James Thurber: His Life and Times (Paperback)

by Harrison Kinney (Author)

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review
"James Grover Thurber," writes Harrison Kinney, "is considered the preeminent American humorist of the twentieth century by those who keep score in grand matters of this kind.... My Life and Hard Times raised the bar of comic literary reminiscence to a height that no other practitioner of the genre has come close to clearing."

This biography of Thurber is practically a lifelong project for Kinney, who first wrote about the humorist for a Columbia master's thesis in the late 1940s and contracted to write this book in 1962. It weighs in at well over 1,000 pages, due primarily to the amount of background the biographer provides. The discussion of Thurber's years at The New Yorker, for example, which takes up much of the final two-thirds of the book, is preceded by a 16-page history of Harold Ross's stewardship of the magazine before Thurber's arrival. But any charges of excessiveness are easily brushed aside by the steady parade of hilarious anecdotes, the numerous quotes from Thurber's own works and correspondence, as well as reproductions of the classic Thurber cartoons, including "All Right, Have It Your Way--You Heard a Seal Bark!" which Robert Benchley called "the funniest cartoon caption the magazine had ever run." This cornucopia of biographic material also provides rich insight into the ways in which Thurber transmuted his personal experiences into lasting art of the highest order. This is a book not to be missed. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From Publishers Weekly
Probably the fullest, most revealing portrait to date of humorist and New Yorker staffer James Thurber (1894-1961), this marvelous biography is exhaustive and sprightly. Loss of an eye in an accident at age seven left shy, mercurial James introverted and a frequent object of scorn even to himself. His mother, Mary ("Mame") Fisher, a manic dynamo addicted to fads, seances, numerology and astrology, was known for her wild antics and endless chatter. James's father, Charles, a Columbus, Ohio, politician and bureaucrat, genially accepted the household bedlam, yet former New Yorker reporter Kinney surmises that Thurber's self-deprecating humor drew upon the jittery apprehensions and inadequacies he felt had been handed down to him by his father. After a frustrating, sexually incompatible first marriage, Thurber found an empathic protector, lover, nurse and business manager in his second wife, tough-minded pulp magazine editor Helen Wismer, who tended him through over 20 years of his blindness. But he resented his dependence on her and made her a handy target for his misogyny. Liberally sprinkled with excerpts from Thurber's letters, conversations, essays and poems, and charmingly illustrated throughout with his cartoons, this encyclopedic biography helps us understand how Thurber transmuted personal misery and frustration into improbable, engaging doodles and sophisticated satire on human folly and pretense.
Copyright 1995 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 1238 pages
• Publisher: Owl Books (NY) (May 1997)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0805053689
• ISBN-13: 978-0805053685
• Product Dimensions: 9 x 6 x 2.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 3.3 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #1,604,013 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

10 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars A Must-Have Book for All Thurber Fans and Scholars!, November 26, 1999

By	Steve Ziadie (Miesenbach, Germany) - See all my reviews

Mr Kinney has given the world (and us fellow "Thurberphiles") a much needed comprehensive critical biography of America's premire 20th century humorist, author, and artist--James Grover Thurber. Mr Kinney's work is well researched and represents over 30 years of painstaking effort, culminating in a plethora of priceless insights and background details concerning this great American author and artist. As an avid (but amateur) Thurber historian and fan, I found the book to fill a much needed space on the shelf of American literary history. Mr Kinney traces Thurber's life, through his early years in Columbus, OH, and later, New York and abroad. He provides historical insight into the early "JT" years at the NEW YORKER staff, and supports his writing with many primary source interviews, papers, photos, letters, etc... While I would have preferred to have seen the use of footnotes and better documentation of sources, the book is still impressive all the same (i.e., he quotes letters and documents but fails to indicate which library/university/private collection, etc., they come from). This book is a "must" for all literary historians and Thurber fans as it provides the best to-date historic timeline and detailed explanation of Thurber, the man: his loves, hates, successes, and failures. To be honest, there are several places where the sheer volume of details and correspondance could overwhelm the novice (despite the book's smooth readability, you will not finish its 1,105 pages over a weekend!). But Mr Kinney should also be praised for his habit of providing a brief outline of each Thurber piece discussed. This serves to assist those readers who may not be throughly familiar with Mr Thurber's works. In addition, his Biographical Update at the end, is an excellent vehicle for tying up the historical and biographical "loose ends" with a "where are they now?" approach. Despite the impressive research however, I did find two very minor inaccuracies: the first one on page 291, where Mr Kinney (referring to Thurber's "Remembrances of Things Past") describes Thurber getting French chickens drunk on bread soaked with "bad wine". In actuality, "Calvados" is not wine, but a brandy made from fermented apples, particular to the Normandy province of France. Also, on page 900, Mr Kinney infers that there was only one Thurber cartoon that depicted a man at a typewriter. This statement is confusing since I've found four Thurber drawings that depict men at typewriters, in addition to the one he is talking about (captioned: "He's giving Dorothy Thompson a piece of his mind"). Despite these minor flaws, Mr Kinney's book is most welcome and should serve for many years as a "one-stop" springboard for others interested in delving into James Thurber's life and influence on American culture. Bravo!

6 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars those thousand page biographies, August 23, 2001

By	Cynthia Rucker "[e-mail]" (Mount Perry, OH United States) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

The amount of time and work Kinney put into this is amazing, and deeply appreciated by the fans of Thurber. The most insightful portions of the book seem to be the letters Kinney so carefully excerpted, particularly the ones Thurber addressed to his daughter Rosemary. Kinney successfully links the letters' content to particular Thurber cartoons or essays. The titles are whimsical, too, befitting the subject: "Those Clocks of Columbus", "Those Violets in the Snow", phrases culled from some of Thurber's essays. My only complaint is the lack of critical commentary on Thurber's writing; Kinney sometimes has a sentence here or there from some distinguished writer/critic, but I'd like to see an appendix with a variety of takes on the Thurberian canon. And...Kinney seems just a wee bit reverent about Thurber, a little more so than I like in a biography. I'm also crazy about "Jamie", but I expect a little less awe from a scholar. However, I'm nitpicking. I've enjoyed the book so much that I always take it with me and read it on my way to Columbus, Ohio, when I attend the literary picnics at Thurber House. (Before you think I drive like Thurber, let me assure you my husband drives--and we live 50 miles away, so I have an hour to read.) Rereading portions of the biography always makes a festive time even better.