Thurber published hundreds of short stories and essays during his career, and while he was one of the few writers to be widely admired both by the critics and by the general public, there is little serious criticism of his work.

‘‘The Catbird Seat’’ was one of four stories Thurber published in 1942, and it was included in the volume Best American Short Stories of 1943. Thurber liked the story, and chose it for the 1945 retrospective collection of his best work, The Thurber Carnival.

The Thurber Carnival was widely reviewed. Critic and editor William Rose Benét, writing in The Saturday Review of Literature, praised the book’s humor and handling of psychology, and called it ‘‘one of the absolutely essential books of our time.’’

A reviewer for the London Times Literary Supplement ranked Thurber as America’s most important humorist. Poet and critic Malcolm Cowley’s review in The New Republic found traces of French expressionism and surrealism in Thurber’s work, but hoped that the humorist would turn his considerable talents to creating longer, more worthy, pieces.

Yet several reviewers lauded Thurber’s mastery of the short form, and predicted that this volume would finally bring his work serious critical attention. Chicago Tribune reviewer Fanny Butcher wrote that she expected Thurber’s reputation to move from ‘‘cult into a literary culture.’’

In the intervening years, a handful of book-length critical studies on Thurber have been published. Each points to ‘‘The Catbird Seat’’ as an example of Thurber’s finest work, but spends only two or three pages discussing it, usually in contrast to ‘‘The Secret Life of Walter Mitty.’’

For Catherine McGehee Kenney, the two stories must be considered together: ‘‘Martin is really Mitty’s second cousin, acting out the fantasies of Hollywood films that Mitty had only dreamed about. Taken together, these two stories represent the height of Thurber’s powers as a short-story writer.’’

Robert Elias also compares Martin to Mitty, finding that they both ‘‘win not too dissimilar victories over the commonplace, the dead level of practicality, the enemies of the imagination.’’ He includes both stories among a short list of Thurber’s ‘‘important and challenging masterpieces.’’

Only a few scholarly articles have been written specifically about ‘‘The Catbird Seat.’’ These critical studies have pointed out that Mr. Martin is unlike Thurber’s typical male protagonist in actually achieving victory over his female tormentor. Moreover, Earl Dias claimed in 1968 that the victory is undercut by Martin’s own femininity.

Thomas Kane proves that Martin’s victory occurs on Armistice Day. Fourteen years later, another article appeared, in which Marylyn Underwood examined the implications of Martin and Mrs. Barrows (‘‘Mrs. Sparrows’’) both having bird names.

In the preface to his James Thurber (1964), the first book-length study of the author’s work, Robert Morsberger comments on the state of Thurber scholarship:

Perhaps no other distinguished contemporary has been so neglected critically: for, in spite of his immense popularity at home and abroad, he has received little serious critical attention and that only in book reviews or brief articles. One difficulty for reader and critic is that most of Thurber’s pieces are short and are scattered over thirty years of periodicals and more than two dozen books. Most of his public read him intermittently, relishing the individual selections but failing to survey the whole of his achievement.

The Thurber Carnival has never gone out of print. ‘‘The Catbird Seat’’ has been included in many of the major high school and college short story anthologies of the last third of the twentieth century. Thurber has not reached the heights of ‘‘literary culture’’ that Fanny Butcher envisioned, however. Like Mark Twain, with whom he is frequently compared, he is studied primarily as a ‘‘humorist,’’ not as a ‘‘serious’’ or ‘‘major’’ figure.

Still, generation after generation of new students study the story, using it as a model of irony and characterization and as a prime example of how a writer can use language for comic effect.