The Art of Fiction No. 10
“When I did the cartoon originally I meant the naked woman to be at the top of a flight of stairs, but I lost the sense of perspective and there she was stuck up there, naked, on a bookcase.”
James Thurber
James Thurber
American humorist James Thurber was born on December 8, 1894, in Columbus, Ohio. Thurber received a Special Tony Award in 1960 for A Thurber Carnival, a theatrical adaptation of The Thurber Carnival, his 1945 collection of short stories. In 1927, Thurber joined The New Yorker as managing editor and staff writer, contributing cartoons about modern city life that would come to define the magazine’s style. His illustrations also appeared in E. B. White’s Is Sex Necessary (1929). He published countless short stories in The New Yorker, the best known being “The Secret Life of Walter Mitty,” which appeared in the magazine in 1939. Thurber also authored many children’s books, including 13 Clocks (1950) and The Wonderful O (1957). He died in New York City on November 2, 1961.
Photo by Fred Palumbo, Library of Congress