Editing James Thurber (section)

===Writer===
Many of Thurber's short stories are humorous fictional memoirs from his life, but he also wrote darker material, such as "The Whip-Poor-Will", a story of madness and murder. His best-known short stories are "The Dog That Bit People" and "[[The Night the Bed Fell]]"; they can be found in ''[[My Life and Hard Times]]'', which was his "break-out" book. Among his other classics are "[[The Secret Life of Walter Mitty]]", "[[The Catbird Seat]]", "The Night the Ghost Got In", "[[A Couple of Hamburgers]]", "The Greatest Man in the World", and "If [[Ulysses S. Grant|Grant]] Had Been Drinking at [[Appomattox Court House National Historical Park|Appomattox]]". ''The Middle-Aged Man on the Flying Trapeze'' has several short stories with a tense undercurrent of marital discord. The book was published the year of his divorce and remarriage.

{{anchor|look it up}}Although his 1941 story "You Could Look It Up",<ref>Thurber, James, [http://www.saturdayeveningpost.com/wp-content/uploads/satevepost/james_thurber.pdf "You Could Look It Up"] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20110720200106/http://www.saturdayeveningpost.com/wp-content/uploads/satevepost/james_thurber.pdf |date=July 20, 2011 }}, ''[[The Saturday Evening Post]]'', April 5, 1941, pp. 9–11, 114, 116.</ref> about a three-foot adult being brought in to take a walk in a baseball game, has been said<ref>Kinney, Harrison (1995). ''James Thurber: His Life and Times''. Henry Holt & Co., p. 672. ISBN 9780805039665 </ref> to have inspired [[Bill Veeck]]'s stunt with [[Eddie Gaedel]] with the [[St. Louis Browns]] in 1951, Veeck claimed an older provenance for the stunt.<ref>{{cite book|last=Veeck|first=Bill|author-link=Bill Veeck|author2=Ed Linn|title="A Can of Beer, a Slice of Cake—and Thou, Eddie Gaedel", from ''Veeck – As In Wreck: The Autobiography of Bill Veeck''|publisher=The University of Chicago Press|year=1962|location=Chicago, IL|pages=11–23|url=http://www.press.uchicago.edu/Misc/Chicago/852180.html|isbn=978-0-226-85218-8|access-date=February 1, 2007|archive-date=February 6, 2007|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20070206140823/http://www.press.uchicago.edu/Misc/Chicago/852180.html|url-status=live}}</ref>

In addition to his other fiction, Thurber wrote more than seventy-five [[fable]]s, some of which were first published in ''The New Yorker'' (1939), then collected in ''[[Fables for Our Time and Famous Poems Illustrated]]'' (1940) and ''Further Fables for Our Time'' (1956). These were short stories that featured anthropomorphic animals (e.g. "The Little Girl and the Wolf", his version of [[Little Red Riding Hood]]) as main characters, and ended with a moral as a tagline. An exception to this format was his most famous fable, "[[The Unicorn in the Garden]]", which featured an all-human cast except for the unicorn, which does not speak. Thurber's fables were [[satire|satirical]], and the morals served as [[punch line]]s as well as advice to the reader, demonstrating "the complexity of life by depicting the world as an uncertain, precarious place, where few reliable guidelines exist."<ref>Maharg, Ruth A. (Summer 1984), [http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/chq/summary/v009/9.2.maharg.html "The Modern Fable: James Thurber's Social Criticisms"]; {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20160202040617/http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/chq/summary/v009/9.2.maharg.html |date=February 2, 2016 }}, ''[[Children's Literature Association Quarterly]]'', Volume 9, Number 2, pp. 72–73.</ref> His stories also included several book-length fairy tales, such as ''[[The White Deer]]'' (1945), ''[[The 13 Clocks]]'' (1950) and ''[[The Wonderful O]]'' (1957). The latter two were among several of Thurber's works illustrated by [[Marc Simont]]. 

Thurber's prose for ''The New Yorker'' and other venues included numerous humorous essays. A favorite subject, especially toward the end of his life, was the English language. Pieces on this subject included "The Spreading 'You Know'," which decried the overuse of that pair of words in conversation, "The New Vocabularianism", and "What Do You Mean It ''Was'' Brillig?". His short pieces – whether stories, essays or something in between – were referred to as "casuals" by Thurber and the staff of ''The New Yorker''.<ref>{{cite news|last=Sorel|first=Edward|title=The Business of Being Funny|work=The New York Times|date=November 5, 1989|url=https://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=950DE5D9113CF936A35752C1A96F948260|access-date=August 17, 2007|archive-date=August 31, 2024|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20240831020343/https://www.nytimes.com/1989/11/05/books/the-business-of-beeing-funny.html|url-status=live}}</ref>

Thurber wrote a five-part ''New Yorker'' series, between 1947 and 1948, examining in depth the radio soap opera phenomenon, based on near-constant listening and researching over the same period. Leaving nearly no element of these programs unexamined, including their writers, producers, sponsors, performers, and listeners alike, Thurber republished the series in his anthology, ''The Beast in Me and Other Animals'' (1948), under the section title "Soapland." The series was one of the first to examine such a pop-culture phenomenon in depth.<ref>{{cite book |last1=Grauer |first1=Neil A. |title=Remember Laughter: A Life of James Thurber |date=1994 |publisher=University of Nebraska Press |page=101 |url=https://archive.org/details/rememberlaughter0000grau/page/100/mode/2up |access-date=April 8, 2024}}</ref>

The last twenty years of Thurber's life were filled with material and professional success in spite of his blindness. He published at least fourteen books in that era, including ''The Thurber Carnival'' (1945), ''Thurber Country'' (1953), and the extremely popular book about ''New Yorker'' founder/editor [[Harold Ross]], ''The Years with Ross'' (1959). A number of Thurber's short stories were made into movies, including ''[[The Secret Life of Walter Mitty (1947 film)|The Secret Life of Walter Mitty]]'' in 1947.