SOURCE: “The Further Range: Thurber's Other Stories,” in James Thurber, Continuum Pub., 1988, pp. 75–106.

In the following essay, Long surveys both the best known stories of Thurber and some of the lesser known.

Thurber's tales of the “little man” culminate in “Walter Mitty,” but this type of story does not disappear exactly with the end of the 1930s decade. Shortly after the onset of his blindness in 1941, Thurber published two other stories, “The Catbird Seat” (1942) and “The Lady on 142” (1943), that are of a similar nature and are among his best. “The Catbird Seat” is in some respects a more ample version of “The Unicorn in the Garden,” and like the earlier fable combines humor with fantasy. Erwin Martin, the story's hero, is the epitome of the little man, a timid clerk who has worked for the same company for years and has become head of its filing department. One...