Did you know? Today is the birthday of the humorist and cartoonist James Thurber (books by this author), born in Columbus, Ohio (1894), who once said “Humor is emotional chaos remembered in tranquility.”
He's best remembered today for his short story "The Secret Life of Walter Mitty" (1944), which was made into a movie in 2013 staring Ben Stiller. It’s the tale of a henpecked husband who fantasizes about a life of daring adventure. As a young man, Thurber's own fantasy had been a little more tame: he dreamed of working as a staff writer for a new magazine called The New Yorker. He began submitting pieces to the magazine in 1926, when it had only been in print for about a year. He said, "My pieces came back so fast I began to think The New Yorker must have a rejection machine." He persisted, and the first story that was accepted was so impressive that editor Harold Ross offered him a job.
But the story must have impressed Ross a little too much, because instead of getting the staff writer position he longed for, Thurber found himself higher up the ladder as an administrative editor. Unhappy, he tried to get himself demoted by making mistakes on purpose, but it didn't work. He gave up and just kept submitting pieces to the magazine. When Ross found out how badly he wanted to write, he gave him the position and put him in an office with E.B. White. The two men became good friends, and collaborated on a self-help parody called Is Sex Necessary? (1929), which featured Thurber's cartoons.
(from The Writer's Almanac, Garrison Keillor)
