James Thurber

James Grover Thurber (December 8, 1894–November 2, 1961) was a U.S. humorist and cartoonist. Thurber was best known for his contributions (both cartoons and short stories) to The New Yorker magazine.

Biography

Thurber was born in Columbus, Ohio. He attended The Ohio State University, where he was a member of Phi Kappa Psi Fraternity. Because of poor eyesight he was excused from the Army in World War I but did serve as a code clerk in France. He joined the staff of The New Yorker in 1927 and continued to contribute to the magazine through the 1950s.

Thurber was married twice. His only child, Rosemary, was born during his first marriage to Althea Adams, from 1922 to 1935. His second marriage, to Helen Wismer in 1935, endured until his death.

Due to a childhood injury, Thurber lost one eye. He progressively suffered from very poor eyesight in his remaining eye. His sight grew weaker as he grew older. He also suffered from a toxic-thyroid condition for more than 2 years in the 1950's, and died of complications from the removal of a brain tumor.

Career

Thurber worked hard in the 1920's, both in the U.S.A. and in France, to establish himself as a professional writer. However, unique among major American literary figures, he became equally well known for his simple, surrealistic drawings and cartoons. Both his skills were helped along by the support of, and collaboration with, fellow New Yorker staff member E. B. White. White insisted that Thurber's sketches could stand on their own as artistic expressions — and Thurber would go on to draw six covers and numerous classic illustrations for the New Yorker.

One of Thurber's most famous cartoons shows a worried man in bed with his wife. She is saying, "Have it your way, you heard a seal bark!" Of course there is a large seal leaning over the headboard.

While able to sketch out his cartoons in the usual fashion in the 1920's and 1930's, his failing eyesight later required him to draw them on very large sheets of paper using a thick black crayon (also, on black paper using white chalk, from which they were photographed and the colors reversed for publication). Regardless of method, his cartoons became as notable as his writings; they possessed an eerie, wobbly feel that seems to mirror Thurber's idiosyncratic view on life. He once wrote that people said it looked like he drew them under water. (Dorothy Parker, contemporary and friend of Thurber, referred to his cartoons as having the "semblance of unbaked cookies.")

Many of his short stories are humorous fictional memoirs from his life, but he also wrote darker material. "The Dog Who Bit People" and "The Night the Bed Fell" are among his best short stories; they can be found in My Life and Hard Times, the creative mix of autobiography and fiction which was his 'break-out' book. Also notable, and often anthologized, are "The Secret Life of Walter Mitty", "The Catbird Seat," "The Greatest Man in the World" and "If Grant Had Been Drinking at Appomatox", which can be found in The Thurber Carnival. The Middle Aged Man on the Flying Trapeze has several short stories with a tense undercurrent of marital discord. The book was published the year of his divorce and remarriage.

Thurber teamed with college schoolmate (and actor/director) Elliot Nugent to write a major Broadway hit comic drama of the late 1930's, "The Male Animal" (made into a film in 1942, starring Henry Fonda, Olivia de Haviland, and Jack Carson.). In 1947 Danny Kaye played the title character in The Secret Life of Walter Mitty, a film that had little to do with the story and which Thurber hated.

Near the end of his life, Thurber finally was able to fulfill his long-standing desire to be on the professional stage by playing himself in a few performances of the anthology "A Thurber Carnival," made up of various acted-out stories and cartoon captions. Thurber won a special Tony Award for the adapted script of the "Carnival."

A network television show based on Thurber's writings and life entitled My World and Welcome to It was broadcast from 1969 to 1970, starring William Windom as the Thurber figure. Windom went on to perform Thurber's work in his one-man stage performances. The animation of his cartoons on this show led to the 1972 Jack Lemmon film "The War Between Men And Women," which concludes with a fine animated rendering of Thurber's classic anti-war work "The Last Flower."

Thurber died at age 66 in New York City. An annual award, The Thurber Prize, begun in 1966, honors outstanding examples of American humor.

Thurber's brain

The neuroscientist V.S. Ramachandran discusses the effect of damaged vision on Thurber's imagination in Phantoms in the Brain (cowritten with Sandra Blakeslee, 1998, ISBN 0688172172). He proposes that Thurber had Charles Bonnet syndrome, a mental condition which causes certain victims of eyesight damage to see highly vivid hallucinations. In his essay "The Admiral on the Wheel", Thurber reported seeing hallucinations, including "a Wonderland, a little like Poictesme. Anything you can think of, and a lot you never would think of, can happen there.''"

Quotations

"Humor is emotional chaos remembered in tranquility."
"It is better to know some of the questions than all of the answers."
"You can fool too many of the people too much of the time."
"One martini is all right. Two are too many, and three are not enough."
"Don't get it right; get it written."
"It is not so easy to fool little girls nowadays as it used to be."
"There is no safety in numbers, or in anything else."
"Never allow a nervous female to have access to a pistol, no matter what you're wearing."
From My Life And Hard Times, referring to a fellow Ohio State student and football star: "In order to be eligible to play it was necessary for him to keep up in his studies, a very difficult matter, for while he was not dumber than an ox he was not any smarter."
Thurber is sometimes misquoted as the source of the quip, "A woman's place is in the wrong." In fact, Thurber merely repeated the quotation in a speech and rather criticized it, saying: "Somebody has said that woman's place is in the wrong. That's fine. What the wrong needs is a woman's presence and a woman's touch. She is far better equipped than men to set it right." He went on to clarify his conception of women by saying, "If I have sometimes seemed to make fun of Woman, I assure you it has only been for the purpose of egging her on."

Books

Is Sex Necessary? or, Why You Feel The Way You Do (spoof of sexual psychology manuals, with E. B. White), 1929, 75th anniv. edition (2004) with forward by John Updike, ISBN 0060733144
The Owl in the Attic and Other Perplexities, 1931
The Seal in the Bedroom and Other Predicaments, 1932
My Life and Hard Times, 1933 ISBN 0060933089
The Middle-Aged Man on the Flying Trapeze, 1935
Let Your Mind Alone! and Other More Or Less Inspirational Pieces, 1937
The Last Flower, 1939
The Male Animal (stage play), 1939 (with Elliot Nugent)
Fables for Our Time and Famous Poems Illustrated, 1940 ISBN 0060909994
My World--and Welcome To It, 1942 ISBN 0156623447
Many Moons, (children) 1943
Men, Women, and Dogs, 1943
The Great Quillow, (children) 1944
The Thurber Carnival (anthology), 1945, ISBN 0060932872
The White Deer, (children) 1945
The Beast in Me and Other Animals, 1948 ISBN 015610850X
The 13 Clocks, (children) 1950
The Thurber Album, 1952
Thurber Country, 1953
Thurber's Dogs, 1955
Further Fables For Our Time, 1956
The Wonderful O, (children) 1957
Alarms and Diversions (anthology), 1957
The Years With Ross, 1959 ISBN 0060959711
A Thurber Carnival (stage play), 1960
Lanterns and Lances, 1961

Posthumous Collections:

Credos and Curios, 1962
Thurber & Company, 1966 (ed. Helen W. Thurber)
Selected Letters of James Thurber, 1981 (ed. Helen W. Thurber & Edward Weeks)
Collecting Himself: James Thurber on Writing and Writers, Humor and Himself, 1989 (ed. Michael J. Rosen)
Thurber On Crime, 1991 (ed. Robert Lopresti)
People Have More Fun Than Anybody: A Centennial Celebration of Drawings and Writings by James Thurber, 1994 (ed. Michael J. Rosen)
James Thurber: Writings and Drawings, 1996, (ed. Garrison Keillor), Library of America, ISBN 1883011221
The Dog Department: James Thurber on Hounds, Scotties, and Talking Poodles, 2001 (ed. Michael J. Rosen)
The Thurber Letters, 2002 (ed. Harrison Kinney, with Rosemary A. Thurber)

Biographies of Thurber

Burton Bernstein Thurber (1975); William Morrow & Co (May, 1996) ISBN 0688147720
Neil A. Grauer Remember Laughter: A Life of James Thurber (1994); University of Nebraska Press; Reprint edition (August, 1995) ISBN 0803270569
Harrison Kinney James Thurber: His Life and Times (1995); Henry Holt & Co ISBN 080503966X

Literature review

The Clocks Of Columbus: The Literary Career of James Thurber by Charles S. Holmes (1972). Atheneum ASIN B0006C4G3O; Secker & Warburg, May 1973, ISBN 0436200805

External links

The Paris Review Interview
Thurber at The Thurber House website
Thurber's World (and Welcome To it)
James Thurber Web Collection - includes online versions of some of his works
PATHFINDER: JAMES GROVER THURBER - collects many Thurber links

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