The Swiss Family Perelman

by S.J. Perelman

Book Overview

THE SWISS FAMILY PERELMAN is the hilarious and unforgettable account of the master humorist Perelman's trip around the world with his wife, son, daughter, and a cello. This collection of stories,... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0140080406
• Release Date: July 1987
• Publisher: Penguin Books
• Length: 224 Pages
• Weight: 0.35 lbs.

Customer Reviews

Buy this book!

Like most of the other stuff from the master, if you have a yen for humor with brains, please, please buy this book. A columnist for the New Yorker, screenplay writer for the Marx Brothers, humorist par excellence - do you need more reasons? How about the fact that he makes most other humorists look like college boys indulging in frat-house antics... Buy and enjoy! And then, buy the rest of his oeuvre!!

My favorite travel book ever

Hilarious account of the year legendary humorist S. J. Perelman took his family (wife and two mid-sized children) on a trip around the world. A follow-up to the equally delightful "Westward, Ha!", his similar trip with illustrator Al Hirschfeld. They travel the South Seas and Asia, the Middle East and all over Europe, accumulating ever larger piles of impedimentia.Every sentence sparkles with Perelman's unique and exquisite brand of "airy persiflage" (reassuring a threatening official of a tyranical oil company: "No muckraker I, I nervously assured him, but a vapid little tomtit writing elegiacs about temple bells and lepidoptera"). Not only funny, but a very interesting look at a the state of the world still readjusting itself from WWII. Heartily recommended.