Perelman Tonight: Perelman the mini-dramatist -- Part 1 of "How Sharper Than a Serpent's Tooth"

"How Sharper Than a Serpent's Tooth" first
appeared in The New Yorker of Jan. 5, 1946.

"The instinct to conceal one's true livelihood from the kiddies, for fear of their possible scorn, is as normal as snoring. A highly solvent gentleman in Forest Hills, a vestryman and the father of three, once told me in wine that for thirty years, under twelve different pseudonyms, he had supplied the gamiest kind of pulp fiction to Snappy Stories and Flynn's, although his children believed him to be a stockbroker."

-- from "How Sharper Than a Serpent's Tooth"

by Ken

I know we left Acres and Pains hanging after our third installment on Thursday. I hope you'll want to pursue it on your own.

Following the rude interruption of last night's "special edition" of "Thurber Tonight," devoted to last night's Thurber celebration at the 92nd Street Y with guests including Thurber's daughter Rosemany, we return to our regularly scheduled programming. We were already scheduled to move on to a piece cast in a form Perelman was extremely fond of: a prose setup, often from a literary or other written source, or even -- as in this case -- a movie, which he spun into the basis of an illustrative playlet. (You see, all those wasted years in Hollywood didn't go entirely to waste!)

I thought the whole of "How Sharper Than a Serpent's Tooth" would run kind of long for a single installment, but the problem in splitting it up is that the setup is considerably shorter than the playlet. To compensate -- and I hope to whet your appetite for the minidrama that follows -- I've included in Part 1 the extensive stage setting. (Not to worry, it will be repeated along with the actual drama in tomorrow night's installment.)


FOR PART 1 OF "HOW SHARPER THAN
A SERPENT'S TOOTH," CLICK HERE


THURBER TONIGHT (including BENCHLEY, WILL CUPPY, WOLCOTT GIBBS, RING LARDNER, BOB AND RAY, E. B. WHITE, JEAN SHEPHERD, and PERELMAN TONIGHT): Check out the series to date

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