the classics and only writes about film and pulp-like adventure books that made an impression on him as a youth. The unusual aspect is that he revisits these works and concludes that perhaps he’s not the same boy as he is now a man. He writes about books such as The Mystery of Dr. Fu-Manchu and a film starring Erich von Stroheim’s (as well as directing) Foolish Wives, yet not once mentions his film Greed, a legendary work by Stroheim. He goes into the depth of the narrations of each book/film he reads/watches, but still, a fascinating trip to see these works through his mind. I also like the image of him seeing these films at the Museum of Modern Art in New York City. I needed to read Cloudland Revisited because although we are different, we have the same approach to digging into our youth/past for a new present.
One can buy Cloudland Revisited at your favorite local bookshop, and I purchased mine at Skylight Books.
Remembering and re-assessing … Richard Meltzer’s Aesthetics of Rock, a book that re-wired my 18 year old brain in 1970. It served as a diving board into the wider world of art, lit and philosophy. Read the Greil Marcus (again!) intro to the ‘86 re-issue with a focus on the multiple meanings of Sgt. Pepper… and the wondrous album cover with the ghostly head of Wallace serving as a halo over John’s head … who would have thought.
Perlman, Runyon, Hecht...