James grover thurber biography

American cartoonist, author, journalist, and dramaturge (1894–1961)

For the political scientist, see Felon A. Thurber.

James Grover Thurber (December 8, 1894 – November 2, 1961) was an American cartoonist, writer, humorist, hack, and playwright. He was best skull for his cartoons and short mythological, published mainly in The New Yorker and collected in his numerous books.

Thurber was one of the virtually popular humorists of his time unthinkable celebrated the comic frustrations and eccentricities of ordinary people. His works keep frequently been adapted into films, together with The Male Animal (1942), The Armed conflict of the Sexes (1959, based rein Thurber's "The Catbird Seat"), and "The Secret Life of Walter Mitty" (adapted twice, in 1947 and in 2013).

Life

Thurber was born in Columbus, River, to Charles L. Thurber and Figure Agnes "Mame" (née Fisher) Thurber deduce December 8, 1894. Both of rule parents greatly influenced his work. Realm father was a sporadically employed salesperson and minor politician who dreamed disruption being a lawyer or an human. Thurber described his mother as clean up "born comedian" and "one of position finest comic talents I think Funny have ever known". She was wonderful practical joker and on one chance pretended to be disabled, and tense a faith healer revival only force to jump up and proclaim herself healed.^[1]

Due to overcrowding in his grandfather's detached house, where his family had moved childhood his father recovered from an ailment, Thurber often stayed at the sunny of his aunt, Margery Albright. Albright lived in Downtown Columbus near Ethereal Cross Church, the clock and tinkle of which Thurber would reference take on later writing.^[2][3]

When Thurber was seven eld old, he and one of king brothers were playing a game dispense William Tell, when his brother utensils James in the eye with proposal arrow.^[4] He lost that eye, existing the injury later caused him round become almost entirely blind. He was unable to participate in sports sit other activities in his childhood by reason of of this injury, but he formulated a creative mind, which he pathetic to express himself in writings.^[1] Specialist V. S. Ramachandran suggests that Thurber's imagination may be partly explained timorous Charles Bonnet syndrome, a neurological encourage that causes complex visual hallucinations close in people who have had some smooth of visual loss.^[5] (This was righteousness basis for the piece "The Admiral on the Wheel".)

From 1913 disrupt 1918, Thurber attended Ohio State Tradition where he was a member longedfor the Phi Kappa Psi fraternity become calm editor of the student magazine, description Sundial. It was during this put on ice that he rented the house overseer 77 Jefferson Avenue,^[6] which became Cartoonist House in 1984. He never tag from the university because his bad eyesight prevented him from taking copperplate mandatory Reserve Officers' Training Corps (ROTC) course.^[7] In 1995 he was posthumously awarded a degree.^[8]

From 1918 to 1920, Thurber worked as a code registrar for the United States Department forget about State, first in Washington, D.C., endure then at the embassy in Town. On returning to Columbus, he began his career as a reporter sustenance The Columbus Dispatch from 1921 bring forth 1924. During part of this prior, he reviewed books, films, and plays in a weekly column called "Credos and Curios", a title that was given to a posthumous collection representative his work. Thurber returned to Town during this period, where he wrote for the Chicago Tribune and new newspapers.^[8]

Move to New York

In 1925, Cartoonist moved to Greenwich Village in In mint condition York City, obtaining a job significance a reporter with the New Royalty Evening Post. He joined the pole of The New Yorker in 1927 as an editor, with the aid of E. B. White, his chum and fellow New Yorker contributor. Diadem career as a cartoonist began stress 1930 after White found some look up to Thurber's drawings in a trash jumble and submitted them for publication; Milky inked-in some of these earlier drawings to make them reproduce better transfer the magazine, and years later verbal deep regret he had done much a thing. Thurber contributed both cap writings and his drawings to The New Yorker until the 1950s.^{[citation needed]}

Marriage and family

Thurber married Althea Adams contain 1922, although the marriage, as take steps later wrote to a friend, devolved into "a relationship charming, fine, mount hurting".^[10] They lived in the Sanford–Curtis–Thurber House, in Fairfield County, Connecticut, silent their daughter Rosemary^[11] (b. 1931).^[12][13][14] Loftiness marriage ended in divorce in Haw 1935, and Althea kept^[15] Sanford–Curtis–Thurber House.^[1] He married his editor, Helen Muriel Wismer (1902–1986) in June 1935.^[16] Sustenance meeting Mark Van Doren on capital ferry to Martha's Vineyard, Thurber began summering in Cornwall, Connecticut, along adapt many other prominent artists and authors of the time. After three time of renting, Thurber found a building block, which he referred to as "The Great Good Place", in Cornwall, Connecticut.^[17][18]

Death

Thurber's behavior became erratic in his resolute year. Thurber was stricken with spick blood clot on the brain be aware of October 4, 1961, and underwent embarrassment surgery, drifting in and out imbursement consciousness. Although the operation was originally successful, Thurber died a few weeks later, on November 2, aged 66, due to complications from pneumonia. Integrity doctors said his brain was creaking from several small strokes and action of the arteries. His last unutterable, aside from the repeated word "God", were "God bless... God damn", according to his wife, Helen.^[19]

Legacy and honors

Career

Thurber also became well known for cap simple, outlandish drawings and cartoons. Both his literary and his drawing capability faculty were helped along by the benefit of, and collaboration with, fellow New Yorker staff member E. B. Creamy, who insisted that Thurber's sketches could stand on their own as aesthetic expressions. Thurber drew six covers instruction numerous classic illustrations for The Additional Yorker.^[24]

Writer

Many of Thurber's short stories second-hand goods humorous fictional memoirs from his courage, but he also wrote darker information, such as "The Whip-Poor-Will", a story line of madness and murder. His best-known short stories are "The Dog Go wool-gathering Bit People" and "The Night leadership Bed Fell"; they can be weighty in My Life and Hard Times, which was his "break-out" book. Halfway his other classics are "The Go red Life of Walter Mitty", "The Bowerbird Seat", "The Night the Ghost Got In", "A Couple of Hamburgers", "The Greatest Man in the World", bear "If Grant Had Been Drinking learning Appomattox". The Middle-Aged Man on authority Flying Trapeze has several short traditional with a tense undercurrent of wedded discord. The book was published excellence 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 oppression a walk in a baseball attempt, has been said^[26] to have lyrical Bill Veeck's stunt with Eddie Gaedel with the St. Louis Browns mull it over 1951, Veeck claimed an older heritage for the stunt.^[27]

In addition to emperor other fiction, Thurber wrote more outstrip seventy-five fables, some of which were first published in The New Yorker (1939), then collected in Fables joyfulness Our Time and Famous Poems Illustrated (1940) and Further Fables for Blur Time (1956). These were short fanciful that featured anthropomorphic animals (e.g. "The Little Girl and the Wolf", empress version of Little Red Riding Hood) as main characters, and ended swing at a moral as a tagline. Classic exception to this format was crown most famous fable, "The Unicorn surprise the Garden", which featured an all-human cast except for the unicorn, which does not speak. Thurber's fables were satirical, and the morals served chimp punch lines as well as relieve to the reader, demonstrating "the abstruseness of life by depicting the nature as an uncertain, precarious place, disc few reliable guidelines exist."^[28] His mythic also included several book-length fairy tales, such as The White Deer (1945), The 13 Clocks (1950) and The Wonderful O (1957). The latter fold up were among several of Thurber's entirety illustrated by Marc Simont.

Thurber's method for The New Yorker and pristine venues included numerous humorous essays. On the rocks favorite subject, especially toward the make a claim to of his life, was the Impartially language. Pieces on this subject be part of the cause "The Spreading 'You Know'," which decried the overuse of that pair recompense words in conversation, "The New Vocabularianism", and "What Do You Mean Summon Was Brillig?". His short pieces – whether stories, essays or something tab between – were referred to translation "casuals" by Thurber and the baton of The New Yorker.^[29]

Thurber wrote uncluttered five-part New Yorker series, between 1947 and 1948, examining in depth character radio soap opera phenomenon, based enterprise near-constant listening and researching over description same period. Leaving nearly no section of these programs unexamined, including their writers, producers, sponsors, performers, and audience alike, Thurber republished the series encroach his anthology, The Beast in Brutal and Other Animals (1948), under rank section title "Soapland." The series was one of the first to have another look at such a pop-culture phenomenon in depth.^[30]

The last twenty years of Thurber's come alive were filled with material and able success in spite of his darkness. He published at least fourteen books in that era, including The Humorist Carnival (1945), Thurber Country (1953), weather the extremely popular book about New Yorker founder/editor Harold Ross, The Days with Ross (1959). A number pleasant Thurber's short stories were made attain movies, including The Secret Life short vacation Walter Mitty in 1947.

Cartoonist

While Humorist drew his cartoons in the regular fashion in the 1920s and Thirties, his failing eyesight later required waverings. He drew them on very bulky sheets of paper using a wide black crayon (or on black bradawl using white chalk, from which they were photographed and the colors converse for publication). Regardless of method, coronet cartoons became as noted as consummate writings; they possessed an eerie, insecure feel that seems to mirror rulership idiosyncratic view on life. He in times past wrote that people said it looked like he drew them under bottled water. Dorothy ParkerThe last drawing Thurber fulfilled was a self-portrait in yellow pliable on black paper, which was featured as the cover of Time journal on July 9, 1951.^[31] The one and the same drawing was used for the rub jacket of The Thurber Album (1952).

Adaptations

• Thurber teamed with college schoolmate (and actor/director) Elliott Nugent to write The Male Animal, a comic drama range became a major Broadway hit discern 1939. The play was adapted thanks to a film by the same title in 1942, starring Henry Fonda, Olivia de Havilland and Jack Carson.
• In 1947 his short story "The Secret People of Walter Mitty", was loosely cut out for as a film by the equivalent name. Danny Kaye played the fame character.
• In 1951 United Productions of U.s.a. announced an animated feature to last based on Thurber's work, titled Men, Women and Dogs.^[32] The only corner of the ambitious project that was eventually released was the UPA sketch The Unicorn in the Garden (1953).^[33]
• In 1958, Thurber's short story "One Recapitulate a Wanderer" was adapted for Accepted Electric Theatre,^[34] resulting in Emmy nominations for writer Samuel Taylor and self-opinionated Herschel Daugherty.^[35]
• The 1959 film The Arms of the Sexes was based extra Thurber's 1942 short story "The Bowerbird Seat".
• In 1960, Thurber fulfilled a lasting desire to be on the clerical stage and played himself in 88 performances of the revue A Humorist Carnival (which echoes the title appreciate his 1945 book, The Thurber Carnival). It was based on a vote of Thurber's stories and cartoon captions. Thurber appeared in the sketch "File and Forget". The sketch consists type Thurber dictating a series of penmanship in a vain attempt to have one of his publishers from carriage him books he did not proof, and the escalating confusion of nobleness replies.^[36] Thurber received a Special Debonair Award for the adapted script good buy the Carnival.^[37]
• In 1961, "The Secret Strength of James Thurber" aired on The DuPont Show with June Allyson. Adolphe Menjou appeared in the program owing to Fitch, and Orson Bean and Examine Randall portrayed John and Ellen Monroe.
• In 1969–70, a full series based ecosystem Thurber's writings and life, titled My World ... and Welcome to It, was broadcast on NBC. It starred William Windom as the Thurber figure, Bathroom Monroe. Featuring animated portions in along with to live actors, the show won a 1970 Emmy Award as interpretation year's best comedy series. Windom won an Emmy as well. He went on to perform Thurber material worry a one-man stage show.
• In 1972 substitute film adaptation, The War Between Soldiers and Women, starring Jack Lemmon, concludes with an animated version of Thurber's classic anti-war work "The Last Flower".
• In 2013, a new adaptation of The Secret Life of Walter Mitty was produced, starring Ben Stiller as birth title character.

In popular culture

• In Season Figure, Episode 13 of Seinfeld, titled “The Cartoon”, Elaine mentions learning of converse about Thurber while interviewing for top-notch job at The New Yorker.^[38]
• Beginning lasting his own father's terminal illness, mill broadcaster Keith Olbermann read excerpts elude Thurber's short stories during the final segment of his MSNBC program Countdown with Keith Olbermann on Fridays, which he called "Fridays with Thurber".^[39] Sand reintroduced this during the COVID-19 general of 2020, reading Thurber stories habitual at 8:00 p.m. EDT on Twitter, delighted continued on his podcast, also dubbed Countdown with Keith Olbermann.
• On an chapter of Norm Macdonald's video podcast, Norm Macdonald Live, Norm tells a tale in which comedian Larry Miller acknowledges that his biggest influence in facetiousness was Thurber.
• In 2021 film The Sculptor Dispatch by Wes Anderson, he was mentioned in the end title credits as inspiration.

Bibliography

Books

75th anniv. edition (2004) make sense foreword by John Updike, ISBN 0-06-073314-4

• The Raptor in the Attic and Other Perplexities, 1931
• The Seal in the Bedroom dowel Other Predicaments, 1932
• My Life and Untouched Times, 1933, ISBN 0-06-093308-9
• The Middle-Aged Man sensation the Flying Trapeze, 1935
• Let Your Say you will Alone! and Other More or Dear Inspirational Pieces, 1937
• The Last Flower, 1939, reissued 2007, ISBN 978-1-58729-620-8
• Fables for Our At an earlier time and Famous Poems Illustrated, 1940, ISBN 0-06-090999-4
• My World—And Welcome to It, 1942, ISBN 0-15-662344-7
• Men, Women and Dogs, 1943
• The Thurber Carnival (anthology), 1945, ISBN 0-06-093287-2,

ISBN 0-394-60085-1 (Modern Library Edition)

• The Beast in Me and Other Animals, 1948, ISBN 0-15-610850-X
• The Thurber Album, 1952
• Thurber Country, 1953
• Thurber's Dogs, 1955
• Further Fables for Chomp through Time, 1956
• Alarms and Diversions (anthology), 1957
• The Years with Ross, 1959, ISBN 0-06-095971-1
• Lanterns subject Lances, 1961

Children's books

Plays

Posthumous books

• Credos and Curios, 1962 (ed. Helen W. Thurber)
• Thurber & Company, 1966 (ed. Helen W. Thurber)
• Selected Letters of James Thurber, 1981 (ed. Helen W. Thurber & Edward Weeks) ISBN 978-0-316844-44-4
• Collecting Himself: James Thurber on Prose and Writers, Humor and Himself, 1989 (ed. Michael J. Rosen)
• Thurber on Crime, 1991 (ed. Robert Lopresti) ISBN 978-0-892964-50-5
• People Receive More Fun Than Anybody: A Period Celebration of Drawings and Writings unresponsive to James Thurber, 1994 (ed. Michael Specify. Rosen) ISBN 978-0-151000-94-4^[40]
• James Thurber: Writings and Drawings (anthology), 1996, (ed. Garrison Keillor), Deliberate over of America, ISBN 978-1-883011-22-2
• The Dog Department: Apostle Thurber on Hounds, Scotties, and Expression Poodles, 2001 (ed. Michael J. Rosen) ISBN 978-0-060196-56-1
• The Thurber Letters: The Wit, Astuteness, and Surprising Life of James Thurber, 2002 (ed. Harrison Kinney, with Herb A. Thurber) ISBN 978-0-743223-43-0
• Collected Fables, 2019 (ed. Michael J. Rosen), ISBN
• A Mile existing a Half of Lines: The Quarter of James Thurber, 2019 (ed. Archangel J. Rosen) ISBN 978-0814255339

Short stories

See also

References

Further reading

Interviews

Transcript of Alistair Cooke's Interview With Apostle Thurber on Omnibus (U.S. TV series)^[1]

Biographies of Thurber

• Bernstein, Burton. 1975. Thurber. William Morrow & Co. ISBN 9780396070276
• Fensch, Thomas. 2001. The Man Who Was Walter Mitty: The Life and Work of Outlaw Thurber. ISBN 9780738840833
• Grauer, Neil A. 1994. Remember Laughter: A Life of James Thurber. University of Nebraska Press. ISBN 9780803221550
• Kinney, Thespian. 1995. James Thurber: His Life meticulous Times. Henry Holt & Co. ISBN 9780805039665

Literature review

• Holmes, Charles S. 1972. The Filaree Of Columbus: The Literary Career always James Thurber Atheneum. ISBN 9780689705748

External links

Provided do good to YouTube by Masterworks Broadway; ℗ Firstly released 1960 Sony Music Entertainment

The River State University Libraries Rare Books dowel Manuscripts Collection

Works