|
Who introduced me to the works
of James Thurber I do not remember. But
my colleague and friend of 60 years,
John von Ahleveldt, remembers how he
discovered 20th century America’s favourite humorist.
“Tyson, we
were walking back to our respective newspaper offices in 1948 to file reports
on a murder trial, and I heard you laughing behind me. You were reading a book
as you threaded your way along the pavement, and I said, ‘What the hell is
that?’
“You said
in that irritating way of yours, “Don’t you know about the Seal in the
Bedroom?’
“Thurber’s
been my favourite ever since.”
Come to
think of it, James Thurber should have been second on my list of Best Ten – but
I happened to think of Damon Runyon first for second place, if you see what I
mean. It’s a toss-up. . . except that I find, personally, that Runyon prompts
more laughs – and also, I found his collected works on my bookshelves.
To my
astonishment, I cannot find my copy of the Seal-in-the-Bedroom edition of
Thurber. The cartoon was on the cover. You may remember the primitive drawing
of a middle-aged couple in bed, while a large animal rears up behind their
headboard. The caption has the husband saying: “All right, have it your way,
you heard a seal bark.”
Yes. Funny
how inexplicable humour is. Timing is
everything.
And talent,
of course. James Thurber contributed to the New Yorker in the
1930s ( to about the 1950s, I think). But his stories go back to the 1920s and
earlier.
When
Thurber discovered readers loved his illustrations he decided to take drawing
lessons. Fortunately his editors
forbade him to do it. His primitive style of drawing remains as uncluttered and
powerful as his deceptively sophisticated writing.
Sixty years after reading his stories I still remember Thurber’s aunt who
kept the family on tenterhooks when she retired to bed each night. She always suspected that intruders were lurking in the passage
outside her bedroom door. So, just before she turned out the lights, she would
emerge to hurl one shoe into the darkness on the left, and another down the
shadows on the right. And sometimes she
might throw a third shoe. Or a fourth or fifth. It drove the family mad.
As reviewers of his books have worked out, James Thurber was perhaps the
sanest man in the world of his time. He
believed that everyone else was unbalanced in some way or other, but that all
this madness around him was normal.
For instance, his same aunt (or possibly another) used to make a point
every day of screwing all light bulbs tightly into their sockets. Especially in her own room, where she left
the door slightly ajar and the window open.
This was because she feared that electricity was constantly leaking from
the sockets and might fill the room to above the level of her bed while she was
sleeping.
Thurber’s
calm style in describing personal crisis leaves one with total clarity of the
situations he describes. . . though detail blurs for me after all those
years. One of his classics, you may
remember, is his account of The Day the Dam Broke. It happened, possibly, near Columbus,
Ohio. Some one in main street started
to run. An observer, who constantly feared the worst, believed the worst was
about to happen. He too started to run. Other pedestrians increased their pace
– until they too began to panic and reluctantly broke into a gallop. People
poured out of the shops, to the cry of “The dam’s broken!”
The entire
citizenry had to return shamefacedly to town. The man who started it all
successfully caught his train and never returned. Something like that, I recall.
But it’s no
good me trying to remember what Thurber wrote.
You need to read (or re-read) him yourself.
I cannot
trace much Thurber material on my bookshelves. I don’t think I can locate all
the shelves. I did find his story ‘Sex
ex Machina’, from his book entitled Let Your Mind Alone, but this is far
below his best humour. [It is a satire about psychologists, and about mankind
trying to fit into an increasingly mechanical world. Very erudite, but satire
for all that. Thurber deserves better than being categorized merely as a
satirest. Satire, to my mind, is, like
sarcasm, too easy to write.]
Instead I
have found my copy of a small book dealing with Thurber’s Dogs. Samples follow.
|
