Books: Looney Bin

KEEP IT CRISP (272 pp.)—S. J. Perelman—Random House ($2.50).

The dentist strapped Sidney Joseph Perelman into the chair with six towels and forced his jaws apart with a blunt instrument. “Now then, where are his X rays?” he asked the nurse. “We haven’t any,” she said. “This is the first time he’s been here.” “Well, bring me any X rays,” barked the dentist; “when you’ve seen one tooth you’ve seen them all.”

Firing a burst of compressed air down Perelman’s gullet, the dentist chortled:”Well, friend, you may as well know the worst. These are the teeth of an 80-year-old man. . . . Who put those [inlays] in — a steamfitter? . . . Miss Smedley, how many times have I told you not to count the patient’s money in front of him? Take the wallet outside and go through it there. . . . H’m’m’m, a cleft palate. . . . While we’re at it, I think we’d better tear out those lowers with a jackhammer.”

The dentist took up a hypodermic syringe “of the type used on brewery horses,” and sank it in Author Perelman’s gum. Then, he “snatched up his drill, took a firm purchase on my hair and teed off. . . Two thin wisps of smoke circled up ward slowly from my ears . . . [my] screams . . . rattled the windows. . . . ‘Don’t be afraid now,’ chuckled the dentist, patting “the mass of protoplasm” that had once been a man; ‘this won’t hurt a bit.’

“Dental surgery is just one of the phases of contemporary life that are kicked in the teeth by S. J. Perelman in his latest collection of diatribes — 25 essays, parodies, playlets, mock radio dramas, most of which have appeared in the New Yorker. Other Perelman subjects:

¶ Tabu, the “Forbidden” perfume (“forbidden to anyone who doesn’t have $18.50 for an ounce of it”).

¶ The National Hotel Exposition— “an annual powwow at which innkeepers forgather to discuss. . . the maintenance of proper standards of insolence among room clerks.”

¶The world of J. P. Marquand (So Little Time; H. M. Pulham, Esq.) — as viewed in Perelman parody — “Out of these things, and many more, is woven the warp and wool of my childhood memory: the dappled sunlight on the great lawns of Chowderhead, our summer estate at Newport, the bitter-sweet fragrance of stranded eels at low tide, the alcoholic breath of a clubman wafted on the breeze from Bailey’s Beach. . . .”

¶ “The Self-Running 10-Inch Scale-Model Delivery-Truck Kit Powered by Magic Motor”— a toy that is easily assembled by any father who follows the simple directions: “Pass Section F through Slot AA, taking care not to fold tabs behind washers (see Fig. 9). . . . Lock into box shape by inserting tabs C,D,E,F,G,H,I,K, and L into slots C,D,E,F,G,H,I,K, and L. . . .” — “with a bestial oath, I drove a safety pin through them and lashed them to the roof.”

Devoured at one gulp, Keep It Crisp is likely to prove as indigestible as a jigger of hydrochloric acid. Sipped slowly, it will bring joy and good will to all those whose “five feet seven of lanky, bronzed strength” is daily “oppressed by the characteristic shortness of breath, mingled with giddiness and general trepidation” that characterizes a high standard of living.