Customer Reviews

People Have More Fun Than Anybody: A Centennial Celebration of Drawings and Writings by James Thurber

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People Have More Fun Than Anybody collects 19 of Thurber's stories/articles/letters, several cartoons, and one recipe that have been previously uncollected. Surely this is a classification that would have amused Thurber no end--are they now "non-uncollected" stories? In "Help! Help! Another Classificationization" Thurber sets himself against exactly this mindset. And frankly, at this late date in the late humorist's career, such a criteria for inclusion assures that the book will not bring us the best of his work.

However, Thurber is almost always witty, and even though some of the pieces are dated and irrelevant, all of the writings evoke at least a smile. The cartoons don't fare as well, some of them being merely puzzling. The end notes tell us that some cartoons had different captions in their original stages. The most wildly different is a picture of a woman leaning forward and speaking intently to a man. The published caption is "If I told you a dream I had about you, Mr. Price, would you promise not to do anyting about it unless you really want to?", but the earlier caption on Thurber's original drawing was "If they never found the husband's body could they do anything to the wife?"

This is essentially a collection for the die-hard Thurber fan (who are rather few on the ground these days, it seems) only. Others will probably do better to read The Thurber Carnival.