Thurber Thursday: Frank Modell, Roger Angell, John Updike, In Unedited Interviews, Talk About Thurber

My New Yorker colleague, Roland High, alerted me to a site loaded with video interviews conducted for Adam Van Doren’s 2000 documentary, James Thurber: The Life and Hard Times.

These are unedited video interviews of, among others, Frank Modell, John Updike, Lillian Ross, and Roger Angell. All the interviews are Thurber-centric.

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James Thurber’s A-Z Entry:

James Thurber Born, Columbus, Ohio, December 8, 1894. Died 1961, New York City. New Yorker work: 1927 -1961, with several pieces run posthumously. According to the New Yorker’s legendary editor, William Shawn, “In the early days, a small company of writers, artists, and editors — E.B. White, James Thurber, Peter Arno, and Katharine White among them — did more to make the magazine what it is than can be measured.”

Key cartoon collection: The Seal in the Bedroom and Other Predicaments (Harper & Bros., 1932). Key anthology (writings & drawings): The Thurber Carnival (Harper & Row, 1945). There have been a number of Thurber biographies. Burton Bernstein’s Thurber (Dodd, Mead, 1975) and Harrison Kinney’s James Thurber: His Life and Times (Henry Holt & Co., 1995) are essential. Website