Jabberwock?
I don’t claim to know about all things Thurber. My focus this past half century has been his drawings and collecting his books, with a particular emphasis on the former.
I’m still learning about material that appeared after Thurber’s passing in November of 1961. Case in point: just last night, I learned of a 1972 play, Jabberwock, based on Thurber’s My Life And Hard Times, written by two highly accomplished Ohio fellows, Jerome Lawrence and Robert E. Lee. According to their Wikipedia pages, Ohio State commissioned Jabberwock. It premiered November 18, 1972 at the dedication of Ohio State’s Thurber Theater.
My essential go-to Thurber biographies, Burton Bernstein’s Thurber: A Biography, and Harrison Kinney’s James Thurber: His Life and Times, mention Jabberwock. Both report that, at some point during Jabberwock‘s run, Thurber’s daughter, Rosemary, briefly appeared in the play [update: according to John Fisher, who was Assistant Stage Manager for the production, Rosemary was “cast as Thurber’s mother, Mary Agnes, from the beginning and she appeared in all eleven performances.”]
A quick Google search of Jabberwock told me that the play has been performed numerous times over the years (high school productions abound!). Google image shows stage sets, and cast members from various productions.
A bit of a puzzlement to me: why a play about Thurber used the title of Lewis Carroll’s poem, Jabberwocky. For enlightenment, I went to my go-to Thurbermeister, Michael Rosen.* Michael replied (I’m quoting in part):
[Thurber] “loved the linguistic abandon that Carroll took, inventing words, near-words, mis-words, etc. Much of his work for children, as well as his cartoons of unnatural history and the later essays that came from the inner firings of his idling mind play with word play…”*Here’s Michael’s bio from his terrific must-have, A Mile And A Half Of Lines: The Art Of James Thurber:
Michael J. Rosen is a writer, an illustrator, and an editor who has collaborated with the Thurber Estate and written about the works of James Thurber for almost forty years. He was the founding director of Thurber house and has edited six volumes of Thurber’s work.
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Thurber’s entry on the Spill’s A-Z:
James Thurber Born, Columbus, Ohio, December 8, 1894. Died 1961, New York City. New Yorker work: 1927 -1961, with several pieces run posthumously. According to the New Yorker’s legendary editor, William Shawn, “In the early days, a small company of writers, artists, and editors — E.B. White, James Thurber, Peter Arno, and Katharine White among them — did more to make the magazine what it is than can be measured.”
Key cartoon collection: The Seal in the Bedroom and Other Predicaments (Harper & Bros., 1932). Key anthology (writings & drawings): The Thurber Carnival (Harper & Row, 1945). There have been a number of Thurber biographies. Burton Bernstein’s Thurber (Dodd, Mead, 1975) and Harrison Kinney’s James Thurber: His Life and Times (Henry Holt & Co., 1995) are essential. Website