James Grover Thurber (December 8, 1894 – November 2, 1961) was an Americancartoonist, writer, humorist, journalist, and playwright. He was best known for hiscartoons and short stories, published mainly inThe New Yorker and collected in his numerous books.
Thurber was born inColumbus, Ohio, to Charles L. Thurber and Mary Agnes "Mame" (née Fisher) Thurber on December 8, 1894. Both of his parents greatly influenced his work. His father was a sporadically employed clerk and minor politician who dreamed of being a lawyer or an actor. Thurber described his mother as a "born comedian" and "one of the finest comic talents I think I have ever known". She was a practical joker and on one occasion pretended to be disabled, and attended a faith healer revival only to jump up and proclaim herself healed.[1]
Due to overcrowding in his grandfather's house, where his family had moved while his father recovered from an illness, Thurber often stayed at the home of his aunt, Margery Albright. Albright lived inDowntown Columbus nearHoly Cross Church, the clock and bell of which Thurber would reference in later writing.[2][3]
Thurber at age 14
When Thurber was seven years old, he and one of his brothers were playing agame of William Tell, when his brother shot James in the eye with an arrow.[4] He lost that eye, and the injury later caused him to become almost entirely blind. He was unable to participate in sports and other activities in his childhood because of this injury, but he developed a creative mind, which he used to express himself in writings.[1] NeurologistV. S. Ramachandran suggests that Thurber's imagination may be partly explained byCharles Bonnet syndrome, a neurological condition that causes complex visual hallucinations in people who have had some level of visual loss.[5] (This was the basis for the piece "The Admiral on the Wheel".)
High school graduation photo, East High SchoolThurber family portrait taken in Columbus, Ohio, in 1915. From left to right: seated: Robert and Charles. Back row: William, James, and Mame
From 1913 to 1918, Thurber attendedOhio State University where he was a member of thePhi Kappa Psi fraternity and editor of the student magazine, theSundial. It was during this time that he rented the house on 77 Jefferson Avenue,[6] which becameThurber House in 1984. He never graduated from the university because his poor eyesight prevented him from taking a mandatoryReserve Officers' Training Corps (ROTC) course.[7] In 1995 he was posthumously awarded a degree.[8]
From 1918 to 1920, Thurber worked as a code clerk for theUnited States Department of State, first in Washington, D.C., and then at theembassy in Paris. On returning to Columbus, he began his career as a reporter forThe Columbus Dispatch from 1921 to 1924. During part of this time, he reviewed books, films, and plays in a weekly column called "Credos and Curios", a title that was given to a posthumous collection of his work. Thurber returned to Paris during this period, where he wrote for theChicago Tribune and other newspapers.[8]
In 1925, Thurber moved toGreenwich Village in New York City, obtaining a job as a reporter with theNew York Evening Post. He joined the staff ofThe New Yorker in 1927 as an editor, with the help ofE. B. White, his friend and fellowNew Yorker contributor. His career as a cartoonist began in 1930 after White found some of Thurber's drawings in a trash can and submitted them for publication; White inked-in some of these earlier drawings to make them reproduce better for the magazine, and years later expressed deep regret he had done such a thing. Thurber contributed both his writings and his drawings toThe New Yorker until the 1950s.[citation needed]
Thurber married Althea Adams in 1922, although the marriage, as he later wrote to a friend, devolved into "a relationship charming, fine, and hurting".[10] They lived in theSanford–Curtis–Thurber House, inFairfield County, Connecticut, with their daughter Rosemary[11] (b. 1931).[12][13][14] The marriage ended in divorce in May 1935, and Althea kept[15] Sanford–Curtis–Thurber House.[1] He married his editor, Helen Muriel Wismer (1902–1986) in June 1935.[16] After meetingMark Van Doren on a ferry toMartha's Vineyard, Thurber began summering inCornwall, Connecticut, along with many other prominent artists and authors of the time. After three years of renting, Thurber found a home, which he referred to as "The Great Good Place", in Cornwall, Connecticut.[17][18]
Thurber's behavior became erratic in his last year. Thurber was stricken with a blood clot on the brain on October 4, 1961, and underwent emergency surgery, drifting in and out of consciousness. Although the operation was initially successful, Thurber died a few weeks later, on November 2, aged 66, due to complications frompneumonia. The doctors said his brain wassenescent from several small strokes and hardening of the arteries. Hislast words, aside from the repeated word "God", were "God bless... God damn", according to his wife, Helen.[19]
Established in 1997, the annualThurber Prize honors outstanding examples of American humor.[20]
In 2008, theLibrary of America selected Thurber's story "A Sort of Genius", first published inThe New Yorker, for inclusion in its two-century retrospective of American True Crime.[21]
Thurber also became well known for his simple, outlandish drawings and cartoons. Both his literary and his drawing skills were helped along by the support of, and collaboration with, fellowNew Yorker staff memberE. B. White, who insisted that Thurber's sketches could stand on their own as artistic expressions. Thurber drew six covers and numerous classic illustrations forThe New Yorker.[24]
Many of Thurber's short stories are humorous fictional memoirs from his life, but he also wrote darker material, such as "The Whip-Poor-Will", a story of madness and murder. His best-known short stories are "The Dog That Bit People" and "The Night the Bed Fell"; they can be found inMy Life and Hard Times, which was his "break-out" book. Among his other classics are "The Secret Life of Walter Mitty", "The Catbird Seat", "The Night the Ghost Got In", "A Couple of Hamburgers", "The Greatest Man in the World", and "IfGrant Had Been Drinking atAppomattox".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.
Although his 1941 story "You Could Look It Up",[25] about a three-foot adult being brought in to take a walk in a baseball game, has been said[26] to have inspiredBill Veeck's stunt withEddie Gaedel with theSt. Louis Browns in 1951, Veeck claimed an older provenance for the stunt.[27]
In addition to his other fiction, Thurber wrote more than seventy-fivefables, some of which were first published inThe New Yorker (1939), then collected inFables for Our Time and Famous Poems Illustrated (1940) andFurther Fables for Our Time (1956). These were short stories that featured anthropomorphic animals (e.g. "The Little Girl and the Wolf", his version ofLittle Red Riding Hood) as main characters, and ended with a moral as a tagline. An exception to this format was his most famous fable, "The Unicorn in the Garden", which featured an all-human cast except for the unicorn, which does not speak. Thurber's fables weresatirical, and the morals served aspunch lines as well as advice to the reader, demonstrating "the complexity of life by depicting the world as an uncertain, precarious place, where few reliable guidelines exist."[28] His stories also included several book-length fairy tales, such asThe White Deer (1945),The 13 Clocks (1950) andThe Wonderful O (1957). The latter two were among several of Thurber's works illustrated byMarc Simont.
Thurber's prose forThe New Yorker and other venues included numerous humorous essays. A favorite subject, especially toward the end of his life, was the English language. Pieces on this subject included "The Spreading 'You Know'," which decried the overuse of that pair of words in conversation, "The New Vocabularianism", and "What Do You Mean ItWas Brillig?". His short pieces – whether stories, essays or something in between – were referred to as "casuals" by Thurber and the staff ofThe New Yorker.[29]
Thurber wrote a five-partNew Yorker series, between 1947 and 1948, examining in depth the radiosoap opera phenomenon, based on near-constant listening and researching over the same period. Leaving nearly no element of these programs unexamined, including their writers, producers, sponsors, performers, and listeners alike, Thurber republished the series in his anthology,The Beast in Me and Other Animals (1948), under the section title "Soapland." The series was one of the first to examine such a pop-culture phenomenon in depth.[30]
The last twenty years of Thurber's life were filled with material and professional success in spite of his blindness. He published at least fourteen books in that era, includingThe Thurber Carnival (1945),Thurber Country (1953), and the extremely popular book aboutNew Yorker founder/editorHarold Ross,The Years with Ross (1959). A number of Thurber's short stories were made into movies, includingThe Secret Life of Walter Mitty in 1947.
While Thurber drew his cartoons in the usual fashion in the 1920s and 1930s, his failing eyesight later required changes. He drew them on very large sheets of paper using a thick black crayon (or on black paper using white chalk, from which they were photographed and the colors reversed for publication). Regardless of method, his cartoons became as noted as his writings; they possessed an eerie, wobbly feel that seems to mirror his idiosyncratic view on life. He once wrote that people said it looked like he drew them under water.Dorothy Parker, a contemporary and friend of Thurber, referred to his cartoons as having the "semblance of unbaked cookies". The last drawing Thurber completed was a self-portrait in yellow crayon on black paper, which was featured as the cover ofTime magazine on July 9, 1951.[31] The same drawing was used for the dust jacket ofThe Thurber Album (1952).
In 1951United Productions of America announced an animated feature to be based on Thurber's work, titledMen, Women and Dogs.[32] The only part of the ambitious project that was eventually released was the UPA cartoonThe Unicorn in the Garden (1953).[33]
In 1960, Thurber fulfilled a long-standing desire to be on the professional stage and played himself in 88 performances of the revueA Thurber Carnival (which echoes the title of his 1945 book,The Thurber Carnival). It was based on a selection of Thurber's stories and cartoon captions. Thurber appeared in the sketch "File and Forget". The sketch consists of Thurber dictating a series of letters in a vain attempt to keep one of his publishers from sending him books he did not order, and the escalating confusion of the replies.[36] Thurber received aSpecial Tony Award for the adapted script of theCarnival.[37]
In 1969–70, a full series based on Thurber's writings and life, titledMy World... and Welcome to It, was broadcast onNBC. It starredWilliam Windom as the Thurber figure, John Monroe. Featuring animated portions in addition to live actors, the show won a 1970Emmy Award as the year's best comedy series. Windom won an Emmy as well. He went on to perform Thurber material in a one-man stage show.
In 1972 another film adaptation,The War Between Men and Women, starringJack Lemmon, concludes with an animated version of Thurber's classic anti-war work "The Last Flower".
In Season Nine, Episode 13 ofSeinfeld, titled “The Cartoon”,Elaine mentions learning of gossip about Thurber while interviewing for a job atThe New Yorker.[38]
Beginning during his own father's terminal illness, television broadcasterKeith Olbermann read excerpts from Thurber's short stories during the closing segment of hisMSNBC programCountdown with Keith Olbermann on Fridays, which he called "Fridays with Thurber".[39] He reintroduced this during the COVID-19 pandemic of 2020, reading Thurber stories daily at 8:00 p.m. EDT on Twitter, and continued on his podcast, also calledCountdown with Keith Olbermann.
People Have More Fun Than Anybody: A Centennial Celebration of Drawings and Writings by James Thurber, 1994 (ed. Michael J. Rosen)ISBN978-0-151000-94-4[40]
^Koerting, Katrina (April 6, 2017)."Newtown home once belonged to humorist James Thurber".Connecticut Post.Archived from the original on April 23, 2023. RetrievedApril 23, 2023.At one point, Thurber had drawn several cartoons on the baseboards, but when he and his wife, Althea, divorced in 1935, she got the house and wallpapered them over.
^Sorel, Edward (November 5, 1989)."The Business of Being Funny".The New York Times.Archived from the original on August 31, 2024. RetrievedAugust 17, 2007.
^Kovner, Leo (1958)."Television Reviews: One Is a Wanderer";Archived August 31, 2024, at theWayback Machine.The Hollywood Reporter. p. 9. "A moving tale of lonely despair in a big city, admittedly it's not everybody's meat. Yet the atmosphere of gentle melancholy was compelling, and the sensitive, intelligent performance of Fred MacMurray and the direction of Herschel Daugherty command attention and respect." Retrieved March 14, 2022.
Harvey Fierstein / Marco Paguia, David Oquendo, Renesito Avich, Gustavo Schartz, Javier Días, Román Diaz, Mauricio Herrera, Jesus Ricardo, Eddie Venegas, Hery Paz, and Leonardo Reyna / Jamie Harrison, Chris Fisher, Gary Beestone, and Edward Pierce (2025)
