SOURCE: Review of Baby, It's Cold Inside, in The Christian Science Monitor, September 24, 1970, p. 11.

In the following review, Nordell comments on the "verbal vaudeville" of Perelman's writing.

Publishing this book in 1970 is casting Perelman before swine, to use one of his favorite words. The world has changed more than Perelman has. If I don't laugh out loud at his pages as often as I used to, the deficiency has got to be mine, not his.

For four decades the books have been coming, adding up to a fabulous rococo monument of comic invention. In this first collection of pieces since 1966, the wordmanship remains dazzling.

But it sometimes suddenly seems more and more about less and less. One admires the edifice of fantasy rising from a tiny news item, for example, appreciating the exactitude of the hyperbolic detail. Only it isn't so much fun anymore. It includes topical references...