Customer Reviews

The Thurber Carnival (Modern Library)

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"The Thurber Carnival" was a beloved companion of my early youth; I laughed out loud again and again at the stories of "My Life and Hard Times," the hilarious "Fables for Our Time," "The Secret Life of Walter Mitty," and other classics. What was really important to me about Thurber was that he came from the same part of Ohio that I did, and actually had had relatives and attended family reunions in Sugar Grove, Ohio, where I grew up. That meant all the world to me, because it showed me that someone who had ties to Sugar Grove could be a famous writer. Now, I love Thurber's work more than ever; as an adult, I can better appreciate the nuances of a story like "The Catbird Seat." Thurber's work is a precise, funny, yet deeply serious portrait of an America which had just recently completed the transition from a frontier to an urban society. Women, having just won the right to vote, were flexing new-found muscles; men, divorced from the need to wrest a living from the soil, felt suddenly unmoored and emasculated; a new breed of self-help authors arose to make a quick buck from the newly uncertain populace; and oceans of alcohol fueled the newly stirred resentments between the sexes.Thurber recorded it all, in a prose style as elegant and lucid as any in the history of American literature. "The Catbird Seat," "Fables for Our Time" and the self-help parodies of "Let Your Mind Alone!" are every bit as fresh and pertinent as when Thurber wrote them 60-odd years ago. Unfortunately, some aspects of his work--most glaringly his portrayal of African-Americans--have not stood up so well. But one can only say of Thurber what the Duc de Saint-Simon said of Louis XIV: "His virtues were his own, his faults were his times'." The best of James Thurber ranks with the best of Mark Twain, Ring Lardner, Woody Allen and any other American humorist you can name.

A few years back I used to travel to work (some 15 miles) by bus. As is the custom with commuters just about everywhere, my fellow travellers and I seldom spoke..a nod and a half-smile would be about as much communication as we managed. One morning I unwisely picked up a copy of "The Thurber Carnival" to while away the time on the journey: unwise because about halfway through "Travels With Olympy" I let out such an unrestrained hoot of laughter that I startled myself and everyone else on the bus. For a moment it seemed that the driver was about to stop and come back to check on the commotion. Things got back to normal, however....but I couldn't help noticing a few puzzled looks in my direction when I found myself choking back the tears while reading about Thurber's dog Rex: I don't even like dogs much, but such is the punch of Thurber's writing that I was howling my eyes out over the demise of this pooch. As the passengers were getting off the bus one kindly lady stopped by my seat and asked what I had been reading. The next day I got it into my head to buy a bicycle and started cycling to work each day. I recall one morning as the bus hurtled past me, seeing the kindly lady reading a book and smiling...I can't be sure, but I like to think it was the Thurber Carnival. These days I drive to work.

THE THURBER CARNIVAL is an excellent collection if only because it contains the complete MY LIFE AND HARD TIMES. In the early seventies, when my grandmother gave me a respectful and wonderfully brief biography called THE CLOCKS OF COLUMBUS, I became a THURBER fan. I was in Junior High and Thurber, dead more than ten years already, was enjoying something of a vogue. Most of his books were back in print. Today, we're down to about a third or less of what he wrote. The Library of America's collection looks fairly complete, but THE THURBER CARNIVAL was his own selection of greatest hits, if you will. In both cases I miss the separate volumes from which these stories and cartoons are culled. If there are concept albums, Thurber had concept collections. You don't get the sense of a Beatles album listening to bits from different albums. This is true with Thurber. You need all of LET YOUR MIND ALONE, which you can only get used now. You need all of THE MIDDLE-AGED MAN ON THE FLYING TRAPEZE; his most representative collection.
He tried writing a novel once or twice, but found he could only write short stories. This bothered him. The chief thing to remember as you read him is that he was deeply ashamed of being a humorist. His literary hero was Henry James. During Thurber's time at the New Yorker (and he arrived there about a year after its founding, staying until his death more than three decades later) the magazine was a showcase for humorists. Think of the original cast of Saturday Night Live and you'll have something of an idea of the atmosphere at the magazine in its first ten years or so. Competitive humorists travelled from all over the United States to work for THE NEW YORKER. The Algonquin Roundtable was largely a haven for NEW YORKER staffers. James Thurber learned from E. B. White and a few others and then outstripped them. If you read E. B. White's forays into humor, you'll see his clean prose shining, but you won't feel you know him. Thurber, on the other hand, leaves you with the impression that he wishes to God he never left Ohio. There is a sense of loss in Thurber's rhythms.
He is as dated as a Studebaker. If you're not willing to put yourself back in time, Thurber's not for you. But, if you notice his pain, you might notice how mightily he strove against it. Thomas Wolfe once met him at a party. Someone said, "This is James Thurber, the New Yorker writer."
Wolfe shook his hand and said, "You call those little, tiny things writing?"
All Thurber had was his writing. He was a mess otherwise. Even when his writing practically barks its bitter sentiment, Thurber turns a phrase as if he owns it. The actual content of the stories is immaterial. He should be read outloud, because he was essentially a poet.

I grew up with this book. First published in the mid-40s, it lived in the center of a built-in bookcase over my father's desk in the family room, and I was drawn to it time and time again during my childhood.

At first, I was convulsed by Thurber's uniquely hilarious cartoons. His dogs and his women are priceless...drawn in a style that nobody has ever been able to duplicate or capture.

It was only later, as I grew older, that I could appreciate Thurber's written humor. The "Thurber Carnival" (and it is) is a compilation of essays and excerpts from "My World--and Welcome to It," "The Middle Aged Man on the Flying Trapeze," and others. These were Thurber's earlier works that were very much a product of their times, but oh, so funny! Thurber was one of the great commentators on the vagaries of everyday life. Along with Robert Benchly et al., he set the tone for an entire generation. I still have this book, and I absolutely cherish it. It's hard to do Thurber justice in a review. All I can say is--buy this book and wallow in it. You'll be glad you did.

This compendium will give a thoroughly entertaining taste of one of the twentieth century's greatest humourists. Thurber's imagination and wit have an appeal all their own.

This anthology brings together a number of his short stories as well as selections from amongst his modern fables and cartoons. 'What Do You Mean, It Was Brillig?' and 'The Night the Bed Fell' are two excellent and hilarious tales that serve well as an introduction to Thurber's surreal world. Don't read these in public unless you are prepared to draw attention to yourself - they will have you laughing out loud. In his fables, modelled after Aesop, but with a twentieth-century bent, Thurber delights in catching the reader unaware with his own particular brand of irony.

The cartoons are ingenious. Sometimes you will read a cartoon in a newspaper and it will make you laugh. Go back to it again and it no longer has the same effect. Thurber's cartoons, on the other hand, are so utterly inspired (I do not exaggerate), that they will improve upon a second and third look. You will discover subtle nuances you didn't perceive before. His funniest offerings draw on the theme of marriage, and frequently involve the chasm between a husband and wife trapped in a marriage out of which the love and romance has long since disappeared. You will be left baffled as to where exactly Thurber came across such a natural talent for finding (and exploiting) the absurd in everything.

One night my wife read to me from one of her textbooks, "The Secret Life of Walter Mitty". I had never heard of James Thurber up to that point. The next day, I bought this collection, mainly because it had Walter Mitty in it. I lucked out, the rest of the collection is incredible--especially the semi-autobiographical material. It's hard to chose favorites but I'll try. I loved "The Owl Who Was God", "The Dog That Bit People", "The Catbird Seat", "The Unicorn in the Garden", "The Car We Had to Push", and "Draftboard Nights". Considering the length of my favorites, I might as well have just copied the Table of Contents.

That been said, Thurber is a fantastic writer, with great humor, and penetrating insight.

Fans of humorous writing argue as to whether Thurber or Twain is the greatest American humorist. I vote for Thurber. The Carnival is the best collection of Thurber. Read it and you'll go looking -- happily -- for everything the collectors had to leave out for lack of space.

This book provides the most complete single-volume picture of Thurber I've seen. Includes classics as well as distrubing, depression-induced stories. Practically an anthology.

One of my all time favorite books. a great compilation of short stories gleaned from several collections that can be enjoyed again and again. My favorites include the classic The Secret Life of Walter Mitty, If Grant Had Been Drinking At Appomattox, the Night the Bed Fell and A Sequence of Servants. This delightful tome includes original illustrations of some classic poems (Excelsior and Barbara Frietchie, et al) as well as a collection of original Thurber cartoons.

The Thurber Carnival is an excellent collection of short fiction, essays and drawings by the late great master of American fiction. Included are such gems as the original Secret Life of Walter Mitty. I thoroughly enjoyed these stories - I think I preferred the fiction to the cartoons near the end (many of which if not all appeared in the New Yorker) but those did not disappoint either.

Thurber's eclectic mix of humor and tragedy, hope and desperation, take the reader easily and wholly into his stories. Highly recommended.