James Thurber: Writings & Drawings (LOA #90) (Library of America) - Hardcover

Thurber, James

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 1883011221 ISBN 13: 9781883011222

Publisher: Library of America, 1996

Synopsis

A comprehensive collection of the American humorist’s best work—including “The Secret Life of Walter Mitty”—plus original drawings and a chronology of Thurber’s own troubled life
 
James Thurber, whimsical fantasist and deadpan chronicler of everyday absurdities, brought American humor into the 20th century. His comic persona, a modern city-dweller whose zaniest flights of free association are tinged with anxiety, remains hilarious, subtly disturbing, and instantly recognizable.
 
Here, in over 1,000 pages, editor Garrison Keillor presents the best and most extensive collection ever assembled. Pieces include “The Secret Life of Walter Mitty” and “The Catbird Seat,” the brilliantly satirical Fables for Our Time, the classic My Life and Hard Times, and the best of The Owl in the Attic, Let Your Mind Alone!, My World—And Welcome to It, and the other famous books. Plus 500 wonderful drawings, including The Seal in the Bedroom and celebrated sequences like “The Masculine Approach” and “The War Between Men and Women.” Rounding out the volume is a selection from The Years with Ross, a memoir of the New Yorker publisher, and a number of wonderful early pieces never collected by Thurber.
 
Only a book of this scope can do justice to Thurber’s extraordinary career and to the many unexpected turns of his comic genius. 
 

LIBRARY OF AMERICA is an independent nonprofit cultural organization founded in 1979 to preserve our nation’s literary heritage by publishing, and keeping permanently in print, America’s best and most significant writing. The Library of America series includes more than 300 volumes to date, authoritative editions that average 1,000 pages in length, feature cloth covers, sewn bindings, and ribbon markers, and are printed on premium acid-free paper that will last for centuries.

About this title

About the Author

James Thurber (1894-1961) was one of the foremost American humorists of the 20th century.

Garrison Keillor is the creator of A Prairie Home Companion, which he hosted for 42 years, and the author of several books, including Lake Wobegon Days, The Book of Guys, and Daddy’s Girl.

From the Back Cover

The Library of America and editor Garrison Keillor present 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. 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, and his other famous collections, including such favorites as "The Pet Department", "The Black Magic of Barney Haller", "Nine Needles", "The Macbeth Murder Mystery", and "File and Forget": 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 celebrated sequences like "The Masculine Approach" and "The War Between Men and Women" and his devastatingly straightforward illustrated versions ofonce-canonical poems such as "Barbara Frietchie" and "Excelsior". Rounding out the volume is a selection from The Years with Ross, his memoir of New Yorker publisher Harold Ross, and a number of pieces uncollected by Thurber, including a few wonderful early ones never before reprinted.

Reviews

American humorists have always helped define American culture by satirizing its more absurd habits of mind, fads, and institutions. James Thurber (1894^-1961) is one of the giants in this fine tradition, and now the entire scope of his sharp wit and poignant whimsy is gathered together in this invaluable volume. Selected by Garrison Keillor, a Thurber soul-mate if ever there was one, these stories, parodies, reminiscences, cartoons, and drawings present Thurber's unique and masterful take on work, psychotherapy, fantasizing, domesticity, and the battle between the sexes. The volume includes the now classic "Secret Life of Walter Mitty," the unforgettable images of The Seal in the Bedroom, and his autobiography, My Life and Hard Times, as well as a number of previously uncollected pieces. A painstaking writer, Thurber found release in the spontaneity of his drawings, and the dynamic contrast between the ironic intensity of his prose and the quicksilver inventiveness of his cartoons is intrinsic to the power of his work. Donna Seaman

This work represents each decade of Thurber's writing career, from the slight New Yorker sketches of the 1920s to the irreverently affectionate portrait of that magazine's founder, The Years with Ross, of the late 1950s. Keillor's selection of Thurber's oeuvre is both the most generous and the most judicious volume available. Known largely for The Secret Life of Walter Mitty (1939), which dramatizes the battle of the sexes and the male animal's ineptitude in the face of modern technology, Thurber was an Algonquin stylist with a wide range of talents. These talents are effectively displayed here in the self-deprecating reminiscences of his eccentric Columbus, Ohio, family; beast fables with a cutting edge; and almost 500 inimitable line drawings. A valuable work; highly recommended for all libraries.?Charles C. Nash, Cottey Coll., Nevada, Mo.
Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Edition details

• Publisher: Library of America
• Publication date: 1996
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 1883011221
• ISBN 13: 9781883011222
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 1004
• Editor: Keillor Garrison