SOURCE: "Meisterzinger," in The Atlantic, Vol. 226, No. 6, December, 1970, pp. 108-10.

In the following review of Baby, It's Cold Inside, Kanfer comments on Perelman's influences and literary influence, as well as the aim of his humor.

Thirty-two mind-expanding master-works that make any trip—other than to your neighborhood bookstore—completely unnecessary . . . S. J. Perelman: "Baby, it's Cold Inside " . . . Right on.

—Advertisement in The New York Times

Had you been reading with Holmesian detachment and Moriartic zeal, you would have noticed a cunning homunculus hanging, mandrill-like, from these lines. Judge-sober, kite-high, and mud-clear, he was one of Nature's noble creatures or, perhaps more accurately, one of Barnes & Noble's nature creatures. A schlemiel-in-itself, with a nose no larger than the prow of the Statendam, a voice that shamed the memory of Farinelli, the great Neapolitan castrato, and a mustard-keen ability to separate the amateur from the prose, I (for let us...