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Sidney J. Perelman is Judge's able artist-author of many a crazy drawing, crazy patter. His form of humor: to satirize the commonplace by exaggerating it. His puns are so startling they are often funny; his patchwork of hackneyed phrases so unexpected and alliterative it often shocks you into laughter. Alliterative, too, are his illustrations. With Quentin J. Reynolds of the New York Evening World he has written a lively, whimsical, improbable but satirical yarn in which his hand is evident but not quite evident enough. The chapter-headings, take-offs on an old tradition, are obviously Perelman-propounded. Example: "The foundling on the priory steps—In which an ankle is sprained and a question asked—A pitcher is sent to the well and traded to the Braves—The long arm of coincidence rears its ugly head and in its hand is a hammer —An inkling about the foundling."
Hero Chester Tattersall, unremarkable employe of a Manhattan telephone company suddenly finds himself rich through the demise of Uncle Marmaduke, surveying instrument tycoon. His first action is to take a "gyp" taxi (one charging more than the minimum fare) for a long ride. Then he rents an oversized apartment and proceeds to enjoy his life. The record of his adventures makes lively if not edifying reading, contains many a pungently satirical comment on U. S. urban and suburban life. Sometimes Authors Perelman and Reynolds call a spade by its trade name. Says a Manhattan newspaperman, complaining as is the custom of newspapermen: "Some business. Work for the Telegram, there's a paper. When you're fifty-five and you've been there twenty years, they give you a week's pay. Bye-bye, little boy, another guy hobbling on a cane in the State institution. Or work for the Sun, that gentle old Y. M. C. A. Smoke a cigaret in the city room and you'll be sleeping on a park bench the same night. Or work for the Post, with the Great White Father of the Curtis publications spying on you from Philadelphia. Oh yes, Mr. Lorimer. Oh no, Mr. Lorimer. Or work for the Brooklyn papers, like the Eagle. They raise you till you get seventy-five a week and then fire you. They'll hire you back the next day for forty. Or work for Mr. Hearst, he pays the best. Sure he does, until some mug blows in from Chicago who's a friend of the efficiency boys. I tell you, anybody who goes into this racket is crazy."
Malay Utopia
THE LAST PARADISE—Hickman Powell—Cape & Smith ($4).
The island of Bali, just east of Java, due south of Borneo, is owned by Holland but enjoys a rare domestic independence. The Dutch policy is Bali for the Balinese. With an extremely fertile soil, Bali raises and exports pigs, cattle, copra, coffee. Says Author Powell: the Balinese are furthermore the most artistic race in the world.
"There is in the language of Bali no word for art. There is no word for artist. A man is a stone carver, a wood carver, a painter, a goldsmith; that his work will be a striving for the beautiful is taken for granted. But charming though it be, Bali is no saccharine Utopia, monotonous with felicity. As in other tropic countries, milk and honey come in cans. There women grow old and shrink to hideous phantoms of themselves."