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Lanterns & Lances

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Lanterns and Lances

By James Thurber

Book Review

By Richard E. Noble

First and foremost, I guess that I would say that this is a book about how to deal with insomnia. Mr. Thurber's insomnia then leads us to his endless nights of tossing a turning while counting the letters of the alphabet and rearranging them in the fashion of an insomniac - forming words, word games, and word problems. We then take these lessons learned in these tedious hours of insomnia and carry them to cocktail parties, the theater, the movies, or wherever Mr. Thurber can find someone to banter with in regards to his compulsive, manic involvement with the English language.

He has one story in here entitled "the Last Clock." In this tale Mr. Thurber tip-toes on that thin line that separates good humor and insanity.
"A Moment with Mandy" is a story after my own heart. I have had such conversations with the little "Mandys" that have also cluttered and complicated my own personal mental well being.
"My Senegalese Birds and Siamese Cats" is a masterpiece.

In analyzing Mr. Thurber's style, based on my personal experience as a columnist, I have concluded that Mr. Thurber was not on salary or being paid per column. It is obvious that he had finagled a contract where he would be paid per word. It is truly brilliant how he managed to out smart his editors by including long random lists of words directly from his dictionary or thesaurus on the premise that he is exploring words beginning with "A" or "B" or C, D, E, F, W, X, Y or Z. You can flop this book open to just about any page and find whole paragraphs of examples.

With regards to the basic problem of the book ... insomnia, Mr. Thurber was not as lucky as I. When I have that problem, I simply turn to page 65 of Lanterns and Lances, "The Tyranny of Trivia" or page 141 "The Watchers of the Night" and my mind will be confused enough to drop off after a page or two. Unfortunately for Mr. Thurber, being the designer of this type confusion, he probably understood what he was talking about and consequently was wide awake all night long ... poor fellow.

Richard Edward Noble - The Hobo Philosopher - Author of:

"Just Hangin' Out, Ma" Humorous Anecdotes.