James Thurber
James Grover Thurber was an American cartoonist, writer, humorist, journalist, and playwright. He was born in Columbus, Ohio, and attended Ohio State University, leaving in 1918 without graduating. He spent over a year in Paris, working for the US State Department as a code clerk, and on his return to Columbus in 1920 was hired as a reporter for the Columbus Dispatch. He married his first wife, Althea Adams, in 1922. Thurber was hired by The New Yorker in early 1927, and soon became a prolific and popular contributor.
With E. B. White he wrote Is Sex Necessary?, a parody of serious psychological books about sex. It included many illustrations by Thurber, and the popularity of these convinced The New Yorker to start printing his cartoons. Over the 1930s several books of his writings and cartoons appeared, including My Life and Hard Times, a collection of reminiscences about Thurber's childhood in Columbus that is often considered his finest work. In 1935 he and Althea divorced, and he immediately remarried, to Helen Wismer. In 1938 he and a college friend, Elliott Nugent, wrote a play, The Male Animal, which had a successful run in 1940 and 1941 and was later made into a film.
Thurber had lost an eye in childhood, and by the late 1930s he was starting to lose vision in his remaining eye. Operations in the early 1940s were unable to save his sight, and he became almost completely blind. He was able to draw until the mid-1940s, and continued to be a productive writer, with The Thurber Carnival, his most successful book, appearing in 1945. In the early 1950s he had thyroid problems that led to emotional instability, which was not brought under control for a couple of years. Later successes included Further Fables for Our Time, a collection of fables most of which could be read as political commentary, which appeared during the McCarthy "red scare" era, and a stage version of The Thurber Carnival, in which he acted in for several months in 1959.
He suffered from a series of undiagnosed small strokes during the last year of his life, and died on November 2, 1961, in Manhattan. His ashes are buried in Green Lawn Cemetery in Columbus.
Early life and education
James Grover Thurber was born in Columbus, Ohio, on December 8, 1894. His father, Charles Leander Thurber, was a clerk working for the Ohio Republican Party at the time James was born; his wife, Mary Agnes Fisher was from a wealthy local family. James was the middle son of three; his older brother, William, was born in 1893, and Robert was born in 1896. In 1900 Charles lost his job when Asa Bushnell, the Republican governor of Ohio, lost the gubernatorial election. At some point in 1901 Charles was appointed to the staff of David K. Watson, who had been appointed to lead a Justice Department commission by President McKinley, and in April 1902 Charles moved the family to Washington D.C.The Thurbers rented a house in Falls Church, Virginia that August. One Sunday while they were in Falls Church, James and William were playing with a bow and arrow in the yard, and William told James to stand facing the fence so William could try to hit him in the back with a blunt arrow. James turned around just as William shot, and the arrow hit James in his left eye. After the initial shock the eye was not very painful, and Mame took James to a local doctor to have it treated. A few days later it was hurting, and Charles and Mame took him to a specialist in Washington, who removed the eye.
In 1902 Charles lost his job with the federal government, and the Thurbers moved back to Columbus in June 1903. Charles fell ill in 1904, and when he did not recover quickly the family moved into Mame's parents' house. James hated living there, and arrangements were made for him to stay frequently with Margery Albright, the practical nurse who had attended his birth. Albright was known to the family as Aunt Margery, and between 1905 and 1910 James stayed with her often, sometimes for weeks at a time. James' brother Robert later described Albright as "a second mother" to James. Charles recovered after a few months, and by 1906 the Thurbers were living in Norwich Hotel.
James missed a year of school in Washington. He was enrolled in Sullivant Elementary School in Columbus, a year behind his age group. In third grade he met Eva Prout at Sullivant; they shared classes for the next six years. By the seventh grade he was infatuated with her. Prout left school after the eighth grade to pursue a singing and acting career, and Thurber occasionally saw her in silent movies over the next few years.
Thurber spent seventh and eighth grades at Douglas Junior High School. He was chosen to write the Class Prophecy in 1909—this was a common essay format at the time. Thurber imagined his schoolmates and himself in an adventure in a flying machine, in which the class appears to be doomed, but were surprised "to see James Thurber walking out on the beam", over the side of the plane, to remove a rope that was tangling a piece of equipment. The class "learned that James was a tight-rope walker with Barnsels and Ringbailey's circus". The story includes made-up technical terms such as "hythenometer" and "curobater", and is considered by Thurber scholars to contain the roots of the ideas that would later become Thurber's story "The Secret Life of Walter Mitty".
Thurber attended East High School, starting in September 1909. He was a favorite with the teachers. A classmate recalls him as a "much better than the rest of us... He was constantly drawing, and then throwing the drawings away, as if he had no further use for them". His first published story, "The Third Bullet", appeared in the high school magazine, X-rays; it was a western, and showed "not the slightest clue of literary promise", according to his biographer Burton Bernstein. Another biographer, Harrison Kinney, agrees that Thurber showed no sign of literary precocity, and that his high school years were not remarkable in any way. Thurber himself considered that he was a "late bloomer".
Ohio State University
In about 1913 the Thurbers moved to 77 Jefferson Avenue. Thurber graduated from East High in June, and was accepted at Ohio State University, beginning classes in September that year. A highlight of his freshman year was a test given by Albert Weiss, Thurber's psychology professor, which made it apparent that Thurber had an astonishingly good memory. Thurber was proud of his performance and often mentioned it to acquaintances throughout his life. He also took English Composition, which focused on paragraphing, a form of humorous writing popular in newspapers of the day. Robert O. Ryder, the editor of the Ohio State Journal, was a popular paragrapher of the time, and Thurber was a great admirer of his work.Thurber's grades were good in his first year, but socially it went badly. His best friend, Ed Morris, abandoned Thurber after Morris joined a fraternity that would not accept Thurber. Only one fraternity was interested in Thurber, but he was eventually blackballed. Thurber registered for classes for the 1914 fall semester, but dropped out of college for a year, spending his time at libraries instead. He was living at home, but his family did not realize he was not attending classes. He began taking classes again in the fall of 1915.
Thurber worked on both the Ohio State student publications: the Sundial, a monthly magazine, and the Ohio State Lantern, a newspaper; and became friends with Elliott Nugent, who was also writing for the Lantern. Nugent was much more successful than Thurber socially, and along with Jack Pierce, another student working on the Lantern, managed to get Thurber accepted into Phi Kappa Psi, one of the most prestigious fraternities at Ohio State. Thurber became editor-in-chief of the Sundial the next academic year, and chose Nugent as his assistant editor. He was called up for military service, and immediately rejected because of his missing eye. Many of his fellow students were now serving in the armed forces, and Thurber wrote much of the Sundial
1918–1926: early career
State Department
Thurber was hired as a code clerk, and moved to Washington, D.C. on June 21, 1918. After several months of training he was assigned to the American Embassy in Paris; he arrived in France on November 13, two days after the Armistice. While in Washington and Paris Thurber corresponded both with Eva Prout, whom he had idealized for years, and with Minnette Fritts, a popular student at Ohio State whom he had dated in Columbus. In one of his letters he asked Prout to marry him; she refused, insisting that they meet in person before she could commit herself. Thurber had become an admirer of Henry James at Ohio State, and had thought of retaining his virginity "for his Jamesian ideal" woman, but he lost his virginity to a Folies Bergère dancer. He was conflicted about his experiences: Thurber's sixteen months in Paris were in some ways when he matured, but he came home guilty and depressed. He left Paris in February 1920 and returned to Columbus. Fritts was married by the time Thurber came home, and he began a more intense courtship of Prout, who had quit her acting career because the film industry was much reduced by the war, and was now living in Zanesville, Ohio. By the end of 1920 she had rejected him.''Columbus Dispatch'' and first marriage
Thurber worked briefly for the Ohio Department of Agriculture in mid-1920, while considering a return to Ohio State and also applying for newspaper jobs. In August 1920 Thurber was hired as a reporter for The Columbus Dispatch, and after a few weeks was assigned to cover Columbus City Hall. The pay began at $25 a week, and by the time Thurber left in 1924 had only risen to $40 a week. He took second jobs to augment his income: he was a correspondent for The Christian Science Monitor, and did publicity work for Columbus's Indianola Park and Majestic Theatre.He became friends with John McNulty, and Joel Sayre, then journalists for the Ohio State Journal, and Herman Miller, who was teaching English at Ohio State University. Miller and Thurber were involved with The Strollers, an Ohio State dramatic society. Thurber was also active in The Scarlet Mask Club, the college's musical theatre group, and wrote and directed their annual show from 1921 to 1924. He met Althea Adams, an Ohio State student, at The Strollers in 1921. Adams had been elected an Ohio State "Rosebud" and "Magic Mirror", both titles given to accomplished and beautiful women students, and many of Thurber's and Adams' acquaintances thought they were an odd couple when they began dating. They married in May 1922, and spent a honeymoon week as guests of Elliott Nugent and his wife, in Connecticut, where they went to see a play together every night. Neither Thurber nor his new wife was well off, and Thurber reviewed each of the plays for the Dispatch in order to make some extra income. On their return to Columbus, James and Althea moved out of James's parents' house into an apartment.
Starting in early 1923, the Dispatch gave Thurber a half-page every Sunday to write whatever he wanted. He titled the column "Credos and Curios", and filled it with a mixture of literary criticism, humorous writing, verse, and commentary. The column was canceled by the publisher in December, to Thurber's disappointment, and Althea persuaded him to try his hand at writing full time. A friend offered the use of a cottage in Jay, in upstate New York, for the summer, and Thurber left the Dispatch, but his efforts met with little success: he sold one story to The ''Kansas City Star, and a short piece to the New York World, but The Saturday Evening Post and The American Mercury rejected everything he submitted. The Thurbers returned to Columbus in late 1924. The Dispatch'' did not rehire Thurber, but he was paid for his work for the Scarlet Mask, and he picked up more publicity work, with the result that he earned more over the next few months than if he had kept his newspaper job.