Thurber's World (and Welcome To it)!

Self Portrait

James Grover Thurber  was an author, cartoonist and humorist who grew up in Columbus Ohio, and gained his fame writing articles and cartoons that graced the pages of the New Yorker from 1927 until his death in 1961.

News Items

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29 October 2000: A new discussion group has come online at the Catherton website for discussions regarding James Thurber. If you don't find what you are looking for here, try the newsgroup and their own  Thurber Information site.   See you there!


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 Peter Schickele (of PDQ Bach fame) has  released a CD called Thurber's Dogs, of musical composition inspired by Thurber's drawings of dogs.


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 A biography of Thurber has come out, called "Remember Laughter: A Life of James Thurber"; a review of this book has been published by the Boston Book Review. And here is another review of the book from the University of Nebraska.


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Yet another Biography has come out: James Thurber:His Life and Times. by Harrison Kinney.

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Movies, TV shows, etc.

Where possible, I have added the Internet Movie Database archive entry on the movie, play, TV series or Actor/Actress. Thurber has his own Filmography and (rather skimpy) Biography: His Filmography on the database is still incomplete, so I hope to send the IMD folks some updates soon.

• The Male Animal: Based on the play written by Thurber and Ellitot Nugent. The movie was later remade in 1952 as She's Working Her Way Through College.
• The Secret Life of Walter Mitty Thurber's short story with Danny Kaye as Walter Mitty, expanded to a full-length motion picture. Ta-pocketa-pocketa...
• The Battle of the Sexes(1959): A British movie of one of Thurber's favorite themes; based on "The Catbird Seat" (or so they say).
• The War Between Men and Women(1972): A more recent movie, with Barbara Harris and Jack Lemmon, playing a Thurber-like character. Lisa Gerritsen, who a few years previously played the daughter (Lydia Monroe ) in the TV My World and Welcome To It, also played Thurber's daughter in this movie. The retelling of Thurber's The Last Flower fable, complete with Thurber's original drawings, is worth the viewing. As a side note, Barbara Harris and Jason Robarts appear together in not only this film, but also in my favorite movie of all time, A Thousand Clowns, based on a play by Herb Gardner.
• The Unicorn In the Garden: Thurber's Fable for Our Time was made into a short animated film, also using his original drawings.
• My World and Welcome To It: (1969-1970): Starring William Windom as John Monroe (a Thurber alter-ego), who deserves a special mention for his role in preserving Thurber's memory, in this TV series based on Thurber's articles and cartoons.
• Is Sex Necesary:? Written with E.B. White, was made into a stage production, (I think)
• The Thurber Carnival was also made into a stage production, which made Broadway.
• Rise and Shine: (1941) Don't know anything about this one.

William Windom

William Windom, (known to more recent generations as the suicidal starship captain in season two of the Star Trek original series, who drove his shuttle straight into the "Doomsday Machine"), created and starred in the TV series My World and Welcome To It . He later made an ongoing career of doing a one-man show playing Thurber, and performing readings of Thurbers writings onstage.

Thurber Hall of Shame

• Verbization of a Noun:
• "How does that impact our work?"

I thought only wisdom teeth could be impacted !
• "Kinko's: The new way to office"

lord help us!
• Malapropisms:
• "Let us explore the parameters of this building".
• Neologisms
• CyberAnything
• AnythingScape
• AnythingGate

Thurber Aphorisms

"It is better to know some of the questions than all of the answers."

"Let us not look back to the past with anger, nor towards the future with fear, but look around with awareness."

"You can fool too many of the people too much of the time."

"The dog has seldom been successful in pulling man up to its level of sagacity, but man has frequently dragged the dog down to his"
 
 

Links to pages related to Thurberabilia

Here is a page with a number of Thurber cartoons and short stories.

The New Sun: earns its place at the top of the list for publishing in Volume 1, Issue 2, a complete Fable For Our Time, The Bear Who Let It Alone (complete with Thurber's original drawing!) , along with yet another Biography, headed with Thurber's self-portrait.

Xander Mellish has written some stories in the style of Thurber, which is cool, since Thurber was known to write stories, intentionally in the style of Henry James (one of his own favorite authors), Hemingway, and others.

Douglas Brick Gets honorable mention for referencing Xander Mellish's Thurber work.

The Jane Austen Bibliography gets a reference for noting that one of Thurber's satirical works, My memories of D. H. Lawrence,, mentions Jane Austen.

Folks Quoting Thurber (accurately!):

• In The Ethical Spectacle September 95, the article The Prisoner's Dilemma in Relationships uses a Thurber story as part of the illustration of the ethical/philosophical problems of the War Between Men and Women. I'm afraid the retelling is not accurate, which is truly ironic, since story involves the one where the husband's wife constantly corrects her husband's old stories. As you know, finally, in a fit of madness, the husband starts making up stories about dreams he had, for surely then she can't have been there to correct him. But this backfires when he runs out of made-up dreams and starts retelling old ones about policemen, clouds, etc., in which the wife starts correcting his imaginary dreams. In this way lies madness...
• Bill Arnett  has a quote.
• Eileen Mullen's page has an entry on Thurber (and has some cute rabbits at the top of the page).
• Andrew Graham quotes Thurber quoting Thurber's New Yorker boss, Harold Ross, during a tretise on THE GREAT GREY WHALE.
• Harper Audio has a wonder archive of readings of works by various authors, including Thurber, here being Fables read by Peter Ustinov.
• Thurber's If Grant Had Been Drinking at Appomattox used to be listed in the Usenet Alternate Histories page. This is amusing because his story is actually a satire of alternative histories.
• The Thurber Auditorium at OSU ...