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James Thurber: Writings & Drawings

Edited by Garrison Keillor

“This hefty collection of Thurber could not have been better done. . . . Reputations fade so quickly these days that even the fame of a comic genius such as Thurber needs to be dusted off and reintroduced to each succeeding generation. We could not have asked for a better job of it than this splendid volume.” — Detroit Sunday Journal

Overview
News & Views
Table of Contents

Overview

News James Thurber: Humor for an age of anxiety
April 20, 2020

Story of the Week James Thurber, “The Night the Bed Fell”
April 10, 2020

Interviews “Humor at first sight” as James Thurber’s art is celebrated for his 125th birthday
December 13, 2019

James Thurber was the unique, unpredictable wild card of American humorists, at once whimsical fantasist and deadpan chronicler of everyday absurdities. The comic persona he invented, a modern citydweller whose zaniest flights of free association are tinged with anxiety, is as hilarious now as when he first appeared in the pages of The New Yorker—and his troubled side is even more striking. Here, The Library of America presents the best and most extensive Thurber collection ever assembled.

Only a book of this scope can do justice to Thurber’s extraordinary career and to the many unexpected turns of his comic genius. Here are the acknowledged masterpieces: “The Secret Life of Walter Mitty,” “The Catbird Seat,” the anti-war parable The Last Flower, the brilliantly satirical Fables for Our Time, the children’s classic The 13 Clocks, and My Life and Hard Times, which Russell Baker calls “possibly the shortest and most elegant autobiography ever written.” Here too are the best pieces from The Owl in the Attic, Let Your Mind Alone!, My World—And Welcome To It, and The Beast in Me and Other Animals. From his other famous collections are included such favorites as “The Pet Department,” “The Black Magic of Barney Haller,” “Nine Needles,’ “the Macbeth Murder Mystery,” and “File and Forget,” revealing an astonishingly diverse mix of literary parodies, eccentric portraits, stories of domestic warfare and inner terror, reminiscences both tender and farcical, extravagant feats of wordplay, freewheeling burlesques of popular culture (from detective novels to self-help fads), and exasperated protests against the mechanized impersonality of the modern world.

Thurber’s wonderful drawings—spontaneous creations of which he once said, “I don’t think any drawing ever took me more than three minutes”—are here in profusion, with their population of husbands, wives, dogs, seals, and various species of Thurber’s own invention. His first great cartoon collection, The Seal in the Bedroom, is presented complete, along with such celebrated sequences like “The Masculine Approach” and “The War Between Men and Women,” and his devastatingly straightforward illustrated versions of once-canonical poems such as “Barbara Frietchie” and “Excelsior.”

Rounding out this volume is a selection from The Years with Ross, his memoir of New Yorker publisher Harold Ross, and a number of pieces, previously uncollected by Thurber, including some early work never before reprinted.

Garrison Keillor, volume editor, is the creator and host of A Prairie Home Companion for American Public Media, and the author of several books, including Lake Wobegon Days, The Book of Guys, and Daddy’s Girl.

This Library of America series edition is printed on acid-free paper and features Smyth-sewn binding, a full cloth cover, and a ribbon marker.

James Thurber: Writings & Drawings is kept in print by a gift from the Geoffrey C. Hughes Foundation to the Guardians of American Letters Fund.
News & Views

News James Thurber: Humor for an age of anxiety
April 20, 2020

Story of the Week James Thurber, “The Night the Bed Fell”
April 10, 2020

Interviews “Humor at first sight” as James Thurber’s art is celebrated for his 125th birthday
December 13, 2019

Story of the Week James Thurber, “The Day the Dam Broke”
December 12, 2019

Story of the Week James Thurber, “If Grant Had Been Drinking at Appomattox”
October 6, 2017
Table of Contents

From Is Sex Necessary? (1929)
The Nature of the American Male: A Study of Pedestalism
The Lilies-and-Bluebird Delusion

From The Owl in the Attic (1931)
Mr. Monroe Holds the Fort
The Pet Department

The Seal in the Bedroom (1932)
Women and Men
The Bloodhound and the Bug
The Race of Life
Miscellany
The Bloodhound and the Hare
Tennis
Parties
The Collapse of Civilization

My Life and Hard Times (1933)
Preface to a Life
The Night the Bed Fell
The Car We Had to Push
The Day the Dam Broke
The Night the Ghost Got In
More Alarms at Night
A Sequence of Servants
The Dog That Bit People
University Days
Draft Board Nights
A Note at the End

From The Middle-Aged Man on the Flying Trapeze
The Departure of Emma Inch
There’s an Owl in My Room
The Topaz Cufflinks Mystery
A Preface to Dogs
The Private Life of Mr. Bidwell
Mr. Preble Gets Rid of His Wife
A Portrait of Aunt Ida
The Luck of Jad Peters
I Went to Sullivant
If Grant Had Been Drinking at Appomattox
How to See a Bad Play
The Funniest Man You Ever Saw
The Black Magic of Barney Haller
Something to Say
Snapshot of a Dog
The Evening’s at Seven
The Greatest Man in the World
One Is a Wanderer
A Box to Hide In

From Let Your Mind Alone! (1937)
Let Your Mind Alone!
Pythagoras and the Ladder
Destructive Forces in Life
The Case for the Daydreamer
A Dozen Disciplines
How to Adjust Yourself to Your Work
Anodynes for Anxieties
The Conscious vs. The Unconscious
Sex ex Machina
Sample Intelligence Test
Miscellaneous Mentation
The Breaking Up of the Winships
Nine Needles
A Couple of Hamburgers
Aisle Seats in the Mind
Mrs. Phelps
Wild Bird Hickok and His Friends
Doc Marlowe
The Admiral on the Wheel
The Last Flower (1939)

From Fables for Our Time & Famous Poems Illustrated (1940)
The Mouse Who Went to the Country
The Little Girl and the Wolf
The Two Turkeys
The Tiger Who Understood People
The Fairly Intelligent Fly
The Lion Who Wanted to Zoom
The Very Proper Gander
The Moth and the Star
The Shrike and the Chipmunks
The Seal Who Became Famous
The Hunter and the Elephant
The Scotty Who Knew Too Much
The Bear Who Let It Alone
The Owl Who Was God
The Sheep in Wolf’s Clothing
The Stork Who Married a Dumb Wife
The Green Isle in the Sea
The Crow and the Oriole
The Elephant Who Challenged the World
The Bird and the Foxes
The Courtship of Arthur and Al
The Hen Who Wouldn’t Fly
The Glass in the Field
The Tortoise and the Hare
The Patient Bloodhound
The Unicorn in the Garden
The Rabbits Who Caused All the Trouble
The Hen and the Heavens
Excelsior
Lochinvar
Curfew Must Not Ring To-Night
Barbara Frietchie

From My World—And Welcome To It (1942)
The Whip-Poor-Will
The Macbeth Murder Mystery
The Man Who Hated Moonbaum
The Secret Life of Walter Mitty
Interview with a Lemming
You Could Look It Up
The Gentleman in 916
The Letters of James Thurber
Here Lies Miss Groby
A Ride with Olympy

From Men, Women and Dogs (1943)
Selected Cartoons
The Masculine Approach
The War Between Men and Women

From The Thurber Carnival (1945)
The Catbird Seat
The Cane in the Corridor
from The Beast in Me and Other Animals
The Princess and the Tin Box
The Lady on the Bookcase
A Call on Mrs. Forrester
A New Natural History

The Thirteen Clocks (1950)

From The Thurber Album (1952)
Daguerreotype of a Lady
Lavender with a Difference

From Thurber Country (1953)
File and Forget
Do You Want to Make Something Out of It?
A Final Note on Chanda Bell
Teacher’s Pet

From Thurber’s Dogs (1955)
An Introduction

From Further Fables for Our Time (1956)
The Bluebird and His Brother
The Lover and His Lass
The Bachelor Penguin and the Virtuous Mate
The Peacelike Mongoose
The Trial of the Old Watchdog

From Alarms and Diversions (1957)
The First Time I Saw Paris

From The Years with Ross (1958)
A Dime a Dozen
The First Years
Every Tuesday Afternoon
The Talk of the Town
Miracle Men
“Sex Is an Incident”

Uncollected Pieces
An American Romance (1927)
A Visit from St. Nicholas (1927)
Tom the Young Kidnapper, or, Pay Up and Live (1933)
How to Relax While Broadcasting (1934)
E.B.W. (1938)
from I Believe (1939)
I Break Everything I Touch (1941)

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ISBN: 978-1-88301122-2 1004 pages

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N° 90 Library of America Series

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