Adam Gopnik presents the very best of S. J. Perelman Americas zaniest humorist. S. J. Perelman 19041979 wrote for the Marx Brothers films Horse Feathers and Monkey Business and won an Oscar for his screenwriting on Around the World in Eighty Days but he remains best known for his many sketches and essays penned for The New Yorker during its golden age of humor. In these short comic piecesPerelman called them feuilletonshis penchant for wordplay witticism spoofery selfdeprecation and plain