Theoretically, humor serves a social function by exposing society's foibles to the members of that society so the existence of these faults can be recognized and corrected. In "The Case for Comedy," an article published in the Atlantic Monthly, Thurber declares that "The decline of humor and comedy in our time has a multiplicity of causes, a principal one being the ideological beating they have taken from both the intellectual left and the political right." As a result, he says, "only tragedy is [considered] serious and has importance." But, "the truth is that comedy is just as important, and often more serious in its approach to truth, and, what few writers seem to realize or to admit, usually more difficult to write."

"An American Romance" was the first story Thurber published in the New Yorker. The 426-word result of Thurber's forty-five minute exercise appeared in the New Yorker...