“What Do You Think About This Caption?”
There are enough Thurber books around to keep me re-reading til the lights go out. Harrison Kinney’s James Thurber: His Life and Times is just about at the top of my re-read list, although Burton Bernstein’s 1975 Thurber: a Biography is dearer to me. It was my first introduction to a Thurber biography, and it became one of the books that helped fuel my desire to get into The New Yorker (Mr. Kinney’s book was published 20 years later, after I’d been published by the magazine for 18 years).
I was overjoyed by the arrival of Kinney’s mammoth biography — so much to discover. To this day I’m still coming across information I’ve somehow missed. For instance: on page 794, here’s the magazine’s office manager, Daise Terry talking about Thurber coming into the office, not too long after he had become legally blind:
“He’d drop into the Tuesday afternoon art meetings now and then. He’d stumble in on his own, and Mr. Ross, who was sympathetic to Mr. Thurber’s condition, would say, ‘Hi, Thurber, come in.’ He’d sit on the table and swing his legs and Mr. Ross would ask him, ‘What do you think about this caption?’ and describe the cartoon. Sometimes he’d come up with something Mr. Ross liked.”
And here, via James Geraghty (The New Yorker‘s art editor from 1939-1973) is that table.
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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