Now In The Public Domain: Is Sex Necessary? I just came across the four-and-a-half months old news that the original edition of E.B. White & James Thurber’s 1929 edition of Is Sex Necessary? entered the public domain as of this year. Above is the Spill‘s copy, swathed in a plastic protective cover. Seeing this edition on the shelf alongside other
Read more
“What Do You Think About This Caption?” There are enough Thurber books around to keep me re-reading til the lights go out. Harrison Kinney’s James Thurber: His Life and Times is just about at the top of my re-read list, although Burton Bernstein’s 1975 Thurber: a Biography is dearer to me. It was my first introduction to a Thurber biography,
Read more
In my current re-reading of Harrison Kinney’s massive (1,238 pages) Thurber biography, James Thurber: His Life And Times, I came across a short section devoted to Thurber’s opining, in a letter, on several cartoons in a particular issue of The New Yorker. Each time I had gone over this section in the past I wondered what issue Thurber was talking about.
Read more
The other day, Scott Burns, a friend of the Spill sent along scans of a rather obscure item: Thurber’s contribution to this booklet of text with accompanying records is “Harmonica Man,” a piece about Larry Adler (Peter Harrington, A London bookseller selling a copy (for $517.98), has this terrific write-up on the set). I came up empty-handed when looking through
Read more