There were several major influences on Perelman's themes and style. A voracious reader throughout his life, Perelman publicly admitted to having been influenced by popular fiction (the Toby Tyler books, Graustark, Girl of the Limberlost, Trail of the Lonesome Pine, The Woman Thou Gavest, The Mystery of Fu Manchu, The Winning of Barbara Worth, Three Weeks, Scaramouche, Polyanna), the Horatio Alger success story, the novels of Charles Dickens, and the writings of H. L. Mencken, George Ade, Stephen Leacock, Max Beerbohm, Ring Lardner, Robert Benchley, Donald Ogden Stewart, Frank Sullivan, Flann O'Brien, W. Somerset Maugham, T. S. Eliot, Raymond Chandler, E. M. Forster, Henry David Thoreau, George Jean Nathan, and James Joyce. The humorist's early interest in cartooning also clearly affected his writing and scholarly analyses have demonstrated the impact of Yiddish and American humor traditions and Hollywood films as well.

There is even some evidence...