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The Catbird Seat | Introduction

First published in the November 14, 1942, issue of the New Yorker, ‘‘The Catbird Seat’’ also appeared in Thurber’s 1945 collection, The Thurber Carnival. Since that time, the story has been published in dozens of anthologies for high school and college students, and Thurber has been called America’s most important twentieth-century humorist.

The story chronicles a battle of wills between the fussy Erwin Martin, head of a filing department, and Ulgine Barrows, the firm’s efficiency expert who threatens to bring change into Martin’s well-ordered existence. With comic irony, Martin uses his reputation as a meek and pleasant man against the flashy Mrs. Barrows. The character of Martin is typical of what critics have called Thurber’s ‘‘Little Man,’’ a common working man who is baffled and beaten down by life in United States in the twentieth century.

The title ‘‘The Catbird Seat’’ derives from the speech patterns of Red Barber, the radio announcer for the Brooklyn Dodgers baseball team in the 1940s. Thurber, a devoted baseball fan, was among those who enjoyed the colorful expressions Barber sprinkled throughout his commentary. As Joey Hart, Martin’s assistant explains, sitting ‘‘in the catbird seat’’ means being in an advantageous position. Although it is Mrs. Barrows who seems strong and bold and powerful, it is Martin who wins in the end.

The Catbird Seat Summary

‘‘The Catbird Seat’’ opens in a crowded cigar store in New York City, where Mr. Erwin Martin is buying a pack of Camel cigarettes. As the narrator points out, this is an unusual act for Martin, who is generally known as a non-smoker. But the reason for his purchase is soon made clear: he is planning to murder Mrs. Ulgine Barrows.

Martin is the head of a filing department in a large corporate firm; he is characterized as a neat and precise man who is known for his ‘‘cautious, painstaking hand.’’ Back in his apartment, drinking a glass of milk, he contemplates the horrible Mrs. Barrows. He resents her for her ‘‘quacking voice and braying laugh,’’ her constant chattering, and her use of colorful phrases she picks up from the radio.

Quoting Red Barber, the announcer for the Brooklyn Dodgers, she asks him seemingly nonsensical questions like ‘‘Are you lifting the oxcart out of the ditch?’’ and ‘‘Are you sitting in the catbird seat?’’ The expressions are Southern colloquialisms picked up by Barber during his years in Tallahassee, Florida. ‘‘Sitting in the catbird seat,’’ for example, means holding an advantage. Even though the source and the meaning of the lines has been explained to him, Martin finds her way of speaking ‘‘annoying’’ and ‘‘childish.’’

Yet the most serious offense she has committed is her... » Complete The Catbird Seat Summary