James Thurber: His Life and Times

Probably the fullest, most revealing portrait to date of humorist and New Yorker staffer James Thurber (1894-1961), this marvelous biography is exhaustive and sprightly. Loss of an eye in an accident at age seven left shy, mercurial James introverted and a frequent object of scorn even to himself. His mother, Mary (``Mame'') Fisher, a manic dynamo addicted to fads, seances, numerology and astrology, was known for her wild antics and endless chatter. James's father, Charles, a Columbus, Ohio, politician and bureaucrat, genially accepted the household bedlam, yet former New Yorker reporter Kinney surmises that Thurber's self-deprecating humor drew upon the jittery apprehensions and inadequacies he felt had been handed down to him by his father. After a frustrating, sexually incompatible first marriage, Thurber found an empathic protector, lover, nurse and business manager in his second wife, tough-minded pulp magazine editor Helen Wismer, who tended him through over 20 years of his blindness. But he resented his dependence on her and made her a handy target for his misogyny. Liberally sprinkled with excerpts from Thurber's letters, conversations, essays and poems, and charmingly illustrated throughout with his cartoons, this encyclopedic biography helps us understand how Thurber transmuted personal misery and frustration into improbable, engaging doodles and sophisticated satire on human folly and pretense. (Nov.)