On this Thurber Thursday I’m going to link you to two recent James Thurber*-centric Liza Donnelly broadcasts. I’ve asked Ms. Donnelly to explain what she was up to in these broadcasts.
“A few times each week, I live-draw on InstagramTV and HappsTV. Usually I draw something in the news, but this past Tuesday, I decided to share my love of James Thurber with my viewers. I am a cartoonist because of him: at age seven, I traced his cartoons and eventually arrived at my own style. Thurber’s lines are so wonderful and loose; I always aspire to draw like him.”
Link here to Ms. Donnelly’s Instagram broadcast
Link here to her Happs broadcast.
Ms. Donnelly’s first New Yorker cartoon was published in 1982. She is 9th** on the list of longest active contributing New Yorker cartoonists.
*James 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. A short bio appears on the Thurber House website: http://www.thurberhouse.org/about-james-thurber/
**1. Edward Koren (1962) 2. Mort Gerberg (April 10, 1965). 3. Edward Frascino (Sept. 4, 1965) 4. George Booth (June 14, 1969) 5. Sam Gross (Aug. 23, 1969). 6. Michael Maslin (April 17, 1978). 7. Roz Chast (July 3, 1978) 8. Mick Stevens (1979) 9. Liza Donnelly (1982)
(full disclosure: Ms. Donnelly & I are married).