James Thurber / The Bear Who Let It Alone

The Bear Who Let It Alone

By James Thurber

In the woods of the Far West there once lived a brown bear who could take it or let it alone. He would go into a bar where they sold mead, a fermented drink made of honey, and he would have just two drinks. Then he would put some money on the bar and say, "See what the bears in the back room will have," and he would go home. But finally he took to drinking by himself most of the day.

   He would reel home at night, kick over the umbrella stand, knock down the bridge lamps, and ram his elbows through the windows. Then he would collapse on the floor and lie there until he went to sleep. His wife was greatly distressed and his children were very frightened.

   At length the bear saw the error of his ways and began to reform. In the end he became a famous teetotaler and a persistent temperance lecturer. He would tell everybody that came to his house about the awful effects of drink, and he would boast about how strong and well he had become since he gave up touching the stuff. To demonstrate this, he would stand on his head and on his hands and he would turn cartwheels in the house, kicking over the umbrella stand, knocking down the bridge lamps, and ramming his elbows through the windows.

   Then he would lie down on the floor, tired by his healthful exercise, and go to sleep. His wife was greatly distressed and his children were very frightened.

 Moral: You might as well fall flat on your face as lean over too far backward.

James Thurber / The Last Flower

THE LAST FLOWER

by James Thurber

These are pictures from James Thurber's "A Thurber Carnival", most specifically "The Last Flower". It is a very compelling story and has a very universal theme. I set it to the Summer Overture from the movie "Requiem for a Dream" movie soundtrack.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X1RrEAroZbw

http://youtu.be/X1RrEAroZbw

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BIOGRAPHY OF JAMES THURBER

James Thurber / The Owl Who Was God

Picasso

The Owl Who Was God

by James Thurber

Once upon a starless midnight there was an owl who sat on the branch of an oak tree. Two ground moles tried to slip quietly by, unnoticed. "You!" said the owl. "Who?" they quavered, in fear and astonishment, for they could not believe it was possible for anyone to see them in that thick darkness. "You two!" said the owl. The moles hurried away and told the other creatures of the field and forest that the owl was the greatest and wisest of all animals because he could see in the dark and because he could answer any question. "I’ll see about that, "said a secretary bird, and he called on the owl one night when it was again very dark. "How many claws am I holding up?" said the secretary bird. "Two," said the owl, and that was right. "Can you give me another expression for ‘that is to say’ or ‘namely’?" asked the secretary bird. "To wit," said the owl. "Why does the lover call on his love?" "To woo," said the owl.

   The secretary bird hastened back to the other creatures and reported that the owl indeed was the greatest and wisest animal in the world because he could see in the dark and because he could answer any question. "Can he see in the daytime, too?" asked a red fox? "Yes," answered a dormouse and a French poodle. "Can he see in the daytime, too?" All the other creatures laughed loudly at this silly question, and they set upon the red fox and his friends and drove them out of the region. They sent a messenger to the owl and asked him to be their leader.

   When the owl appeared among the animals it was high noon and the sun was shining brightly. He walked very slowly, which gave him an appearance of great dignity, and he peered about him with large, staring eyes, which gave him an air of tremendous importance. "He’s God!" screamed a Plymouth rock hen. And the others took up the cry "He’s God!" So they followed him wherever he went and when he bumped into things they began to bump into things, too. Finally he came to a concrete highway and he started up the middle of it and all the other creatures followed him. Presently a hawk, who was acting as outrider, observed a truck coming toward them at fifty miles an hour, and he reported to the secretary bird and the secretary bird reported to the owl. "There’s danger ahead," said the secretary bird. "To wit?" said the owl. The secretary bird told him. "Aren’t you afraid?" he asked. "Who?" said the owl calmly, for he could not see the truck. "He’s God!" cried all the creatures again, and they were still crying "He’s God" when the truck hit them and ran them down. Some of the animals were merely injured, but most of them, including the owl, were killed.

Moral: You can fool too many of the people too much of the time.

James Thurber / The Little Girl and the Wolf

The Little Girl and the Wolf

by James Thurber
BIOGRAPHY

   One afternoon a big wolf waited in a dark forest for a little girl to come along carrying a basket of food to her grandmother. Finally a little girl did come along and she was carrying a basket of food. "Are you carrying that basket to your grandmother?" asked the wolf. The little girl said yes, she was. So the wolf asked her where her grandmother lived and the little girl told him and he disappeared into the wood.

   When the little girl opened the door of her grandmother's house she saw that there was somebody in bed with a nightcap and nightgown on. She had approached no nearer than twenty-five feet from the bed when she saw that it was not her grandmother but the wolf, for even in a nightcap a wolf does not look any more like your grandmother than the Metro-Goldwyn lion looks like Calvin Coolidge. So the little girl took an automatic out of her basket and shot the wolf dead.

   (Moral: It is not so easy to fool little girls nowadays as it used to be.)

THE GIRL AND THE WOLF

by Jonathan Button

A troubled young lady, known to many as Little Red Hoodie has a rather gory encounter with the hungry and savage, Big Bad Wolf. Based on the iconic fable, 'The Girl and the Wolf' (James Thurber, 1940).

James Thurber / The Unicorn in the Garden

Illustration by James Thurber

THE UNICORN IN THE GARDEN

by James Thurber

Fables For Our Time

Once upon a sunny morning a man who sat in a breakfast nook looked up from his scrambled eggs to see a white unicorn with a golden horn quietly cropping the roses in the garden. The man went up to the bedroom where his wife was still asleep and woke her. "There's a unicorn in the garden," he said. "Eating roses." She opened one unfriendly eye and looked at him.

   "The unicorn is a mythical beast," she said, and turned her back on him. The man walked slowly downstairs and out into the garden. The unicorn was still there; now he was browsing among the tulips. "Here, unicorn," said the man, and he pulled up a lily and gave it to him. The unicorn ate it gravely. With a high heart, because there was a unicorn in his garden, the man went upstairs and roused his wife again. "The unicorn," he said,"ate a lily." His wife sat up in bed and looked at him coldly. "You are a booby," she said, "and I am going to have you put in the booby-hatch."

   The man, who had never liked the words "booby" and "booby-hatch," and who liked them even less on a shining morning when there was a unicorn in the garden, thought for a moment. "We'll see about that," he said. He walked over to the door. "He has a golden horn in the middle of his forehead," he told her. Then he went back to the garden to watch the unicorn; but the unicorn had gone away. The man sat down among the roses and went to sleep.

   As soon as the husband had gone out of the house, the wife got up and dressed as fast as she could. She was very excited and there was a gloat in her eye. She telephoned the police and she telephoned a psychiatrist; she told them to hurry to her house and bring a strait-jacket. When the police and the psychiatrist arrived they sat down in chairs and looked at her, with great interest.

   "My husband," she said, "saw a unicorn this morning." The police looked at the psychiatrist and the psychiatrist looked at the police. "He told me it ate a lilly," she said. The psychiatrist looked at the police and the police looked at the psychiatrist. "He told me it had a golden horn in the middle of its forehead," she said. At a solemn signal from the psychiatrist, the police leaped from their chairs and seized the wife. They had a hard time subduing her, for she put up a terrific struggle, but they finally subdued her. Just as they got her into the strait-jacket, the husband came back into the house.

   "Did you tell your wife you saw a unicorn?" asked the police. "Of course not," said the husband. "The unicorn is a mythical beast." "That's all I wanted to know," said the psychiatrist. "Take her away. I'm sorry, sir, but your wife is as crazy as a jaybird."

   So they took her away, cursing and screaming, and shut her up in an institution. The husband lived happily ever after.

   Moral: Don't count your boobies until they are hatched.

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BIOGRAPHY OF JAMES THURBER

James Thurber / Quote

 

James Thurber
BIOGRAPHY
QUOTE

In The Years with Ross, James Thurber describes his beginnings as an artist at [The New Yorker]; Thurber says that, having had success at his now-famous quickly sketched freehand drawings, he sat down and did some proper ones, with full attention to detail, shading, perspective, and so on. When he showed them to his colleague E.B. White, White took one look and said, “Don’t do that. If you ever got good you’d be mediocre.”

The new yorker (2005)

Ian frazier from steinberg at the new yorker (2005)

James Thurber / My Life and Hard Times

James Thurber
My Life and Hard Times

“In the early years of the nineteenth century, Columbus won out, as state capital, by only one vote over Lancaster, and ever since then has had the hallucination that it is being followed, a curious municipal state of mind which affects, in some way or other, all those who live there (Thurber ixx).”

Surely the unofficial spokesperson for Columbus, Ohio since the publication of his autobiographical farce My Life and Hard Times is James Thurber. Inspired by the life and “struggles” of his own adolescence on the East Side, this farce provided an identity for his hometown that has long been the subject of appropriate pull quoting and name dropping for columnists of the area for decades.5 Yet for a hometown hero, Thurber’s portrayal of Midwestern life is far removed from the usual sugar-coating you see in a lot of regional literature. He personifies his city for its collective inferiority complex, stocking his text to the brim with accounts of superstition, boredom, fear of the weather, and unique mental unrest. For example, “In the early years of the nineteenth century, Columbus won out, as state capital, by only one vote over Lancaster, and ever since then has had the hallucination that it is being followed, a curious municipal state of mind which affects, in some way or other, all those who live there” (Thurber 67). Certainly, such passages bring us to question: how does a writer so willing to address the insecurities of his region become such a glorified image of the city? The answer lies in the combination of what the city demands and what Thurber supplies. His ongoing presence of certain palpable social qualities, often mistaken as flaws, Thurber effectively brings to focus through his characters. Yet through it all, he portrays eccentricity of character and situation as a life enhancing quality rather than something to be reconciled. Being at odds with the conventions of the commonplace becomes a positive value for the city, the neighborhood, the family, and ultimately the self in Thurber’s case. Columbus, a town in need of confirmation, can effectively overcome its imperfections as long as they are addressed, made to look charming, and delivered through comedy and laughter.

Tangible, bizarre qualities of Thurber’s family and Columbus locals are not so much revealed as preserved by their corresponding interactions in

 My Life and Hard Times. Despite Thurber’s affinity for exaggeration, the flat, funny characters doing much of Thurber’s bidding each share that their depictions (though diverse) are always palpable, always backhandedly complimentary and reinforce one another’s identity with confirmation and delight. “The Night the Ghost Got In” is one such story where the farce is evenly spread from character to character. The story begins with a short introductory paragraph that prepares readers for the more colorful events that will unfold in the pages to come—his mother throwing a shoe through a window, his grandfather shooting a policeman—and then goes right into the events of that night. When young Thurber emerges from a bath tub at one in the morning and hears the sound of footsteps in the dining room, he alarms his mother, who alerts the neighbors (hence, shoe hurling), who then call the authorities, who arrive shortly after, only barge into the burglar-less home on Jefferson Avenue (except for the characters aforementioned of course). Eventually, each of these characters would arrive at the conclusion that this burglar must have been a ghost.6 Though some would consider these and similar circumstances that unfold in My Life and Hard Times as a pseudo-mockery, the deliberate inclusion and balance of impartial caricaturizations look and feel non-threatening to the integrity of Columbus and its residents. The Columbus local officers, particularly dopey, ransack through private possessions etc and greet young Thurber in a strong colloquial accent, “‘Whatta you doin’ here?’ He demanded. ‘I live here,’ I said (Thurber 59). The nonsensical actions leading up to the arrival of Columbus’ finest are reinforced rather than discouraged by the image of these officers, lacking any ability to claim superiority by comparison. “‘No sign o’ nuthin.’ Said the cop who had first spoken to mother. ‘This guy,’ he explained to the other, jerking a thumb at me, ‘was nekked. The lady seems historical’” (Thurber 63). Ultimately, if Thurber wished to portray his life, his family, his experience, his town, his neighbors, as inferior, he could very easily have done so by presenting more valid antiheroes. However, every character and event in this book is equally farcical. Even in the midst of all the shoe hurling, ghost hunting, car pushing, and flash “flooding” that compose his fictional autobiography, Thurber places these events in a consciously controlled way that never feels out of place within his own work, and his own life. He surrounds strangeness with strangeness and absurdity within greater absurdity. Within the world of Thurber, farces and exaggerations feel somewhat normal, real and valid within themselves.

Another story, “The Night the Bed Fell” plays out in an equally chaotic fashion to “The Night the Ghost Got In,” with a look and feel that is strikingly similar in plot structure, narrative subjectivity, and overall pace. More a narrative than a memoir, the story written in the first person has a subjective angle, and is ordered chronologically and methodically. There are seven main characters, including James (once again taking the helm as the narrator) and several other family members such as his mother, father, two brothers, cousin, uncle, three aunts, and his grandfather all of whom separately and equally fascinating farces.While the organized chaos of “The Night the Bed Fell” remains focused primarily on the shenanigans and extremities of Thurber’s immediate family—with no neighbors welcomed with shoes, no “authorities” alerted—despite this exclusion of outside forces, the family itself provides the same delightfully entertaining and quietly charming image of his urban upbringing in Columbus. The plot starts with James Thurber explaining his “interesting” family, including a crazy cousin that thinks he will die of suffocation during his sleep, and a grandfather that leaves the house for several days, coming back talking about a war that happened decades ago. When James sets the story in motion as he falls out of his army cot, his mom mistakes the crash for his father’s death and story starts to get chaotic. Upon hearing the sound of James’ “tremendous banging crash” (Thurber 7) which left young James unconscious, unhurt and unassuming, the racket awakened his mother in the next room who immediately came to the conclusion that “her worst dread was realized and the bed in the attic had fallen on father” (which it hadn’t). The noise of his mother’s screaming awakens adjacent and perpendicular rooms within the house, all explicitly detailed to be on the same floor,7 thus leading to each character’s individual fears to act themselves out in collectively individualized, and synchronized hysteria. This would include the suffocation of a cousin (who had a fear of dying in his sleep), the yelping of the family dog Rex (who had an affinity of biting people on a whim), and again some shoe hurling—this time limited to the hallway—of Aunt Gracie Shoaf convinced that the commotion had been caused by the entrance of a burglar (her own respective phobia). Again, Thurber utilizes this butterfly effect we’ve seen before, and organizes chaos and its butterfly effect this time limited to his house and his family. All the while, the events are brought about as a means of entertainment with mistakes easily corrected and clarified by stories end, “The situation was finally put together like a giant jigsaw puzzle. Father caught a cold from prowling around in his bare feet but there were no other bad results.” (Thurber 15). Here where the lack of an anti-hero, or a more commendable clear-headed presence is lacking once again (this time to its complete absence even more so than depicted in “The Night the Ghost Got In”) each of the respective shenanigans, imperfections, misunderstandings, and caricatures continue to interact and reinforce the mindset Thurber hopes to instill in his reader: these mistakes are likable as long as they are brought to the correct focus. This is the mindset that would later be applied in other stories that feature similar misunderstandings and imperfections. Specifically, in this story these compounding and reinforced imperfections are ultimately charming because of their harmless results and playful recitation, despite the fact that such imperfections could easily have been viewed in a negative way had they been inappropriately handled on Thurber’s part. Thankfully for his sake, his family’s sake, and his hometown’s sake, he again presents his material as an organized chaos.

James Thurber with Peggy Cass and Joan Anderson

Yet this does not diminish the fact that these depictions are dependent on the reading of material that is, at least on the surface, unflattering. Though at times readers could confuse characterizations of Thurber the writer as mockery, Thurber the illustrator makes clear where his sympathies lie. The depictions of his characters are understated, blemished, and charming but most importantly the descriptions included in the language are always paralleled in the image included. The old cliché that a picture is worth a thousand words perfectly complements the delicately handled blemishes of himself, his family and his hometown.

http://bookmarkingohio.wordpress.com/james-thurber/

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BIOGRAPHY OF JAMES THURBER