Latest Addition To The Spill Archive: A Tower Of Thurber Files
Yesterday’s Spill mentioned a stack of Cartoonist PROfiles donated to the archives. This week also brought several boxes containing several pounds of research files on James Thurber from another Spill booster, the fab Michael Rosen, editor of A Mile And A Half Of Lines: The Art of James Thurber (Mr. Rosen edited a number of other Thurber-centric titles, including Collecting Himself: James Thurber On Writing and Writers, Humor, and Himself). I’ll be going through all of these files in the weeks (months!) to come, sharing items of interest I come across.
The article shown here appeared in a San Francisco paper, March 6, 1937 reviewing the “thoroughly delightful exhibition” of Thurber drawings at the Gump Galleries.
The article includes this passage by Thurber on his drawings:
“…most of them are funny or are supposed to be funny. Those that find them funny often do not see them as being ‘art.'”
and this:
“I originally drew, I think, to satirize and poke fun at the more pretentious artists.”
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James Thurber’s A-Z Entry
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