|
Biography James Thurber
Born: 8 December 1894
Birthplace: Columbus, Ohio
Death: 2 November 1961 (complications from a stroke)
Best Known As: Author of The Secret Life of Walter Mitty
Thurber\'s witty short stories and lumpy cartoons were a popular mainstay of The New Yorker magazine in the 1930s and 1940s. A Midwestern boy with an urbane twist, Thurber mixed comical reminiscences of his Ohio childhood with wry observations on modern times and the battle of the sexes. (His best-known story is The Secret Life of Walter Mitty, the tale of a henpecked husband who escapes into heroic daydreams.) Thurber\'s funny, loopy, absurdist cartoons featured men, women, dogs and other strange animals. He was by turns hilarious and melancholy, and his darker nature seemed to come out in stories and cartoons about husbands and wives: the wives often domineering and sarcastic, the husbands harried or bitterly triumphant. Like Mark Twain, Thurber became increasingly morose in his last decade, although he continued to write until his death. His books include the spoof Is Sex Necessary? (1929, with E.B. White), the fanciful \"autobiography\" My Life and Hard Times (1933), the New Yorker memoir The Years With Ross (1959), and the short story collections The Middle-Aged Man on the Flying Trapeze (1935) and The Thurber Carnival (1933). He also wrote the 1950 children\'s book The Thirteen Clocks. With Elliot Nugent he wrote the play The Male Animal (published 1940).
Thurber\'s nickname was \"Jamie\"... He lost sight in one eye in while playing bows-and-arrows with his brothers in 1901; his other eye slowly failed, and by the 1950s he had become legally blind... Thurber died after collapsing from a blood clot on the brain; some sources list it as a brain tumor... Thurber was married to Althea Adams from 1922-35; they had one child, Rosemary, born in 1931. His second marriage, to Helen Wismer, lasted from 1935 until his death in 1961... The Thurber Carnival also has become a popular stage play.
Thurber, James, 1894–1961, American humorist, b. Columbus, Ohio, studied at Ohio State Univ. After working on various newspapers he served on the staff of the New Yorker from 1927 to 1933 and was later a principal contributor to the magazine, considerably influencing its tone through his various drawings, stories, and anecdotes of his misadventures. Beneath the vague outlines of Thurber\'s cartoons and the wistful and ironic improbabilities of his writings—often dealing with incidents and characters from his Midwestern childhood or with the vexed relationship between the sexes—there is a deep psychological insight that sets him apart from most 20th-century humorists.
With E. B. White he wrote and illustrated Is Sex Necessary? (1929), a satire of books on popular psychoanalysis. The Male Animal (1940), a play he wrote with Elliott Nugent, satirizes collegiate life. Collections of his drawings and writings include The Owl in the Attic (1931), The Seal in the Bedroom (1932), My Life and Hard Times (1933), Fables for Our Time (1940), The Thurber Carnival (1945), Thurber Country (1953), Thurber\'s Dogs (1955), The Wonderful O (1957), and Credos and Curios (1962). Among his other works are The Thirteen Clocks (1950), a children\'s book, and The Years with Ross (1959), a memoir of his days with the New Yorker. Thurber\'s later career was hampered by his
|
Recommended Reading
