Books: Secretarial Doodles

LISTEN TO THE MOCKING BIRD (153 pp.) —S. J. Perelman—Simon & Schuster ($2.95).

It was possible “in the early twenties . . . to hire the recording secretary of the Classical High School debating society—a man whose mordant irony reminded his auditors of Disraeli and Brann the Iconoclast, although he had scarcely turned 16 —to sift your ashes and beat your carpets at 30¢ an hour. Even I find it almost too fantastic to credit, and, mind you, I was the recording secretary.”

Times and prices have changed since the twenties, but the Secretary, Sid Perelman, goes on recording with the same sharp pencil. Listen to the Mocking Bird is the latest collection of his bits and skits in The New Yorker.

Fortified by his experience with the debating society, Sid Perelman has become a kind of secretary of society in general—the kind who doodles in the minutes book, makes faces at the principal speaker, and sneaks out in the middle of the meeting. Of late years, Perelman has done little more than sift the ashes of his satire (at considerably more than 30¢ an hour). Listen to the Mocking Bird contains a heap of clinkers, but enough live coals (Mortar and Pestle, and some book reviews) to keep Perelmaniacs hopping.