As a humorist, Perelman is a pixie. He walks you down the garden path of simple declarative sentences, then smacks you with a load of double-jointed linguistics. He hits you on the shin with syntax, and when you double over, he steps in to clout you over the head with a hidden hieroglyphic. If you are a fan dating back to "Dawn Ginsbergh's Revenge," you'll find ["Westward, Ha!"], in these days of global consciousness, gives Perelman nothing less than a whole world to play with. If, on the other hand, you're new on the beat, let me warn you that the man sneaks up on you like four martinis. It all looks so pleasant and amiable, and all of sudden there you are rolling on the floor.

Horace Sutton, "Durante of Discourse," in The Saturday Review of Literature (copyright © 1948 by Saturday Review; all rights reserved; reprinted by permission...