SOURCE: "S. J. Perelman: A Basket of Grovels," in Essays in Disguise, Alfred A. Knopf, 1990, pp. 47-54.

In the following review of The Last Laugh, originally published in 1981, Sheed examines the ingredients of Perelman's humor, but remarks that this volume lach some of the vigor of Perelman's earlier work.

Cyril Connolly once observed that even P. G. Wodehouse might have profited from being told which of his books was better than which. But nobody wants to review a humorist. Such notices as the funnymen get are generally either facetious, because the reviewer dreads seeming pompous, or vaguely eulogistic: "Another whatnot by the inimitable . . . need one say more?"

Whether criticism ever really helps anybody, it can, by its sheer mass, make a writer seem impressive, like stuffing in a dress shirt. So it is sobering to realize that a writer of the late S. J. Perelman's eminence probably went...