Personal History…An Important Book
I suppose it must say a lot about how important Thurber’s Years With Ross is to me — especially this particular paperback edition — that I can recall the exact moment noticing it, fifty years ago, on a metal display book rack outside a store in Cape May, New Jersey.
I forked over the $1.25 (cheap!), went back to my rented room, and began reading. The book was win/win from the get-go: Thurber writing about the New Yorker and its founder and first editor, Harold Ross. It was my first deep introduction to The New Yorker world.
By the time I bought the book, I was already being rejected by The New Yorker, and already building up whatever necessary ingredient it was (and still is) that a cartoonist needs to plow ahead anyway.
In a few more years, Brendan Gill’s Here At The New Yorker was published, and Burton Bernsteins, Thurber: A Biography. By then, I was, as the saying goes, all in, New Yorker-wise and Thurber-wise.
Of note: to the upper right of the typewriter on the book cover there’s a copy of The New Yorker opened to a Thurber drawing. It’s the one shown directly above (published in the issue of August 1, 1942); just below the book jacket Thurber drawing is a copy of the September 12, 1942 New Yorker. Cover by Peter Arno, shown directly above.
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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