Here’s something fun just added to the Spill‘s archive: a two record set, released in 1967 by The Listening Library, The World Of James Thurber. I’d never heard of this until last week; I was lucky enough to find a copy online (the album cost about the same as a pound of Maxwell House).
As you can see by the cover text, the album includes commentary by Thurber as well as a number of other New Yorker luminaries. None disappoint. On this vinyl set we get to hear Thurber talk about how the lady on the bookcase drawing came about, as well as his most famous drawing, The Seal In The Bedroom. He also repeats the story told in the Omnibus: American Profiles dvd segment about his drawings for Is Sex Necessary.
A bonus: Dorothy Parker reading a part of her introduction for Thurber’s collection, The Seal In The Bedroom (the section containing her famous description of Thurber people as looking like “unbaked cookies”). That alone is worth well more than the price of admission. Hearing Frank Sullivan, Peter DeVries, and E.B. White is icing on the vinyl.
James Thurber’s entry on the Spill‘s A-Z:
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. A short bio appears on The Thurber House website.