“The Little Man”
1927 was a very big year for James Thurber. The February 26th issue carried his very first New Yorker appearances (two pieces of verse in the same issue). One week later, in the issue of March 5th, his third piece, a “casual,” titled “An American Romance” appeared. It deserves very special mention because it was the very first piece he sold to the magazine. I’ve always loved the story — new to me when I read Burton Bernstein’s Thurber: A Biography in 1978 — of how “An American Romance” came to be written. I’d love to simply show you the entire paragraph Mr. Bernstein wrote about “An American Romance,” but I doubt that’s copasetic. Instead I’ll show you these two snippets out of the paragraph (found on page 158 if you have the book):
“Althea (Thurber’s first wife) concluded that her husband was slaving over each piece too long. She told him to set an alarm clock to ring in forty-five minutes and force himself to have something finished by then…
…within forty-five minutes, Thurber had a rough draft of a casual, He polished it off and sent it to The New Yorker. It was immediately bought.”
Here’s what the piece’s heading and ending look like:
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Three notes about the photo of The New Yorker issue of March 5, 1927 shown above:
- The cover artist was Ilonka Karasz
Ilonka Karasz (photo by Nickolas Muray) Born, Budapest, July 13, 1893. Died, Warwick, New York, May 26, 1981. New Yorker work: Ms. Karasz was a prolific New Yorker cover artist, with 185 published. Her first appeared on the issue of April 4, 1925; her last appeared on the issue of October 22, 1973. Her Wikipedia entry
2. A personal note about this particular issue: as you can see I bookmarked it (long ago), “First Thurber Piece Bought By NYer“; I’ve learned over time that “special” issues need some kind of obvious flagging or they’ll get swallowed up by the volume of issues archived.
3. Beyond the flagging, I’ll always think of Edward Sorel when I look at this issue. I believe it’s one of the very first New Yorker-related much appreciated “gifts” he’s handed over to me through the years. We were in his old studio in Tribeca, well over two decades ago, when he grabbed this issue from a spot near his drawing board, and said something like, “You might want this.” And, of course, I did.
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Edward Sorel (self-portrait from a strip appearing in The Nation following the death of Marlene Dietrich. Drawing used by permission of Mr. Sorel). Born 1929. New Yorker work: 1990 – . All of Mr. Sorel’s books are of great interest; Unauthorized Portraits (Alfred A. Knopf, 1997) is particularly essential.
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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