James Thurber Summary

Thurber, James (1894-1961) Ohio-born satirical writer James Thurber was most noted for his ability to illustrate, through the use of humor, the frailties of human beings in a world seemingly dominated... Read more

Biography EssayIn a general survey of American humor, James Thurber comes after the traditional horsesense humorists and before the black humorists of the postatomic era. His most famous and most endu... Read more

Called "one of the world's greatest humorists" by Alistair Cooke in the Atlantic, James Thurber was one of the mainstays of the New Yorker magazine, where his short stories, essays, and numerous carto... Read more

In a general survey of American humor, James Thurber comes after the traditional horse-sense humorists and before the black humorists of the postatomic era. His most famous and most enduring work deve... Read more

Next to Mark Twain, James Thurber is the most critically acclaimed humorist in American literary history. Like Twain he first established his reputation as a journalist. By the time he died, he was re... Read more

In the following essay, Triesch examines the ways in which Thurber changed the traditional form of the fable. Speaking of the Human Habit of Ascribing Human Weaknesses to animals, James Thurber says t... Read more

In the following essay, Arnold discusses Thurber's use of animals in his short fiction. Those critics who have had the temerity to discuss Thurber's animals have often taken the directio... Read more

In the following essay, Secor determines how the character of Walter Mitty reflects the image of Joseph Conrad's creation, Lord Jim. James Thurber first encountered Joseph Conrad in a college c... Read more

In this essay, Cheatham explores the function of sin, death, and judgment in the fantasies of Thurber's character Walter Mitty. Serious matters, we now know, bubble and boil beneath the cleverl... Read more

Critical Essay by Julian Moynihan In a tribute to Mary Thurber written after her death in 1955 and reprinted in Alarms and Diversions Thurber testified to the life-long occupation of his mind by a sen... Read more

Critical Essay by Kenneth Hurren The temptation to tangle with an analysis of the late James Thurber's gay and anguished humour is generally irresistible to reviewers confronted with such excer... Read more

This rapid overview of many of Thurber's most famous works aims to dispute Thurber's critical reputation as the foremost American humorist of his time. While he was still alive, James Th... Read more

In contrast to unenthusiastic responses to Thurber's Collecting Himself, this review finds the collection a "luminous delight." Trying to explain the mechanics of humour can be a ... Read more

In the following essay, Kaufman disputes the consensus that Walter Mitty is an everyman to be sympathized with. Instead, he proposes that the story is a critique of Mitty's inability to cope wi... Read more

In the following mixed assessment, Seligman finds that some of Thurber's work retains a peculiar charm but that most of it is overwrought and dated, the product of a talent that never achieved ... Read more

In the following brief review, the critic laments that Thurber's Credos and Curios is likely his last work. When a writer has entertained us so well for so many years as James Thurber did, it i... Read more

In this essay, Gehring identifies Thurber's work for the New Yorker in the 1920s as one of the first instances of a new twentieth-century literary figure, the comic antihero. The comic anti-her... Read more

This brief review faults the editors of this volume of letters for their selection criteria, calling the compilation disappointing. Thurber was an inveterate letter writer from college days until his ... Read more

In this essay, Arner discusses the first ten years of Thurber's writing career and his humor's relation to the Depression era. The first ten years of James Thurber's career coinci... Read more

Critical Essay by Wilfrid Sheed Thurber was a marvelous comic writer, but alone among such he was able to sketch the phantasmagoric goo from which his funny ideas came. If Henry James or Dostoevsky ha... Read more

Critical Essay by Jonathan Yardley James Thurber was often an irascible and difficult man, but there is little of that side of his personality in these Selected Letters. Here we find him for the most ... Read more

Critical Essay by Nora Sayre Encounters—with unfriendly food, or machinery, or objects that took on a life of their own—were essential to [James Thurber's] vision of human existen... Read more

Critical Essay by Alan Coren [The] wife who wants to bring out a volume of her deceased husband's correspondence has not one, but two, reputations to protect, if not, indeed, enhance. But in th... Read more