In conversation with New Yorker fiction editor Deborah Treisman. She asks:
Thurber was intensely popular from the 1920s until the 50s. And now, as you say, he’s not really thought of so much anymore. Why do you think we have put him lower on the reading lists?
Jonathan Lethem:
Just as you know, it’s difficult for a great comedy to win an Academy Award, and you know, people underrate Cary Grant as an actor. The kind of clever, endearing quality that Thurber presents tends to be very slightly downmarket from a sober, serious short story writer. …And, if you read a whole lot of Thurber, you come away with a kind of misogynistic hangover. It doesn’t usually damage any one piece—other people would compare it to listening to too many Bob Dylan albums—after a while, you start to feel his lifelong grudge and it’s a little depressing. So I think that might also block his contemporary reputation somewhat.
Deborah Treisman:
Some of that work’s better just encapsulated in a cartoon, where you can laugh for a second and move on.
Jonathan Lethem:
Yeah.
Some quotes from James Thurber.
Previously:
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