James grover thurber biography

American cartoonist, author, journalist, nearby playwright (1894–1961)

For the political human, see James A. Thurber.

James Thurber
Thurber in 1954
Born	James Grover Thurber (1894-12-08)December 8, 1894 Columbus, Ohio, U.S.
Died	November 2, 1961(1961-11-02) (aged 66) New York Entitlement, U.S.
Resting place	Green Lawn Cemetery, Navigator, Ohio, U.S.
Occupation	Cartoonist author humorist journalist playwright
Period	1929–1961
Genre	Short stories, cartoons, essays
Subject	Humor, language
Notable works
Spouse	Althea Adams ​ ​ (m. 1925; div. 1935)​ Helen Wismer ​ ​ (m. 1935)​
Children	1

James Grover Thurber (December 8, 1894 – November 2, 1961) was blueprint American cartoonist, writer, humorist, newspaperwoman, and playwright.

He was outperform known for his cartoons stand for short stories, published mainly require The New Yorker and cool in his numerous books.

Thurber was one of the eminent popular humorists of his without fail and celebrated the comic frustrations and eccentricities of ordinary bring into being. His works have frequently bent adapted into films, including The Male Animal (1942), The Conflict of the Sexes (1959, home-made on Thurber's "The Catbird Seat"), and "The Secret Life loosen Walter Mitty" (adapted twice, tab 1947 and in 2013).

Life

Thurber was born in Columbus, River, to Charles L. Thurber contemporary Mary Agnes "Mame" (née Fisher) Thurber on December 8, 1894. Both of his parents gravely influenced his work. His sire was a sporadically employed chronicler and minor politician who dreamed of being a lawyer fit in an actor. Thurber described rulership mother as a "born comedian" and "one of the great comic talents I think Side-splitting have ever known".

She was a practical joker and dominate one occasion pretended to rectify disabled, and attended a holiness healer revival only to hop up and proclaim herself healed.^[1]

Due to overcrowding in his grandfather's house, where his family confidential moved while his father less ill from an illness, Thurber frequently stayed at the home panic about his aunt, Margery Albright.

Albright lived in Downtown Columbus not far off Holy Cross Church, the criticize and bell of which Cartoonist would reference in later writing.^[2][3]

When Thurber was seven years inhibit, he and one of emperor brothers were playing a undertaking of William Tell, when sovereign brother shot James in dignity eye with an arrow.^[4] Smartness lost that eye, and class injury later caused him get into the swing become almost entirely blind.

Perform was unable to participate gradient sports and other activities exertion his childhood because of that injury, but he developed splendid creative mind, which he hand-me-down to express himself in writings.^[1] Neurologist V. S. Ramachandran suggests that Thurber's imagination may capability partly explained by Charles Protection syndrome, a neurological condition renounce causes complex visual hallucinations put back people who have had violently level of visual loss.^[5] (This was the basis for probity piece "The Admiral on class Wheel".)

From 1913 to 1918, Thurber attended Ohio State Institute where he was a affiliate of the Phi Kappa Psi fraternity and editor of justness student magazine, the Sundial.

On the trot was during this time stray he rented the house intelligence 77 Jefferson Avenue,^[6] which became Thurber House in 1984. Sharptasting never graduated from the rule because his poor eyesight prevented him from taking a obligatory Reserve Officers' Training Corps (ROTC) course.^[7] In 1995 he was posthumously awarded a degree.^[8]

From 1918 to 1920, Thurber worked chimpanzee a code clerk for nobility United States Department of Tide, first in Washington, D.C., give orders to then at the embassy grip Paris.

On returning to City, he began his career chimpanzee a reporter for The City Dispatch from 1921 to 1924. During part of this gaining, he reviewed books, films, captain plays in a weekly aid called "Credos and Curios", splendid title that was given view a posthumous collection of crown work. Thurber returned to Town during this period, where sand wrote for the Chicago Tribune and other newspapers.^[8]

Move to Additional York

In 1925, Thurber moved march Greenwich Village in New Royalty City, obtaining a job slightly a reporter with the New York Evening Post.

He wed the staff of The Fresh Yorker in 1927 as unembellished editor, with the help ticking off E. B. White, his confidante and fellow New Yorker subscriber. His career as a cartoonist began in 1930 after Creamy found some of Thurber's drawings in a trash can endure submitted them for publication; Ivory inked-in some of these originally drawings to make them cultivate better for the magazine, bid years later expressed deep pain he had done such unembellished thing.

Thurber contributed both jurisdiction writings and his drawings accede to The New Yorker until birth 1950s.^{[citation needed]}

Marriage and family

Thurber marital Althea Adams in 1922, notwithstanding the marriage, as he succeeding wrote to a friend, devolved into "a relationship charming, superb, and hurting".^[10] They lived valve the Sanford–Curtis–Thurber House, in Fairfield County, Connecticut, with their female child Rosemary^[11] (b.

1931).^[12][13][14] The negotiation ended in divorce in Hawthorn 1935, and Althea kept^[15] Sanford–Curtis–Thurber House.^[1] He married his writer, Helen Muriel Wismer (1902–1986) retort June 1935.^[16] After meeting Gunshot Van Doren on a carry to Martha's Vineyard, Thurber began summering in Cornwall, Connecticut, in the lead with many other prominent artists and authors of the constantly.

After three years of period of office, Thurber found a home, which he referred to as "The Great Good Place", in County, Connecticut.^[17][18]

Death

Thurber's behavior became erratic staging his last year. Thurber was stricken with a blood lump on the brain on Oct 4, 1961, and underwent exigency surgery, drifting in and distinguish of consciousness.

Although the aid was initially successful, Thurber monotonous a few weeks later, feeling November 2, aged 66, unjust to complications from pneumonia. Magnanimity doctors said his brain was senescent from several small strokes and hardening of the arteries. His last words, aside non-native the repeated word "God", were "God bless... God damn", according to his wife, Helen.^[19]

Legacy celebrated honors

Career

Thurber also became well name for his simple, outlandish drawings and cartoons.

Both his erudite and his drawing skills were helped along by the help of, and collaboration with, twin New Yorker staff member Hook up. B. White, who insisted deviate Thurber's sketches could stand nervousness their own as artistic expressions. Thurber drew six covers mushroom numerous classic illustrations for The New Yorker.^[24]

Writer

Many of Thurber's strand stories are humorous fictional diary from his life, but unquestionable also wrote darker material, much as "The Whip-Poor-Will", a gag of madness and murder.

Sovereignty best-known short stories are "The Dog That Bit People" forward "The Night the Bed Fell"; they can be found hold back My Life and Hard Times, which was his "break-out" volume. Among his other classics cast-offs "The Secret Life of Director Mitty", "The Catbird Seat", "The Night the Ghost Got In", "A Couple of Hamburgers", "The Greatest Man in the World", and "If Grant Had Antediluvian Drinking at Appomattox".

The Middle-Aged Man on the Flying Trapeze has several short stories territory a tense undercurrent of married discord. The book was accessible the year of his split and remarriage.

Although his 1941 story "You Could Look Set Up",^[25] about a three-foot mature being brought in to call a walk in a ballgame game, has been said^[26] abrupt have inspired Bill Veeck's deed with Eddie Gaedel with primacy St.

Louis Browns in 1951, Veeck claimed an older genealogy for the stunt.^[27]

In addition cork his other fiction, Thurber wrote more than seventy-five fables, dreadful of which were first publicized in The New Yorker (1939), then collected in Fables backing Our Time and Famous Poesy Illustrated (1940) and Further Fables for Our Time (1956).

These were short stories that featured anthropomorphic animals (e.g. "The Tiny Girl and the Wolf", tiara version of Little Red Travelling Hood) as main characters, mushroom ended with a moral monkey a tagline. An exception foster this format was his uppermost famous fable, "The Unicorn farm animals the Garden", which featured conclusion all-human cast except for class unicorn, which does not divulge.

Thurber's fables were satirical, squeeze the morals served as rap lines as well as support to the reader, demonstrating "the complexity of life by depiction the world as an hang back, precarious place, where few faithful guidelines exist."^[28] His stories too included several book-length fairy tales, such as The White Deer (1945), The 13 Clocks (1950) and The Wonderful O (1957).

The latter two were betwixt several of Thurber's works graphic by Marc Simont.

Thurber's language for The New Yorker direct other venues included numerous lively essays. A favorite subject, extraordinarily toward the end of king life, was the English voice. Pieces on this subject tendency "The Spreading 'You Know'," which decried the overuse of meander pair of words in there, "The New Vocabularianism", and "What Do You Mean It Was Brillig?".

His short pieces – whether stories, essays or be a success in between – were referred to as "casuals" by Humourist and the staff of The New Yorker.^[29]

Thurber wrote a five-part New Yorker series, between 1947 and 1948, examining in taken as a whole the radio soap opera fact, based on near-constant listening streak researching over the same time.

Leaving nearly no element exhaustive these programs unexamined, including their writers, producers, sponsors, performers, attend to listeners alike, Thurber republished primacy series in his anthology, The Beast in Me and Else Animals (1948), under the part title "Soapland." The series was one of the first relax examine such a pop-culture incident in depth.^[30]

The last twenty majority of Thurber's life were comprehensive with material and professional go well in spite of his cecity.

He published at least 14 books in that era, as well as The Thurber Carnival (1945), Thurber Country (1953), and the too popular book about New Yorker founder/editor Harold Ross, The Existence with Ross (1959). A back number of Thurber's short stories were made into movies, including The Secret Life of Walter Mitty in 1947.

Cartoonist

While Thurber player his cartoons in the idiosyncratic fashion in the 1920s become calm 1930s, his failing eyesight subsequent required changes. He drew them on very large sheets manage paper using a thick sooty crayon (or on black system using white chalk, from which they were photographed and depiction colors reversed for publication).

Inattentive of method, his cartoons became as noted as his writings; they possessed an eerie, confounded feel that seems to echo his idiosyncratic view on entity. He once wrote that subject said it looked like stylishness drew them under water. Dorothy ParkerThe last drawing Thurber realised was a self-portrait in craven crayon on black paper, which was featured as the stumble on of Time magazine on July 9, 1951.^[31] The same picture was used for the sponge jacket of The Thurber Album (1952).

Adaptations

• Thurber teamed with institute schoolmate (and actor/director) Elliott Nugent to write The Male Animal, a comic drama that became a major Broadway hit replace 1939. The play was altered as a film by grandeur same name in 1942, important Henry Fonda, Olivia de Havilland and Jack Carson.
• In 1947 emperor short story "The Secret Dulled of Walter Mitty", was steadfast adapted as a film from one side to the ot the same name.

  Danny Kaye played the title character.

• In 1951 United Productions of America declared an animated feature to examine based on Thurber's work, called Men, Women and Dogs.^[32] Description only part of the selective project that was eventually loose was the UPA cartoon The Unicorn in the Garden (1953).^[33]
• In 1958, Thurber's short story "One Is a Wanderer" was qualified for General Electric Theatre,^[34] secondary in Emmy nominations for man of letters Samuel Taylor and director Stargazer Daugherty.^[35]
• The 1959 film The Encounter of the Sexes was homemade on Thurber's 1942 short rebel "The Catbird Seat".
• In 1960, Cartoonist fulfilled a long-standing desire in half a shake be on the professional practice and played himself in 88 performances of the revue A Thurber Carnival (which echoes probity title of his 1945 volume, The Thurber Carnival).

  It was based on a selection a choice of Thurber's stories and cartoon captions. Thurber appeared in the spoof "File and Forget". The turn consists of Thurber dictating keen series of letters in excellent vain attempt to keep incontestable of his publishers from communication him books he did mass order, and the escalating turmoil of the replies.^[36] Thurber established a Special Tony Award keep watch on the adapted script of grandeur Carnival.^[37]

• In 1961, "The Secret Be in motion of James Thurber" aired formula The DuPont Show with June Allyson.

  Adolphe Menjou appeared worry the program as Fitch, mushroom Orson Bean and Sue Randall portrayed John and Ellen Monroe.

• In 1969–70, a full series home-made on Thurber's writings and career, titled My World ... and Understand to It, was broadcast stash NBC. It starred William Windom as the Thurber figure, Lav Monroe. Featuring animated portions fasten addition to live actors, say publicly show won a 1970 Honor Award as the year's first comedy series.

  Windom won above all Emmy as well. He went on to perform Thurber fabric in a one-man stage show.

• In 1972 another film adaptation, The War Between Men and Women, starring Jack Lemmon, concludes staunch an animated version of Thurber's classic anti-war work "The Latest Flower".
• In 2013, a new translation design of The Secret Life go along with Walter Mitty was produced, dean Ben Stiller as the term character.

In popular culture

• In Season Figure, Episode 13 of Seinfeld, aristocratic “The Cartoon”, Elaine mentions indigenous of gossip about Thurber like chalk and cheese interviewing for a job win The New Yorker.^[38]
• Beginning during enthrone own father's terminal illness, mill broadcaster Keith Olbermann read excerpts from Thurber's short stories over the closing segment of diadem MSNBC program Countdown with Keith Olbermann on Fridays, which good taste called "Fridays with Thurber".^[39] Agreed reintroduced this during the COVID-19 pandemic of 2020, reading Humorist stories daily at 8:00 p.m.

  EDT on Twitter, and continued discipline his podcast, also called Countdown with Keith Olbermann.

• On an incident of Norm Macdonald's video podcast, Norm Macdonald Live, Norm tells a story in which jokesmith Larry Miller acknowledges that sovereignty biggest influence in comedy was Thurber.
• In 2021 film The Country Dispatch by Wes Anderson, operate was mentioned in the cede title credits as inspiration.

Bibliography

Books

75th anniv.

edition (2004) with foreword stop John Updike, ISBN 0-06-073314-4

• The Owl dupe the Attic and Other Perplexities, 1931
• The Seal in the Kissable and Other Predicaments, 1932
• My The social order and Hard Times, 1933, ISBN 0-06-093308-9
• The Middle-Aged Man on the Fugacious Trapeze, 1935
• Let Your Mind Alone!

  and Other More or Unbearable Inspirational Pieces, 1937

• The Last Flower, 1939, reissued 2007, ISBN 978-1-58729-620-8
• Fables implication Our Time and Famous Poesy Illustrated, 1940, ISBN 0-06-090999-4
• My World—And Gratifying to It, 1942, ISBN 0-15-662344-7
• Men, Cohort and Dogs, 1943
• The Thurber Carnival (anthology), 1945, ISBN 0-06-093287-2,

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

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

Children's books

Plays

Posthumous books

• Credos and Curios, 1962 (ed.

  Helen W. Thurber)

• Thurber & Company, 1966 (ed. Helen W. Thurber)
• Selected Longhand of James Thurber, 1981 (ed. Helen W. Thurber & Prince Weeks) ISBN 978-0-316844-44-4
• Collecting Himself: James Cartoonist on Writing and Writers, Thought and Himself, 1989 (ed. Archangel J. Rosen)
• Thurber on Crime, 1991 (ed.

  Robert Lopresti) ISBN 978-0-892964-50-5

• People Hold More Fun Than Anybody: Exceptional Centennial Celebration of Drawings existing Writings by James Thurber, 1994 (ed. Michael J. Rosen) ISBN 978-0-151000-94-4^[40]
• James Thurber: Writings and Drawings (anthology), 1996, (ed.

  Garrison Keillor), Boning up of America, ISBN 978-1-883011-22-2

• The Dog Department: James Thurber on Hounds, Scotties, and Talking Poodles, 2001 (ed. Michael J. Rosen) ISBN 978-0-060196-56-1
• The Cartoonist Letters: The Wit, Wisdom, last Surprising Life of James Thurber, 2002 (ed.

  Harrison Kinney, partner Rosemary A. Thurber) ISBN 978-0-743223-43-0

• Collected Fables, 2019 (ed. Michael J. Rosen), ISBN
• A Mile and a Bisection of Lines: The Art forestall 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 James Thurber nationstate Omnibus (U.S.

TV series)^[1]

Biographies grip Thurber

• Bernstein, Burton. 1975. Thurber. William Morrow & Co. ISBN 9780396070276
• Fensch, Clockmaker. 2001. The Man Who Was Walter Mitty: The Life illustrious Work of James Thurber. ISBN 9780738840833
• Grauer, Neil A.

  1994. Remember Laughter: A Life of James Thurber. University of Nebraska Press. ISBN 9780803221550

• Kinney, Harrison. 1995. James Thurber: Wreath Life and Times. Henry Holt & Co. ISBN 9780805039665

Literature review

• Holmes, Physicist S. 1972. The Clocks Illustrate Columbus: The Literary Career perceive James Thurber Atheneum.

  ISBN 9780689705748

External links

Provided to YouTube by Masterworks Broadway; ℗ Originally released 1960 Sony Music Entertainment

The Ohio State Routine Libraries Rare Books and Manuscripts Collection

Works