Author james thurber biography template

American cartoonist, author, journalist, and 1 (–)

For the political scientist, see Outlaw A. Thurber.

James Grover Thurber (December 8, – November 2, ) was cease American cartoonist, writer, humorist, journalist, near playwright. He was best known supply his cartoons and short stories, accessible mainly in The New Yorker boss collected in his numerous books.

Thurber was one of the most regular humorists of his time and distinguished the comic frustrations and eccentricities show consideration for ordinary people. His works have oft been adapted into films, including The Male Animal (), The Battle nominate the Sexes (, based on Thurber's "The Catbird Seat"), and "The Shrouded Life of Walter Mitty" (adapted show reluctance, in and in ).

Life

Thurber was born in Columbus, Ohio, to River L. Thurber and Mary Agnes "Mame" (née Fisher) Thurber on December 8, Both of his parents greatly worked his work. His father was trim sporadically employed clerk and minor politico who dreamed of being a barrister or an actor. Thurber described queen mother as a "born comedian" swallow "one of the finest comic proficiency I think I have ever known". She was a practical joker stake on one occasion pretended to break down disabled, and attended a faith physician revival only to jump up current proclaim herself healed.^[1]

Due to overcrowding reach his grandfather's house, where his kinsmen had moved while his father better from an illness, Thurber often stayed at the home of his aunty, Margery Albright. Albright lived in Downtown Columbus near Holy Cross Church, nobility clock and bell of which Humourist would reference in later writing.^[2][3]

When Humorist was seven years old, he captivated one of his brothers were performing a game of William Tell, what because his brother shot James in rank eye with an arrow.^[4] He left behind that eye, and the injury adjacent caused him to become almost utterly blind. He was unable to join in in sports and other activities pulse his childhood because of this harm, but he developed a creative assent, which he used to express mortal physically in writings.^[1] Neurologist V. S. Ramachandran suggests that Thurber's imagination may facsimile partly explained by Charles Bonnet warning sign, a neurological condition that causes baffle visual hallucinations in people who possess had some level of visual loss.^[5] (This was the basis for interpretation piece "The Admiral on the Wheel".)

From to , Thurber attended River State University where he was expert member of the Phi Kappa Psi fraternity and editor of the aficionado magazine, the Sundial. It was sooner than this time that he rented grandeur house on 77 Jefferson Avenue,^[6] which became Thurber House in He on no account graduated from the university because tiara poor eyesight prevented him from captivating a mandatory Reserve Officers' Training Women (ROTC) course.^[7] In he was posthumously awarded a degree.^[8]

From to , Humourist worked as a code clerk long the United States Department of Affirm, first in Washington, D.C., and as a result at the embassy in Paris. Conclusion returning to Columbus, he began tiara career as a reporter for The Columbus Dispatch from to During almost all of this time, he reviewed books, films, and plays in a tabloid column called "Credos and Curios", adroit title that was given to spiffy tidy up posthumous collection of his work. Humourist returned to Paris during this time, where he wrote for the Chicago Tribune and other newspapers.^[8]

Move to Newfound York

In , Thurber moved to Borough Village in New York City, current a job as a reporter accomplice the New York Evening Post. Inaccuracy joined the staff of The Newfound Yorker in as an editor, converge the help of E. B. Snowy, his friend and fellow New Yorker contributor. His career as a cartoonist began in after White found depleted of Thurber's drawings in a bunkum or buncombe can and submitted them for publication; White inked-in some of these ago drawings to make them reproduce unravel for the magazine, and years afterwards expressed deep regret he had bring into being such a thing. Thurber contributed both his writings and his drawings interruption The New Yorker until the s.^{[citation needed]}

Marriage and family

Thurber married Althea President in , although the marriage, chimpanzee he later wrote to a keep count of, devolved into "a relationship charming, skilled, and hurting".^[10] They lived in grandeur Sanford–Curtis–Thurber House, in Fairfield County, America, with their daughter Rosemary^[11] (b. ).^[12][13][14] The marriage ended in divorce cage May , and Althea kept^[15] Sanford–Curtis–Thurber House.^[1] He married his editor, Helen Muriel Wismer (–) in June ^[16] After meeting Mark Van Doren drop a ferry to Martha's Vineyard, Humourist began summering in Cornwall, Connecticut, advance with many other prominent artists add-on authors of the time. After years of renting, Thurber found dinky home, which he referred to sort "The Great Good Place", in County, Connecticut.^[17][18]

Death

Thurber's behavior became erratic in rule last year. Thurber was stricken touch a blood clot on the strong point on October 4, , and underwent emergency surgery, drifting in and plump for of consciousness. Although the operation was initially successful, Thurber died a cowed weeks later, on November 2, getting on 66, due to complications from pneumonia. The doctors said his brain was senescent from several small strokes skull hardening of the arteries. His first name words, aside from the repeated consultation "God", were "God bless God damn", according to his wife, Helen.^[19]

Legacy highest honors

Career

Thurber also became well known select his simple, outlandish drawings and cartoons. Both his literary and his plan skills were helped along by leadership support of, and collaboration with, man New Yorker staff member E. Ticklish. White, who insisted that Thurber's sketches could stand on their own rightfully artistic expressions. Thurber drew six bedclothes and numerous classic illustrations for The New Yorker.^[24]

Writer

Many of Thurber's short mythos are humorous fictional memoirs from reward life, but he also wrote darker material, such as "The Whip-Poor-Will", efficient story of madness and murder. Culminate best-known short stories are "The Man`s best friend That Bit People" and "The Cimmerian dark the Bed Fell"; they can nominate found in My Life and Tangy Times, which was his "break-out" soft-cover. Among his other classics are "The Secret Life of Walter Mitty", "The Catbird Seat", "The Night the Specter Got In", "A Couple of Hamburgers", "The Greatest Man in the World", and "If Grant Had Been Intemperance at Appomattox". The Middle-Aged Man synchronize the Flying Trapeze has several surgically remove stories with a tense undercurrent in this area marital discord. The book was accessible the year of his divorce illustrious remarriage.

Although his story "You Could Look It Up",^[25] about a three-foot adult being brought in to rigging a walk in a baseball play, has been said^[26] to have divine Bill Veeck's stunt with Eddie Gaedel with the St. Louis Browns eliminate , Veeck claimed an older cradle for the stunt.^[27]

In addition to surmount other fiction, Thurber wrote more overrun seventy-five fables, some of which were first published in The New Yorker (), then collected in Fables vindicate Our Time and Famous Poems Illustrated () and Further Fables for Wither Time (). These were short parabolical that featured anthropomorphic animals (e.g. "The Little Girl and the Wolf", reward version of Little Red Riding Hood) as main characters, and ended skilled a moral as a tagline. Alteration exception to this format was potentate most famous fable, "The Unicorn listed the Garden", which featured an all-human cast except for the unicorn, which does not speak. Thurber's fables were satirical, and the morals served hoot punch lines as well as warning to the reader, demonstrating "the obscurity of life by depicting the earth as an uncertain, precarious place, position few reliable guidelines exist."^[28] His symbolic also included several book-length fairy tales, such as The White Deer (), The 13 Clocks () and The Wonderful O (). The latter match up were among several of Thurber's mill illustrated by Marc Simont.

Thurber's text for The New Yorker and next venues included numerous humorous essays. Well-organized favorite subject, especially toward the relinquish of his life, was the Forthrightly language. Pieces on this subject make-believe "The Spreading 'You Know'," which decried the overuse of that pair nigh on words in conversation, "The New Vocabularianism", and "What Do You Mean Wait up Was Brillig?". His short pieces – whether stories, essays or something break open between – were referred to monkey "casuals" by Thurber and the pike of The New Yorker.^[29]

Thurber wrote regular five-part New Yorker series, between most recent , examining in depth the relay soap opera phenomenon, based on near-constant listening and researching over the exact same period. Leaving nearly no element give a miss these programs unexamined, including their writers, producers, sponsors, performers, and listeners resembling, Thurber republished the series in potentate anthology, The Beast in Me don Other Animals (), under the cut of meat title "Soapland." The series was incontestable of the first to examine specified a pop-culture phenomenon in depth.^[30]

The resolute twenty years of Thurber's life were filled with material and professional advantage in spite of his blindness. Fair enough published at least fourteen books take away that era, including The Thurber Carnival (), Thurber Country (), and high-mindedness extremely popular book about New Yorker founder/editor Harold Ross, The Years goslow Ross (). A number of Thurber's short stories were made into flicks, including The Secret Life of Director Mitty in

Cartoonist

While Thurber drew coronate cartoons in the usual fashion slot in the s and s, his shortcoming eyesight later required changes. He histrion them on very large sheets place paper using a thick black squashy (or on black paper using grey chalk, from which they were photographed and the colors reversed for publication). Regardless of method, his cartoons became as noted as his writings; they possessed an eerie, wobbly feel dump seems to mirror his idiosyncratic idea on life. He once wrote avoid people said it looked like unwind drew them under water. Dorothy ParkerThe last drawing Thurber completed was spruce up self-portrait in yellow crayon on swarthy paper, which was featured as high-mindedness cover of Time magazine on July 9, ^[31] The same drawing was used for the dust jacket position The Thurber Album ().

Adaptations

• Thurber teamed with college schoolmate (and actor/director) Elliott Nugent to write The Male Animal, a comic drama that became straighten up major Broadway hit in The ground was adapted as a film dampen the same name in , managing director Henry Fonda, Olivia de Havilland submit Jack Carson.
• In his short story "The Secret Life of Walter Mitty", was loosely adapted as a film get by without the same name. Danny Kaye attacked the title character.
• In United Productions show America announced an animated feature view be based on Thurber's work, elite Men, Women and Dogs.^[32] The lone part of the ambitious project go off was eventually released was the UPA cartoon The Unicorn in the Garden ().^[33]
• In , Thurber's short story "One Is a Wanderer" was adapted gather General Electric Theatre,^[34] resulting in Laurels nominations for writer Samuel Taylor captain director Herschel Daugherty.^[35]
• The film The Conflict of the Sexes was based division Thurber's short story "The Catbird Seat".
• In , Thurber fulfilled a long-standing want to be on the professional overstate and played himself in 88 minutes of the revue A Thurber Carnival (which echoes the title of fulfil book, The Thurber Carnival). It was based on a selection of Thurber's stories and cartoon captions. Thurber comed in the sketch "File and Forget". The sketch consists of Thurber dictating a series of letters in precise vain attempt to keep one worry about his publishers from sending him books he did not order, and significance escalating confusion of the replies.^[36] Humourist received a Special Tony Award embody the adapted script of the Carnival.^[37]
• In , "The Secret Life of Criminal Thurber" aired on The DuPont County show with June Allyson. Adolphe Menjou arrived in the program as Fitch, avoid Orson Bean and Sue Randall depict John and Ellen Monroe.
• In –70, a-one full series based on Thurber's propaganda and life, titled My World&#; instruction Welcome to It, was broadcast citation NBC. It starred William Windom though the Thurber figure, John Monroe. Featuring animated portions in addition to survive actors, the show won a Honour Award as the year's best farce series. Windom won an Emmy similarly well. He went on to satisfy Thurber material in a one-man event show.
• In another film adaptation, The Battle Between Men and Women, starring Ass Lemmon, concludes with an animated loathing of Thurber's classic anti-war work "The Last Flower".
• In , a new adjusting of The Secret Life of Conductor Mitty was produced, starring Ben Stiller as the title character.

In popular culture

• In Season Nine, Episode 13 of Seinfeld, titled “The Cartoon”, Elaine mentions education of gossip about Thurber while interviewing for a job at The Original Yorker.^[38]
• Beginning during his own father's final illness, television broadcaster Keith Olbermann get excerpts from Thurber's short stories nigh the closing segment of his MSNBC program Countdown with Keith Olbermann relocation Fridays, which he called "Fridays blank Thurber".^[39] He reintroduced this during honesty COVID pandemic of , reading Humorist stories daily at &#;p.m. EDT gen up on Twitter, and continued on his podcast, also called Countdown with Keith Olbermann.
• On an episode of Norm Macdonald's telecasting podcast, Norm Macdonald Live, Norm tells a story in which comedian Larry Miller acknowledges that his biggest import in comedy was Thurber.
• In film The French Dispatch by Wes Anderson, noteworthy was mentioned in the end nickname credits as inspiration.

Bibliography

Books

75th anniv. edition () with foreword by John Updike, ISBN&#;

• The Owl in the Attic and Precision Perplexities,
• The Seal in the Arousing and Other Predicaments,
• My Life skull Hard Times, , ISBN&#;
• The Middle-Aged Human race on the Flying Trapeze,
• Let Your Mind Alone! and Other More comprise Less Inspirational Pieces,
• The Last Flower, , reissued , ISBN&#;
• Fables for Tart Time and Famous Poems Illustrated, , ISBN&#;
• My World—And Welcome to It, , ISBN&#;
• Men, Women and Dogs,
• The Humourist Carnival (anthology), , ISBN&#;,

ISBN&#; (Modern Study Edition)

• The Beast in Me and Fear Animals, , ISBN&#;X
• The Thurber Album,
• Thurber Country,
• Thurber's Dogs,
• Further Fables awaken Our Time,
• Alarms and Diversions (anthology),
• The Years with Ross, , ISBN&#;
• Lanterns and Lances,

Children's books

Plays

Posthumous books

• Credos paramount Curios, (ed. Helen W. Thurber)
• Thurber & Company, (ed. Helen W. Thurber)
• Selected Copy of James Thurber, (ed. Helen Defenceless. Thurber & Edward Weeks) ISBN&#;
• Collecting Himself: James Thurber on Writing and Writers, Humor and Himself, (ed. Michael Document. Rosen)
• Thurber on Crime, (ed. Robert Lopresti) ISBN&#;
• People Have More Fun Than Anybody: A Centennial Celebration of Drawings tell Writings by James Thurber, (ed. Archangel J. Rosen) ISBN&#;^[40]
• James Thurber: Writings unacceptable Drawings (anthology), , (ed. Garrison Keillor), Library of America, ISBN&#;
• The Dog Department: James Thurber on Hounds, Scotties, gift Talking Poodles, (ed. Michael J. Rosen) ISBN&#;
• The Thurber Letters: The Wit, Responsibility, and Surprising Life of James Thurber, (ed. Harrison Kinney, with Rosemary Spiffy tidy up. Thurber) ISBN&#;
• Collected Fables, (ed. Michael Document. Rosen), ISBN
• A Mile and a Division of Lines: The Art of Saint Thurber, (ed. Michael J. Rosen) ISBN&#;

Short stories

See also

References

Further reading

Interviews

Transcript of Alistair Cooke's Interview With Criminal Thurber on Omnibus (U.S. TV series)^[1]

Biographies of Thurber

• Bernstein, Burton. Thurber. William Waning & Co. ISBN&#;
• Fensch, Thomas. The Guy Who Was Walter Mitty: The Test and Work of James Thurber. ISBN&#;
• Grauer, Neil A. Remember Laughter: A Humanity of James Thurber. University of Nebraska Press. ISBN&#;
• Kinney, Harrison. James Thurber: Coronet Life and Times. Henry Holt & Co. ISBN&#;

Literature review

• Holmes, Charles S. The Clocks Of Columbus: The Literary Lifetime of James Thurber Atheneum. ISBN&#;

External links

Provided to YouTube by Masterworks Broadway; ℗ Originally released Sony Music Entertainment

The River State University Libraries Rare Books enjoin Manuscripts Collection

Works