When I turned to a random page of the collected works of S.J. Perelman — newly available in a sleek, beetle-black edition, courtesy of the Library of America — here’s what I got: “Just in case anybody ...

Though he reached the ripe old age of 75, S.J. Perelman never burdened his readers with anything like a magnum opus. There is no solo-penned novel in the Perelman bibliography, and though he was a ...

S.J. Perelman rightly belongs on the Mount Rushmore of American humorists. Like many writers of his day, Perelman supported himself in Hollywood—he wrote two screenplays for the Marx Brothers and won ...

1. S.J. Perelman was unique among writers of humor, of any period, because his writing was a record of his reading. Imprinted for life by the pulp fiction, from Arthur Conan Doyle to Sax Rohmer, that ...

Among aspiring comedy writers, the would-be print humorist seems rare. Though The Onion, McSweeney’s, and The New Yorker are high-profile exceptions, it seems everyone wants to write for sitcoms, late ...

This year is The New Yorker’s eighty-fifth anniversary. To celebrate, over eighty-five weekdays we will turn a spotlight on a notable article, story, or poem from the magazine’s history. The issue ...

Add articles to your saved list and come back to them any time. Humour, by its very nature, has a short shelf life, so that looking down from the mountain of dead humour can be dizzying. Medieval gag ...

Sign up for our weekly home and property newsletter, featuring homes for sale, neighborhood happenings, and more. It is hard to pick out a single remarkable detail ...