Don't tread on me : the selected letters of S. J. Perelman

Nominated for the 1987 National Book Critics Circle Award for biography/autobiography, this volume presents the selected letters of Perelman, ranging from 1928 to the year of his death. There are letters to T.S. Eliot, Groucho Marx, James Thurber, Raymond Chandler, Nash Ogden, Malcolm Cowley, and Paul Theroux. The letters are interesting, charming and beautifully written, but reveal a self-centered man and an indifferent parent. They include scathing comments on Malcolm Muggeridge, Dore Schary, Norman Mailer, and David Surskind; and deal obliquely with the disappointments he felt with his family, financial problems, work load, hatred of Hollywood, and bickerings with editors and publishers.