This time of year, when there’s snow on the ground (as there is here in upstate New York), reminds me of a long-time favorite passage in the third paragraph of the Foreword of Burton Bernstein‘s fabulous Thurber biography, published in 1976. I won’t repeat the paragraph here so as to avoid ruffling copyright feathers, but I believe it’s fair to
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There are a lot of fun Thurber factoids to be found in Edwin Bowden‘s James Thurber: A Bibliography (Ohio State University Press, 1968). Since I brought it home from Columbus, Ohio (I bought it in the Thurber House gift shop, of all places) I’ve gone to this book a zillion times for all sorts of Thurber-related issues that’ve come up.
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Back in 1980, I was booted out of my apartment on West 11th Street in Greenwich Village (see my 11th Street downstair’s neighbor, Donald Barthelme’s December 4, 1978 Talk Of The Town piece about the building’s landlord — I’m one-half of trembling “…young cohabiting couple…” he mentions). Needing a break from Manhattan I took up an offer from an illustrator
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After breezing through a book or three of Thurber’s drawings, it’s sometimes fun to settle down with either of the two books of his letters. The first published, Selected Letters Of James Thurber (Atlantic, Little & Brown, 1981) was edited by his second wife, Helen Thurber, and Thurber’s friend (and Atlantic editor), Edward Weeks. Although Selected Letters was published half
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