Thurber, Wry Minimalist, Joins a Literary Pantheon Biography

• Published in: The New York times
• Main Author: Gussow, Mel
• Format: Newspaper Article
• Language: English
• Published: New York, N.Y New York Times Company 03.02.1997
• Edition: Late Edition (East Coast)
• Subjects: Books and Magazines; Cartoonists; Humor; James Thurber; Literary criticism; Thurber, James (1894-1961); Writers
• ISSN: 0362-4331

James Thurber was, by his own description, a ''short-piece writer'': 10 pages or less, and on to the next work. Once he collaborated (with Elliott Nugent) on a full-length play, ''The Male Animal,'' but he was not about to write a Jamesian novel or a tell-all-through-the-night autobiography. His memoir, ''My Life and Hard Times,'' is briefer than a breviary. Within his chosen parameters, he was an acute observer of human nature as both a writer and a cartoonist. As Joseph Mitchell, a fellow New Yorker writer, said, he was ''the only true genius'' The New Yorker produced. Mitchell rated him ahead of E. B. White, S. J. Perelman, Dorothy Parker and, of course, himself. Thurber's response to such encomiums: ''Anybody with the slightest critical ability knows that a genius would not have to slave over his prose so long, or over his drawings so little.'' Because he is categorized as a humorist, it may come as a surprise to see him eternally enshrined in the Library of America series with a 1,004-page volume. In the Library, he is alongside Melville, Hawthorne, Twain and James. With the exception of William Bartram, the naturalist whose Library of America collection includes drawings and text, Thurber is the first author-artist in the series.