Thurber Thursday: Thurber’s Favorite Thurber

It’s a question many a cartoonist has been asked: Of all your own cartoons, what’s your favorite? In a piece published in the (UK) newspaper, The Daily Express, July of 1958, James Thurber was asked to name his favorite Thurber drawing:

“I never picked my own favourite drawing, but I suppose it is, “My wife wants to spend Halloween with her first husband.” I don’t know what was the matter with the man’s wife, or with me and since I no longer draw, I see no reason to find out. My own wife, by the way, always spends Halloween with her first husband.”

Here’s the drawing, published in The New Yorker, October 31, 1942:

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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