Just when I thought I’d seen every Thurber cover story, along came the issue of The Saturday Review shown here:
Within the issue is a great review (shown below) of The Thurber Carnival by William Rose Benet, a Pulitzer Prize winner, and the fellow who founded The Saturday Review (the Thurber portrait on the cover is a wood engraving by Francis O’Brien Garfield).
The Thurber Carnival , as I’ve probably said a hundred times on this site, is my #1 desert island pick; if you’re only going to have one Thurber book (heaven forbid!) this is the one to have.
(As a bonus in the issue is columnist (among other things) Bennett Cerf taking Harold Ross to task for printing a piece Mr. Cerf found inaccurate and mean-spirited). I may post the piece at a later date (it’s long).
Here’s the cover of The Thurber Carnival.
And here’s the Spill‘s Thurber 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
And don’t forget Michael Rosen’s terrific A Mile And A Half Of Lines: The Art Of James Thurber (Ohio State Press, 2019).*
*Full disclosure, even though you can see it right there on the cover: I contributed to the book as did my wife and New Yorker colleague, Liza Donnelly.
Thank you, Michael, for this wonderful review.