[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 conclusion that touches us all on the raw: "Human dignity, the humourist believes, is not only silly but a little sad. So are dreams and conventions and illusions. The fine brave fragile stuff that people live by. They look so swell, and go to pieces so easily."

An eloquent diagnosis, perhaps, but it hardly explains why this new compendium of Thurber's essays, reviews, cartoons, articles and letters is such a joy. I have never come across anyone who has properly elucidated the essence of Thurber's gift—I'm not sure I want to. Michael Rosen has corralled these loose bits and pieces into rough clumps of categories, reasoning that they have never been collected between hard covers before and together offer a coherent body of opinion on style, or, as the book's sub-title promises, "on writing and writers, humour and himself". All we have to do is sit back and enjoy the ride.

Thurber wrote and drew for the New Yorker in its heyday, sharing space with the likes of Dorothy Parker, Benchley, Woollcott and White, and battling with the editorial eccentricities of Harold Ross. These were evidently something of a trial to a writer whose natural facility for language was constantly trammelled by Ross's pedantry and fastidiousness. He quotes this example of editorial "lunacy"—"You have the word 'make' on galleys 3, 9 and 11", and his own exasperated response—"For God's sake, Shakespeare used 'to be' twice in one line and 'tomorrow' three times in one line. Where were the New Yorker editors then?" Realising that language should take precedence over "house style", Thurber gives grammar a thorough medical, slicing open sentences with the brisk confidence of a surgeon to check for sclerotic commas or inflammation of the syntax. He lights the way towards clarity with a civilised grace and wit.

He grew progressively blinder during his lifetime, though as the essays and book reviews here bear out, his critical gaze was undimmed. In a funny and trenchant piece on Thomas Wolfe he takes a sidelong swipe at the glib extravagance of book reviewers: "At least twice a month, as all readers of book reviews know, a new genius emerges and sets an all-time all-American tidemark with a vital and all-embracing picture of American life that is haunting and unforgettable and filled with a unique power and a strange and moving beauty." The observation has worn all too well. Elsewhere parodic shafts expertly pin down writers both admired and loathed, either deflating the splendour of Henry James's interminable periods, or skewering the pretentious twaddle of Gertrude Stein. Chekhov's lugubrious tug and Eugene O'Neill's tortuous psychodrama are sent up in miniatures of teasing affection.

Collecting Himself is a valuable reminder of Thurber's everyday brilliance, and a tonic in the midst of present-day drabness. These writings and drawings present a world view less jaundiced than that of Parker and Perelman but one that is no less perceptive, despite—or maybe because of—his waning eyesight. For him it may have been laughter in the dark; for us it's a luminous delight.