As I continue my revisit through Harrison Kinney’s massive biography of James Thurber, I continue to find moments I overlooked the first time I read it.
A for instance:
On page 853, Mr. Kinney quotes E.B. White’s review of The Thurber Carnival in PM (the issue of January 4, 1945):
“The book contains the picture of the woman speaking into the telephone, saying, ‘If I called the wrong number, why did you answer the phone?’ I’ve been thinking about that situation for many years; it seems to me just as alive and as funny today as when I first saw the drawing…It is the funniest, the most haunting caption I have ever read under any picture…”
It originally appeared in The New Yorker, June 5, 1937.