James Thurber life and biography

James Grover Thurber was an American author, cartoonist and celebrated wit. Thurber was best known for his contributions (both cartoons and short stories) to The New Yorker magazine.

James Thurber's witty short stories and lumpy cartoons were a popular mainstay of The New Yorker magazine in the 1930s and 1940s. A Midwestern boy with an urbane twist, Thurber mixed comical reminiscences of his Ohio childhood with wry observations on modern times and the battle of the sexes. (His best-known story is The Secret Life of Walter Mitty, the tale of a henpecked husband who escapes into heroic daydreams.) Thurber's funny, loopy, absurdist cartoons featured men, women, dogs and other strange animals. He was by turns hilarious and melancholy, and his darker nature seemed to come out in stories and cartoons about husbands and wives: the wives often domineering and sarcastic, the husbands harried or bitterly triumphant. Like Mark Twain, Thurber became increasingly morose in his last decade, although he continued to write until his death. His books include the spoof Is Sex Necessary? (1929, with E.B. White), the fanciful "autobiography" My Life and Hard Times (1933), the New Yorker memoir The Years With Ross (1959), and the short story collections The Middle-Aged Man on the Flying Trapeze (1935) and The Thurber Carnival (1933). He also wrote the 1950 children's book The Thirteen Clocks. With Elliot Nugent he wrote the play The Male Animal (published 1940).

Thurber's nickname was "Jamie"... He lost sight in one eye in while playing bows-and-arrows with his brothers in 1901; his other eye slowly failed, and by the 1950s he had become legally blind... Thurber died after collapsing from a blood clot on the brain; some sources list it as a brain tumor... Thurber was married to Althea Adams from 1922-35; they had one child, Rosemary, born in 1931. His second marriage, to Helen Wismer, lasted from 1935 until his death in 1961... The Thurber Carnival also has become a popular stage play.

Author of books:

The Owl in the Attic and Other Perplexities (1931)
The Seal in the Bedroom and Other Predicaments (1932)
My Life and Hard Times (1933, memoir)
The Middle-Aged Man on the Flying Trapeze (1935)
Let Your Mind Alone! (1937)
The Last Flower (1939)
Men, Women and Dogs (1943)
The Great Quillow (1944, juvenile)
The White Deer (1945)
The Thurber Carnival (1945)
The Beast in Me and Other Animals (1948)
Thirteen Clocks
Thurber Country (1953)
Thurber on Humor (1953)
Thurber's Dogs (1955)
A Thurber Garland (1955)
Further Fables For Our Time (1956)
Alarms and Diversions (1957)
The Wonderful O (1957)
The Years With Ross (1959, biography)
Credos and Curios (1962)
Thurber & Company (1966)

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