James Thurber
Thurber was born in Columbus, Ohio to Charles L. Thurber and Mary Agnes (Mame) Fisher Thurber. Both of his parents greatly influenced his work. His father, a sporadically employed clerk and minor politician who dreamed of being a lawyer or an actor, is said to have been the inspiration for the small, timid protagonist typical of many of his stories. Thurber described his mother as a "born comedienne" and "one of the finest comic talents I think I have ever known." She was a practical joker, on one occasion pretending to be crippled and attending a faith healer revival, only to jump up and proclaim herself healed.
Thurber had two brothers, William and Robert. Once, while playing a game of William Tell, his brother William shot James in the eye with an arrow. Because of the lack of medical technology, Thurber lost his eye. This injury would later cause him to be almost entirely blind. During his childhood he was unable to participate in sports and activities because of his injury, and instead developed a creative imagination, which he shared in his writings.
From 1913 to 1918, Thurber attended The Ohio State University, where he was a member of the Phi Kappa Psi Fraternity. He never graduated from the University because his poor eyesight prevented him from taking a mandatory ROTC course. In 1995 he was posthumously awarded a degree.
From 1918 to 1920, at the close of World War I, Thurber worked as a code clerk for the Department of State, first in Washington, D.C. and then at the American Embassy in Paris, France. After this Thurber returned to Columbus, where he began his writing career as a reporter for the Columbus Dispatch from 1921 to 1924. During part of this time, he reviewed current books, films, and plays in a weekly column called "Credos and Curios," a title that later would be given to a posthumous collection of his work. Thurber also returned to Paris in this period, where he wrote for the Chicago Tribune and other newspapers.
In 1925, he moved to Greenwich Village in New York City, getting a job as a reporter for the New York Evening Post. He joined the staff of The New Yorker in 1927 as an editor with the help of his friend and fellow New Yorker contributor, E.B. White. His career as a cartoonist began in 1930 when White found some of Thurber's drawings in a trash can and submitted them for publication. Thurber would contribute both his writings and his drawings to The New Yorker until the 1950s.
Thurber was married twice. In 1922, Thurber married Althea Adams. The marriage was troubled and ended in divorce in May 1935. Adams gave Thurber his only child, his daughter Rosemary. Thurber remarried in June, 1935 to Helen Wismer. His second marriage lasted until he died in 1961, at the age of 66, due to complications from pneumonia, which followed upon a stroke suffered at his home. His last words, aside from the repeated word "God," were "God bless... God damn," according to Helen Thurber.
“Comedy has to be done en clair. You can’t blunt the edge of wit or the point of satire with obscurity. Try to imagine a famous witty saying that is not immediately clear.”
“The past is an old armchair in the attic, the present an ominous ticking sound, and the future is anybody’s guess. ”
“Last night I dreamed of a small consolation enjoyed only by the blind: Nobody knows the trouble I’ve not seen.”
“There is no exception to the rule that every rule has an exception.”
“With sixty staring me in the face, I have developed inflammation of the sentence structure and definite hardening of the paragraphs.”
“I loathe the expression “What makes him tick.” It is the American mind, looking for simple and singular solutions, that uses the foolish expression. A person not only ticks, he also chimes and strikes the hour, falls and breaks and has to be put together again, and sometimes stops like an electric clock in a thunderstorm. ”
“Early to rise and early to bed makes a male healthy, wealthy, and dead. ”
“The most dangerous food is wedding cake.”
“It had only one fault. It was kind of lousy. ”
“Let me be the first to admit that the naked truth about me is to the naked truth about Salvador Dali as an old ukulele in the attic is to a piano in a tree, and I mean a piano with breasts. Senor Dali has the jump on me from the beginning. He remembers and describes in detail what it was like in the womb. My own earliest memory is of accompanying my father to a polling booth in Columbus, Ohio, where he voted for William McKinley.”
“Boys are beyond the range of anybody's sure understanding, at least when they are between the ages of 18 months and 90 years.”
“One martini is all right. Two are too many, and three are not enough.”
“There is something about a poet which leads us to believe that he died, in many cases, as long as 20 years before his birth.”
“You can fool too many people, too much of the time.”
“I used to wake up at 4 A.M. and start sneezing, sometimes for five hours. I tried to find out what sort of allergy I had but finally came to the conclusion that it must be an allergy to consciousness.”
“The wit makes fun of other persons; the satirist makes fun of the world; the humorist makes fun of himself.”
“It is better to have loafed and lost than never to have loafed at all.”
“In other countries, art and literature are left to a lot of shabby bums living in attics and feeding on booze and spaghetti.”
“Don't get it right, get it written.”
“The dog has seldom been successful in pulling man up to its level of sagacity, but man has frequently dragged the dog down to his.”
“Love is what you've been through with somebody”
“I always begin at the left with the opening word of the sentence and read toward the right and I recommend this method.”
“Humor is emotional chaos remembered in tranquility.”
“Well, if I called the wrong number, why did you answer the phone?”
“I am the Golux, the only Golux in the world and not a mere device”
“There are two kinds of light - the glow that illuminates, and the glare that obscures.”
“These are the days of bootleg love.”
“Why do you have to be a nonconformist like everybody else?”
“Quick, name some towns in New Jersey”
“It is better to know some of the questions than all of the answers.”
“I hate women because they always remember where things are.”
“All human beings should try to learn before they die what they are running from, and to, and why.”
“There is no safety in numbers, or in anything else.”