Criticism > Contemporary Literary Criticism > Thurber, James (Grover) - Wilfrid Sheed

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WILFRID SHEED

Thurber was a marvelous comic writer, but alone among such he was able to sketch the phantasmagoric goo from which his funny ideas came. If Henry James or Dostoevsky had done their own illustrations, the results could hardly have been stranger or more illuminating. Men, Women and Dogs is like a writer's head with the back open; the fact that it's funny back there is as spooky as anything in Jung. Thurber did not make up his jokes in his mouth, like so many clowns, but somewhere between the optic nerve and the unconscious, an area where the slightest tilt can lead to torment and madness.

As it did, we now know, in his last years. But this book belongs to the sunny period before he literally lost his sight and had to move into his own skull for good, with no fresh images to lighten the nightmares. At this point his defective eyesight was still an asset conjuring up useful if scary visions of rear admirals on bicycles and dogs...

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1. Introduction
2. Kenneth Burke
3. Wilfrid Sheed
4. Brian Attebery
5. Jonathan Yardley
6. William Zinsser
7. Nora Sayre
8. Clancy Sigal
9. Alan Coren
10. Copyright

1. James Thurber