[James Thurber was a celebrated American humorist best known for his essays, stories, and cartoons published in the New Yorker during the 1930s and 1940s. In the following excerpt from his review of the posthumously published Chips Off the Old Benchley, Thurber commends Benchley's skill as a humorist and suggests that other critics have overlooked Benchley's gift for "comic brevity."]

The heavier critics have under-rated Benchley because of his "short flight," missing his distinguished contribution to the fine art of comic brevity. He would thank me not to call him an artist, but I think he was an artist who wouldn't give up to it, like a busy housewife fighting the onset of a migraine headache.

It was an artist, to cite outstanding proof, who wrote (in another book) that brilliant and flawless parody of Galsworthy called "The Blue Sleeve Garter." He had all the equipment for the "major flight," but he laid it aside to lead one of the most crowded private lives of our century. Even so, he somehow found time to work on an ambitious enterprise, a book about the satirists of the Queen Anne period, which he later turned into a history in play form. For all its seriousness, it seems to have been a kind of monumental hobby, and a man is never done with a hobby. Benchley didn't finish his.

Chips Off The Old Benchley contains eighty pieces never put in a book before. I don't know why. All of it is highly readable, and much of it is top-flight Benchley, gathered from The New Yorker, Vanity Fair and a dozen other sources. It goes back as far as 1915, but forty-eight of the pieces are from the vintage years of 1930-34. As in all Benchley, a fresh wind stirs in these pages. In this collection you find him everywhere, ducking swiftly, looking closely, writing sharply.

I have space for a few gleams and swatches:

This God-given talent which I have must be tossed aside like an old mistress (or is it mattress?).

He is a little man who has difficulty in breathing (not enough, however).

There was a big bull-pigeon walking about on the window ledge and giving me an occasional leer with its red eyes.

Sun shining on closed eyelids (on my closed eyelids) soon induces large purple azaleas whirling against a yellow background.

At a hundred yards he could detect a purple wolf's cup (or Lehman's dropsy) and could tell you, simply by feeling a flower in the dark, which variety of bishop's ulster it was.

Working on the piece-system as we do (so much per word or per piece—or perhaps) …

The London illustrated weeklies are constantly making remarkable discoveries in the Etruscantomb belt.

I could go on till dusk.

Benchley has been placed in the Leacock "school," but this is too facile a classification. For just one thing, Benchley did more funny things in, and to, banks than Stephen ever dreamed of. Leacock was an "I" writer and Benchley, even in the first person, a "You" writer. Leacock is Leacock, but Benchley's Mr. Ferderber is practically every man.

Comparison is easy. A facet of the Benchley fancy resembles the comic approach of the late Max Adeler, but I never heard him mention the Comparable Max—or Leacock either. To most of us, he stands alone, in a great, good place all his own.

James Thurber, "The Incomparable Mr. Benchley," in The New York Times Book Review, September 18, 1949, pp. 1, 31.