S.J. Perelman, born at the beginning of the twentieth century, was a writer who thrived in two milieus – as a screenwriter for the Marx Brothers and as a comic essayist, most notably for The New Yorker. Perelman is an unusual influence for an Australian born in the late 1960s, but the precision of his language, his erudition, and his sheer wit make him the best of teachers for any writer. Tegan Bennett Daylight talks about her lifelong engagement with Perelman’s work.