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James Thurber: Celebrated Humorist and Sometimes Pipe Smoker
James Thurber with Peggy Cass and Joan Anderson
Widely considered the foremost humorist of the 20th century, James Thurber (1894-1961) often portrayed bemused protagonists clumsily navigating the complexity of modern life through incomprehension, fantasy, and defeated acceptance. Thurber's writings and drawings encapsulate those odd but universal feelings of being out of phase with the rest of humanity, and his characters, while hilarious, display just enough reality to be recognizably similar to ourselves or someone we've known.
His writing style is casually informal but, like his cartoons, conveys nuance with sparse, simple lines. His style is easy to read and comfortably encourages readers to identify with his protagonists, who often are in some sort of altercation with circumstances, machinery, animals, modernity, or a long line of competent women characters who overshadow and dominate relatively incompetent males.
Stories like "The Secret Life of Walter Mitty" (1939) highlight the internal environment of many of Thurber's characters. Faced with an incomprehensible modern world, they sometimes retreat into their imaginations to attain control and even heroism. Other Thurber stories reflect this dynamic as well, such as "The Curb in the Sky" (1931), in which the protagonist relies on his dreams to deflect the continuous corrections of his wife.
"Walter Mitty," however, is the most famous of Thurber's stories. It's been remade into films (starring Danny Kaye in 1947 and Ben Stiller in 2013), is among his most often anthologized pieces, and is routinely included in middle school curriculums. It's an entertaining short story with a theme of imaginative escapism as a defense mechanism.
It's an entertaining short story with a theme of imaginative escapism as a defense mechanism
Mitty is such a defining character that he was added to the English language as a term. In Merriam Webster, for example, its definition is "a commonplace unadventurous person who seeks escape from reality through daydreaming." The piece is artfully composed with a repetitive machine-like noise (ta-pocketa-pocketa-pocketa) acting as a transition from reality to daydreams, and Mitty's heroic self in these fantasies is hilariously satirical of heroic tropes:
"We're going through!" The Commander's voice was like thin ice breaking. He wore his full-dress uniform, with the heavily braided white cap pulled down rakishly over one cold gray eye. "We can't make it, sir. It's spoiling for a hurricane, if you ask me." "I'm not asking you, Lieutenant Berg," said the Commander. "Throw on the power lights! Rev her up to 8500! We're going through!" The pounding of the cylinders increased: ta-pocketa- pocketa-pocketa-pocketa-pocketa. The Commander stared at the ice forming on the pilot window. He walked over and twisted a row of complicated dials. "Switch on No. 8 auxiliary!" he shouted. "Switch on No. 8 auxiliary!" repeated Lieutenant Berg. "Full strength in No. 3 turret!" shouted the Commander. "Full strength in No. 3 turret!" The crew, bending to their various tasks in the huge, hurtling eight-engined Navy hydroplane, looked at each other and grinned. "The Old Man'll get us through," they said to One another. "The Old Man ain't afraid of hell!" . . .
"Not so fast! You're driving too fast!" said Mrs. Mitty. "What are you driving so fast for?"
"Hmm?" said Walter Mitty. He looked at his wife, in the seat beside him, with shocked astonishment. She seemed grossly unfamiliar, like a strange woman who had yelled at him in a crowd. "You were up to fifty-five," she said. "You know I don't like to go more than forty. You were up to fifty-five."
The rakish tilt of the Commander's hat, his cold gray eye, and the absurdity of the battle vocabulary, along with the cliche of the crew's confidence in this seasoned hero, all support the daydream aspect of someone who doesn't know the specifics of battle, thus verifying the daydream's absurdity. And that absurdity is emphasized by the return to reality and the remonstrations of the character's wife.
Absurdity is common in Thurber's work and is a source of much of his humor, and that tactic is abundantly present in his cartoons as well. The mastery of storytelling in both prose and cartoons is a rarity; no one has been more successful with both as James Thurber.
Absurdity is common in Thurber's work and is a source of much of his humor
His cartooning fame was almost accidental. When he started working for The New Yorker in 1927, his colleague E.B. White noticed Thurber's doodling and retrieved some sketches from the trash. E.B. White knew what he was doing. He would author such classic books as Stuart Little (1945), Charlotte's Web (1952), and would co-author the most useful of all writing books, The Elements of Style (1959). It was White who arranged for Thurber to work at The New Yorker, and it was White who discovered Thurber's genius for cartooning.
White submitted Thurber's cartoons for publication, and they became enormously popular until Thurber's poor eyesight caused him to stop drawing and writing for The New Yorker in the 1950s. Thurber would draw six different magazine covers for The New Yorker, as well as an impressive number of cartoons for its pages.
Thurber's eyesight problems plagued him to the end of his life and may have contributed to his own seemingly docile personality, perhaps causing him to live his own life almost as internally as some of his characters. He was no Walter Mitty, though, and he crafted his writing style with long, hard work supported by surrealistic creativity, but there is no doubt that his imagination was impressive.
Thurber grew up in Columbus, Ohio, but it was while his family was temporarily in Virginia for his father's job that the most pivotal event of his life would occur. At the age of six, Thurber and his brother were playing William Tell in the yard with a toy bow-and-arrow set. Thurber was facing away from his brother, waiting to be shot in the back, but his brother delayed and fumbled to the point where Thurber turned around wondering what was taking so long. His timing was such that he was struck directly in his left eye by a blunt arrow.
His timing was such that he was struck directly in his left eye by a blunt arrow
Thurber Family Portrait
The damage was severe and the eye was eventually removed, leaving him with a prosthesis. However, because of a delay in finding the right doctor, sympathetic ophthalmia set in and his other eye was affected. Thurber resented his parents for the delay. He was not permitted to stress himself with sports or physical activities, and despite precautions, he became legally blind later in life.
It has been suggested by V. S. Ramachandran, a neurologist, that the intensity and creativity of Thurber's imagination may be due to Charles Bonnet syndrome, a neurological condition that can affect those who endure a loss of vision and that has been proposed as the cause of complex visual hallucinations in some sufferers.
Thurber went to the University of Ohio, and in 1918 tried to enlist and join the war effort but was rejected by the draft board because of his eyesight. In an added insult, he could not graduate from college because a requirement was to take a Reserve Officers Training Course (ROTC), which his eyesight precluded him from doing. He stopped studying and failed all of his sophomore classes, leaving the university without a degree, though one was posthumously awarded him in 1995.
He stopped studying and failed all of his sophomore classes
James Thurber and Pipe Smoking
Though primarily a cigarette smoker, Thurber also enjoyed pipes. However, as with many historical figures, details are sparse. No one paid attention to the smoking habits of famous people in those times, or perhaps during any times one might name. We don't know what sort of pipe tobacco he smoked or his preference in pipe brands.
However, some clues remain. In The Thurber Letters (2002) by James Thurber, mention is made of a pipe outing:
He seems to have been a man who bottled his emotions, and frustration could bring about poor behavior, which he and his wife referred to as "spells." He's quoted in Burton Bernstein's Thurber: A Biography (1975) as he describes the frustrations relating to them:
He seems to have been a man who bottled his emotions
That's the sort of pressure that could trigger him into one of his spells:
Thurber's difficulty with pipe smoking is again referenced in James Thurber: His Life and Times (1995) by Harrison Kinney: "... as several photographs show, Thurber tried Taylor's pipe-smoking habit, but all the fiddling involved with cleaning, tamping and relighting didn't suit Thurber's temperament, and he gave it up." (156)
... cleaning, tamping and relighting didn't suit Thurber's temperament
Pipe Smoking in Thurber's Writing
More pipe-smoking references may be found in Thurber's work, but they are scarce and subtle, as in this passage from Thurber Country: A New Collection of Pieces about Males and Females, Mostly of Our Own Species (1953) by James Thurber:
Another example is found in the same work on page 201:
Thurber does at one point mention a pipe by brand name, so he knew something about quality pipes:
Still, he seems more comfortable when detailing cigarettes than pipes, as found in this passage from the same book:
James Thurber's Life
James Thurber House, Columbus, Ohio. Built in 1873
Thurber's former home is The Thurber House, which his family rented while he attended university and where he lived from 1914-1917. It's a museum of his life and is located in Columbus, Ohio, where visitors still flock in appreciation of the great humorist's accomplishments.
His youth was fairly uneventful. Because of his medical condition, he could not play sports, and that was a depressing circumstance for Thurber, causing him to withdraw into a moderately protective shell. His sense of humor, however, thrived in the household of his mother, whom he characterized as a great comic in her own right. She was a practical joker who once faked an infirmity at a revival meeting only to leap up and announce that she had been healed. She had a big personality that dominated the household, and that family dynamic is reflected in Thurber's cartoons and fiction, which often portray women as the controlling influence in any domestic situation.
After college, where he was the editor of the student magazine, the Sun-Dial, Thurber became a code clerk for the U.S. Dept. of State in Washington, D.C., and subsequently in Paris, returning to Columbus in 1921. There he began work as a reporter for the Columbus Dispatch and spent three years there reviewing films, plays, and books, and writing a weekly column. He also wrote for other newspapers during this time.
It was 1927 when he moved to New York, met E.B. White, and began his long relationship with The New Yorker. Most of his career was spent there, drawing, writing, and attracting the admiration of wider and wider audiences. As his sight failed and blindness overtook him, he began to draw with larger paper and a loupe, but he eventually had to give it up. He was able to write, however, and could dictate his work. It's said that he could go over a 3,000-word story in his head and when he was ready to dictate, he could do so almost flawlessly from start to finish.
Thurber passed away in 1961 from complications of pneumonia, just a few weeks after surgery for a blood clot. He's well remembered, though. New generations appreciate his cartoons and his prose. Humor prizes are awarded in his name and two of his homes are now historic sites.
It's tempting to hope that when he passed, he encouraged his imagination to guide and entertain him in the style of his famous character, Walter Mitty. It would be comforting to think that he remembered lines from that story: "He took one last drag on his cigarette and snapped it away. Then, with that faint, fleeting smile playing about his lips, he faced the firing squad; erect and motionless, proud and disdainful, Walter Mitty the Undefeated, inscrutable to the last."
- JamesThurber.org
- JamaNetwork.com
- Phantoms in the Brain: Probing the Mysteries of the Human Mind (1998) by V.S. Ramachandran and Sandra Blakeslee
- Thurber: A Biography (1975) by Burton Bernstein
- Thurber Country: A New Collection of Pieces about Males and Females, Mostly of Our Own Species (1953) by James Thurber
- James Thurber: His Life and Times (1995) by Harrison Kinney
- The Thurber Letters (2002) by James Thurber
- "The Secret Life of Walter Mitty" (1939) by James Thurber
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Comments
"Faced with an incomprehensible modern world, they sometimes retreat into their imaginations to attain control and even heroism." Grabbing a pipe, filling and lighting it - then those first two drags - is the my assured respite from a difficult world.
Thanks for shining your pipe smoking spotlight on one of my favorite humorists. I first became acquainted with him through his short story "University Days" that begins describing his biology class in which "My instructor repeatedly failed in his attempts to help me at the plant cells through the microscope. 'I can't see anything'. I would say. He would begin patiently enough, explaining how anybody can see through a microscope. But he would always end up in a fury, claiming that I could too see through the microscope but just pretended that I couldn't, 'It takes away all the beauty of the flower'." No doubt Thurber's eyesight problems would indeed have made it difficult to use a microscope.
Thank you for another interesting article. James Thurber was a genius. I appreciate the videos and links provided too.
Thank you for another great article