Mary Agnes, known as “Mame,” loved telling stories and staging practical jokes. Is My Life and Hard Times a memoir, fiction, or some sublime blend of the two? Ross hired Thurber as an editor, but Thurber quickly shucked his administrative duties in favor of writing. Continuum, 1988. “We can’t make it, sir. Thurberville. What we get is an overblown homily on the virtues of self-actualization—James Thurber by way of Dale Carnegie. Even while seated in the New Yorker’s gloomy art-meeting room, he seemed in full motion, his clothes atwitch with nervous shiftings of arm and leg, his head jerking toward his interviewer as he asked a question or made a point. “The Old Man ain’t afraid of Hell!”. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1994. He walked over and twisted a row of complicated dials. A specialist eventually removed Thurber’s injured eye, but his right eye was permanently weakened, and by 1937 he was going blind. “I’m not an artist,” he told an interviewer in 1939. Not to say that it should be abolished -- just put in its proper, diminished place. Richard C. Tobias. Remember Laughter: A Life of James Thurber. Report scam, HUMANITIES, January/February 2015, Volume 36, Number 1, HUMANITIES: The Magazine of the National Endowment for the Humanities, SUBSCRIBE FOR HUMANITIES MAGAZINE PRINT EDITION, Sign up for HUMANITIES Magazine newsletter, The Rise and Fall and Rise of Roy Orbison, Standing Together: The Humanities and the Experience of War, Chronicling America: History American Newspapers. Thurber described his mother as a "born comedian" and "one of the finest comic talents I think I have ever known." James Grover Thurber was born December 8, 1894, in Columbus, Ohio, the second of Mary Agnes and Charles Thurber’s three sons. But his gift for language is timeless, and the stories of his Ohio boyhood seem as fresh today as when they were written. Each available at Amazon for $3.95: click on image to order. And here is just a bouquet of praise from writers of nearly every genre: “Thurber’s wit sustains life. just as he enlarged and made immortal the strange goings on in the Ohio home of his boyhood.”. Unable to enlist as a soldier in World War I because of his vision, he trained as a code clerk and nabbed an assignment in Paris, but he arrived in Europe just as the war was ending. Like quite a few odd geniuses who couldn’t fit in elsewhere, Thurber found salvation in the offices of the New Yorker, then a fledgling magazine with an eye for unconventional talent. As a lighthearted look at his youth, My Life and Hard Times necessarily avoids referring to the biggest tragedy of Thurber’s life. Though Thurber’s last years were especially troubled with the burdens of his physical and mental condition, he continued to be a prolific essayist, vivacious raconteur, and a passionate debater—particularly regarding the rein of House Un-American Activities. Remember Laughter: A Life of James Thurber. University Press of Mississippi, 1989. An indifferent student at Ohio State University, he failed to get a degree. Text copyright Donald Pittenger. Is there anything I could give her?”, In its matter-of-fact prescriptions and casual air of omniscience, Thurber’s answer evokes the confident authority of corporate journalism: “There are no medicines which can safely be given to induce felicity in a cat, but you might try lettuce, which is a soporific, for the wakefulness. He was reading Thurber stories to his father in the hospital and read some of them on his program. Twaynes United States Authors Series, 1964. As it is, his line is perfectly suited to his humor. Ohio University Press, 1969. The alternate universe that Mitty constructs is every bit as real to him—and to the reader—as the blander one where Mitty keeps a physical address. Powered by. Accept. It might be one reason he was a big fan of Henry James, a writer who otherwise seemed to have nothing in common with Thurber. Best viewed on computer via Kindle App or on a large iPad. Though Thurber lived in New York, Connecticut, Bermuda, and France, Columbus remained the well-spring for much of his best work: “Columbus is a town in which almost anything is likely to happen and in which almost everything has.”, In 1927, after writing columns for the Columbus. Master of the Minimal: Drawings of Thurber's for Sale, Contemporary Literary Criticism, Volume 5, An extensive study guide for younger readers on eNotes, extensive bio and resource guide to Thurber. In the decades since his death, some of his work has grown dated. Is Sex Necessary?, a 1929 book that he coauthored with New Yorker colleague E. B. Simple theme. Shortly before his death, Thurber enjoyed the chance to play himself in the Broadway hit, T. Despite rounds of operations and treatments for eye problems, a near-death encounter with pneumonia, and a toxic thyroid condition, Thurber continued to create, often prevailing upon his photographic memory that could retain over two thousand words of prose for a later dictation session. While James’s prose style is serpentine and ornate, Thurber’s is gracefully simple, open, and declarative, touched by the directness of his Midwestern origins. 3 turret!” The crew, bending to their various tasks in the huge, hurtling eight-engined Navy hydroplane, looked at each other and grinned. He was tall, reedy, with an exploded head of hair, and wearing what must have been the thickest glasses known to optometry. His work gave him a place in history as one of the great comic artists and one of the great American humorists.”, A selection of biographical information on the internet, The Rey Center (focused on the work of Curious George creator H. A. Rey) has a very. Published in 1933, and drawn from material first published in the New Yorker, the book is sidesplittingly funny, but its humor involves comic monologs that achieve their effect over slowly building plots rather than punchy one-liners. “Among other escapades,” writes Thurber biographer Neil A. Grauer, “she once attended a faith healer’s revival in a wheelchair, pretending to be (paralyzed), then jumped up to howl hosannas and proclaim herself cured.”. New York: Dodd, Mead, 1975. Instead, he worked primarily as an aide for various Ohio politicians. Harrison Kinney. Anthologist and editor Clifton Fadiman wrote, “Way back in 1946, when [Thurber] still had sixteen years to go, posterity was already beckoning an American humorist and satirist who today is second only to Mark Twain.”. Bob Hunter. The dream element in “Mitty” also figures in much of Thurber’s other work. White, a New Yorker writer who introduced him to the magazine’s irascible founding editor, Harold Ross. “Sympathetic ophthalmia” eventually overtook the other eye, rendering him blind the last two decades of his life. His childhood included two life-long influences: his mother’s uncanny sense of dramatic humor, and an eye injury from an arrow sustained during a game of William Tell. CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform, 2015. Nothing seemed to catch fire. The reader can find Thurber lurking on National Public Radio or on the Internet or even, without much of a stretch, in the New York Times columns of the great Maureen Dowd.”, Despite his differences with Thurber, White offered what’s perhaps the best summation of his legacy. William Fisher could be combative, and he claimed Ulysses S. Grant as a hero, but he bore only a passing resemblance to the loopy patriarch of Thurber’s tales. He towers over all.”, —Maira Kalman, author, illustrator, designer, “Thurber made the seals bark! James Grover Thurber (1894-1961) called his New Yorker cartoons "doodles."