Thurber, James (Vol. 125) - Anthony Quinn (review date 15 December 1989)
Anthony Quinn (review date 15 December 1989)
SOURCE: "Laughter in the Dark," in New Statesman and Society, Vol. 2, No. 80, December 15, 1989, p. 37.
[In contrast to unenthusiastic responses to Thurber's Collecting Himself, this review finds the collection a "luminous delight."]
Trying to explain the mechanics of humour can be a dispiriting business. Analyse a poem and one's appreciation might be enriched; analyse a joke and something quite different happens, delicate ironies and clever nuances evaporate before your eyes, punch lines wither and die. "Humour can be dissected, as a frog can, but the thing dies in the process and the innards are discouraging to any but the pure scientific mind," was E B White's sage observation.
One fancies that a professional humourist would always guard the "secret" of his art, but White's friend and colleague James Thurber seemed genuinely interested in its disclosure, and arrived at a...
[The entire page is 682 words long]
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