Reading S. J. Perelman's latest book "The Road to Miltown," the professional humorist is apt to experience sensations similar to those known to pianists who listen to an Art Tatum recording. He feels, in other words, like giving up.

Perelman is simply too good. The suspicion arises that there is no real Perelman any more, but that some diabolically ingenious technician has succeeded in equipping a Univac machine with a complete supply of the world's literary clichés, a vocabulary ranging from Chaucer to Madison Avenuese, a fund of what is commonly regarded as the British gift for understatement, counterbalanced by consummate mastery of what is commonly regarded as the American gift for overstatement, a jolt of Groucho Marxish lunacy … and the perception of a philosopher, and that this fantastic device simply keeps Simon & Schuster supplied with an endless stack of funny essays, constructed along certain predictable but...