James Thurber
Personal Information
Description
The author of The Secret Life of Walter Mitty and the creator of numerous New Yorker magazine cover cartoons, was born in Columbus, Ohio on December, 8, 1894. One of the foremost American humorists of the 20th century, his inimitable wit and pithy prose spanned a breadth of genres, including short stories, modern commentary, fiction, children's fantasy and letters. Thurber's father, Charles, was a civil clerk, and his mother, Mame, was an eccentric woman who would influence many of her son's stories. Thurber had two brothers, William and Robert. One day while playing "William Tell" with them as youngsters, Thurber lost the sight in one eye when an arrow pierced it. Ultimately, he would go blind in both eyes, but that never stopped him from writing or drawing. Thurber CarnivalFrom 1913-1917, Thurber attended the Ohio State University where he was a member of the Phi Kappa Psi fraternity. It was at this time that the Thurbers rented the house at 77 Jefferson Avenue, which became Thurber House in 1984. Due to his eye injury, Thurber was not able to complete a compulsory ROTC course so OSU would not let him graduate, although they did give him an honorary degree later. Thurber launched his professional writing career as a reporter for the Columbus Dispatch in 1920. He began writing for the New Yorker in 1927 after friend E.B. White (Charlotte's Web) got him a job at the magazine. Thurber started as an editor for the magazine but quickly became a writer. His career as a cartoonist began in 1930, when White dug some of Thurber's drawings out of the trash and submitted them to be published in the New Yorker. Thurber wrote nearly forty books and won a Tony Award for his popular Broadway play, A Thurber Carnival, in which he often starred as himself. Thurber died of complications from pneumonia on November 2, 1961. --Thurberhouse.org
Books
The Thurber letters
"Though he died more than forty years ago, James Thurber remains one of America's greatest and most enduring humorists, and his books - for both adults and children - remain as popular as ever. In this comprehensive collection of his letters - the majority of which have never before been published - we find unsuspected insights into his life and career." "For the first time, Thurber's daughter Rosemary has allowed the publication of many of the extremely personal letters he wrote early in his life to the women he was - usually hopelessly - in love with, as well as the affectionate and hilarious letters that he wrote to her. In addition, Harrison Kinney, noted Thurber biographer, has located a number of Thurber letters never before published. The Thurber Letters traces Thurber's progress from lovesick college boy to code clerk with the State Department in Paris and reporter for the Columbus Dispatch, through his marriages and love affairs, his special relationship with his daughter, his illustrious and tumultuous years with The New Yorker, his longstanding relationship with E.B. White, his close friendship with Peter De Vries, and his tragic last days. Included in the book are Thurber drawings never before published."--Jacket.
People have more fun than anybody
In this centennial volume of previously uncollected work, James Thurber continues to flourish. Here is the pleasure of recognizing this comic genius at work again, with his suspicious, civilized, unsettling wit. Included are eighteen prose pieces and over seventy-five drawings by the only cartoonist who could claim to draw "abstract things like despair, disillusion, despondency, sorrow, lapse of memory, exile . . . sometimes in a shape that might be called Man or Woman." Here are drawings with such contemporary smarts that they still sting, including dozens of reports from the front line in that cold war between the sexes. This is Thurber at his most entertaining, praising things canine in two marvelous tributes, musing over the promises of mail sweepstakes, confessing his aversion to anything mechanical, puzzling over the animal kingdom's curious uprisings, reconsidering the value of Byrd's claiming of the icy lands of Antarctica ("Are we landowners or ice dealers? Are we men or penguins?"), and observing the fate of sex. For good measure, Michael Rosen offers the recipe for Thurber's favorite birthday cake, the Never-Fail Devil's Food.
Happy Endings
Two women--beautiful, successful Raven, still suffering from an ugly childhood, and romance writer Holly, struggling to build a new identity--cross paths as they search for love, happiness, and happy endings in Hollywood.
My Life and Hard Times (Rep)
Parade of comic characters and hilarious anecdotes as the American humorist recalls his Ohio childhood.
Collecting Himself
Presents a remarkable body of previously unauthologized drawings and writings by James Thurber that present the beloved humorist as reader, journalist, satirist, comic, and personal respondent to the written world around him.
The night the ghost got in
The brief appearance of a ghost late at night begins a series of comic misunderstandings during which the narrator's mother throws a shoe through a neighbor's window and his grandfather shoots a policeman.
The Secret Life of Walter Mitty
A henpecked husband copes with the frustrations of his dull life by imagining he is a fearless airplane pilot, a brilliant doctor, and other dashing figures.
Selected letters of James Thurber
Letters covering the period of 1935 to 1961, from Thurber's confident prime as a writer and artist, to his last days when blindness and infirmity failed to quench the exuberance of his spirit or his prose.
The Wonderful O
Relates what happened when an evil sea captain banished the letter O from the island Ooroo.