Thurber, James (Grover)

(1894–1961) author and cartoonist; born in Columbus, Ohio. One of America's great humorists, he wrote short stories and drew witty cartoons as a staff member of the New Yorker magazine from 1927 to 1933 and thereafter as a contributor until his death in 1961. He portrayed the preposterousness and frustrations of modern life in such collections as The Owl in the Attic and Other Perplexities (1931), The Seal in the Bedroom and Other Predicaments (1932), and Fables For Our Time (1940), which included his illustrations and such memorable stories as The Secret Life of Walter Mitty. He was also the author of children's books, including The Thirteen Clocks (1950), and coauthored with Elliot Nugent the Broadway comedy, The Male Animal (1940). As a youngster he lost the sight in his left eye, and in his mid-forties he eventually lost the vision in his other eye, thereby writing as many of his stories while blind as when he enjoyed vision.

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References in periodicals archive

Nesbit, James Thurber and the late Eva Ibbotson, and words such as 'glorious', 'enchanting', 'sheer magic' are repeated in the reviewers' comments.

Valente, Catherynne M.: The Girl who Circumnavigated Fairyland in a Ship of her Own Making

Had James Thurber worked in animation, the waggish result might look and sound a bit like "It's Such a Beautiful Day," indie cartoonist Don Hertzfeldt's alternately poignant and absurdist triptych, which seamlessly joins three long-gestating short films into an hourlong rumination on the nature of existence as seen through the eyes of a stick figure named Bill.

It's Such a Beautiful Day

Ross, a Colorado-born high school dropout, was "completely miscast" as editor of a magazine for New York sophisticates, James Thurber later wrote.

We'll take Manhattan: the woman behind The New Yorker

The office will act like an embassy for our academic mission in India," says Gordon Gee, President, Ohio State University, the alma mater of American writer James Thurber, cult- making artist Roy Lichtenstein and Deven Sharma, who heads the world's most influential credit rating agency, Standard and Poor's.

Ohio State opens Mumbai office to forge educational ties with India

Among his compositions were Sinfonia for orchestra, premiered by the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra in 1954, The Secret Life of Walter Mitty, based on the story by James Thurber, which won a national prize for a new chamber opera in 1956, and numerous songs and piano pieces.

Charles E. Hamm

Fields, Lewis Grizzard, Steve Jobs, Martin Luther King, Jr., Harvey Mackay, Richard Nixon, Sophocles, John Steinbeck, and James Thurber.

The language perfectionist: quotation quota

The political scientist James Thurber recalled watching lobbyists with their cellphones at a congressional hearing on the 1986 tax reforms.

Venom and paralysis define the U.S. political system

Washington, May 3 (ANI): A political science professor at the American University, Professor James Thurber, has said jobs and the performance of the economy will be the primary factors influencing the 2012 presidential elections, and not Osama bin Laden's killing as many think.

For Obama, economic challenges remain after Osama's killing

One can imagine James Thurber drawing a cartoon of him.

Fred McGavran. The Butterfly Collector

The best advice comes from James Thurber: "Let us not look back in anger, nor forward in fear, but around in awareness."

Psychological warfare..

One of my earliest introductions to the work of Gertrude Stein came at the age of eight, in the form of the 1934 piece, 'There's an Owl in My Room', in a later book club collection of coruscatingly funny James Thurber articles.

Karen Leick, Gertrude Stein and the Making of an American Celebrity

He has just not, to use James Thurber's retort to irate parents who claimed that their eight-year-olds could draw better than he, "had the experience."

Essentialism v. constructionism redux