Cloudland Revisited

Description

From October 1948 to October 1953, The New Yorker published humourist S. J. Perelman’s ‘Cloudland Revisited’ series: 22 reviews of once-popular books and silent films whose expiration dates had passed. All but forgotten even at the time, they were nonetheless part of Perelman’s youth and made an indelible mark on him. In the comic genius’s biting satire they live once again: Gertrude Atherton’s sensationalist fantasy Black Oxen; Sax Rohmer’s supervillain blockbuster The Mystery of Dr. Fu-Manchu; the ‘underwater’ silent film adaptation of Twenty Thousand Leagues under the Sea; Edgar Rice Burrough’s 1914 novel Tarzan of the Apes; and George Barr McCutcheon’s 1901 historical fantasy novel Graustark-the Game of Thrones of its era-which launched numerous sequels and film adaptations. The complete series is collected here for the first time. With self-deprecating humour and frequent embarrassment, Perelman reflects on how rereading and rewatching brings us in contact with how we, like an ol