James Thurber - Humor in Fiction

James Thurber was one of the most influential and unforgettable writers of his kind. He made modern-day problems seem preventable in the minds of people, and he tried to make them realize that the problems had to have a source. Thurber wrote of people struggling with day-to-day life that was once trouble-free and drew his ideas of humanity losing the direction it once had in the past. He attributed this change to wandering minds and ignorant actions on man’s behalf. James Thurber used his artistic and creative abilities to make a point of human shortcomings through ingenious writings and comical sketches.

James Oliver Thurber, a satirical, Ohio-born writer, was born in Columbus on December 8, 1894. Thurber wrote of himself that he “was born on a night of wild portent and high wind…The house, which is still standing, bears no tablet or plaque of any description, and is never pointed out to visitors” (Barbieri 8:18). The Thurber family was never seen as the typical American family. They always found themselves in peculiar situations. Thurber’s father had a passion for politics but no talent for holding an office for any length of time. His mother could have been called the comedian of the family before James came along. In front of guests she came down the stairs explaining that she had been locked up in the attic since she was in love with the mailman, for instance (Barbieri 8:18). Luckily, Thurber had inherited the ability to see the hilarity in the odd predicaments that characterized him throughout his life. Once when he was six, Thurber’s older brother shot a stray arrow during a game of William Tell that took the vision in his left eye.

After high school, he went to Ohio State University in 1913; however, he took three years off during his course of study: one for reading and two for war service. Because of his eye injury during his childhood, the Army refused to accept him. Not wanting to return to school but being unable to join the military, he spent his time from 1917 to 1918 working as a code clerk in the Department of State in Washington and the American Embassy in Paris. He finally received his degree from Ohio State in 1919. After finishing up his time as a code clerk, he stayed in Paris and worked as a paper boy for the Columbia Dispatch and the Chicago Tribune until 1926. At that point he returned to New York and began submitting writings to The New Yorker in 1927. During this time he met E.B. White, who also worked for the magazine. White thought that Thurber’s cartoon sketches could stand alone as pieces, and his work went on to grace the cover six times (Kunitz 1404).

Thurber started his job holding the managing editor position but was promptly put at the head of the “Talk of the Town” section. He resigned from the post in 1933 after approximately six years of directing the column. Nevertheless, Thurber continued contributing outside of the office by means of sending in essays and drawings. As a matter of fact, practically everything that appeared in Thurber’s first book had appeared in the magazine as well. The success of his book obviously called for an encore. The works to follow were The Owl in the Attic, The Seal in the Bedroom, and the autobiographical My Life and Hard Times. Every successive piece seemed to further establish Thurber as the foremost humorist of the period. Thurber’s fame extended past that of The New Yorker. Walter Mitty was reincarnated on the screen by Danny Kaye; Thirteen Clocks was performed on stage and also as a television opera (Magill 3:1770). Though because of his poor sight, Thurber withdrew to Connecticut and continued his writing and sketching there until his death in New York City on November 2, 1961.

One of Thurber’s choice ways of communicating with the masses was through writing magazine articles, short stories, essays, and children’s books. His uncanny take on his writing usually brought laughter and enjoyment to its readers with descriptions of wild and ridiculous events being his number one source of absurdity. Among them were Many Moons, a story of a daughter of royalty who refused to make herself better after overeating until she was given the moon, and The Wonderful O, the tale of a pirate who travels to the island of Ooroo to find jewels. When the pirate leaves empty-handed, he banishes all words containing the letter “o.” The moral to the fairy-tale was words containing that vowel were vital in the world and among the necessary words was “freedom” (Morsberger Suppl. 1:612).

When it came to more important matters, Thurber had the views of many of today’s modern thinkers, and it was reflected in his work. He saw the human as more harmful than helpful to the world as a whole. In his “Interview with a Lemming,” the creature being interrogated by a scientist calls humans “murderous, maladjusted, maleficent, malicious, and muffle-headed.” The scientist proceeds