Thurberville was one of the three books I signed and sold at the Buckeye Book Fair in Wooster, Ohio, last weekend, and it sparked considerable conversation with browsing customers.
“Thurberville?” a middle-aged man in an Under Armour sweatshirt asked. “Is that a real place?”
I explained that the title represented the city of Columbus where James Thurber was born, raised and lived until he was in his late twenties and added that the book has chapters on people and places in Columbus that he knew and wrote about later.”
“So he was writer, then?”
Uh, yeah.
He raised his head slowly as if he had just learned something not so fascinating, partially opened the book in front of him and briefly looked at it as if he were examining a piece of rancid meat. Then he closed it and was on his way.
It doesn’t surprise me any more when I meet someone who doesn’t know who Thurber is, but it’s disappointing when it happens at a book fair where people excitedly browse while lugging armfuls of books they can’t wait to buy and read. Nonetheless, I could tell by the puzzled expressions that the Under Armour guy had a lot of company, even if they didn’t always convert their confusion into words. Maybe the cover drawing of dozens of frantic Thurber people and animals running in a curious stampede perplexed them; heck, those people look like they could have been drawn by fifth grader who flunked art class.
No matter. Thurber wrote and drew a lot of genuinely funny stuff. I remember going to a Halloween reading of “The Night the Ghost Got In” in a packed bar at the Westin Great Southern hotel several years ago, and people in the bar laughed out loud at some of the lines. There is a timeless element to Thurber’s humor – he wrote that story in 1933 — even if some of his views on issues seem a bit dated.
After the book fair ended, I ran into Robin Yocum, a talented author and friend whom I worked with at the Columbus Dispatch many years ago who had also spent some time in the employ of the Thurber House in Columbus. We commiserated on Thurber’s decline in status as his lifetime (1894-1961) moves farther and farther into the distant past.
“It’s sad,” Yocum said. “We read him in school, but I doubt that happens anymore.”
That probably explains why Thurber seems to resonate more with older readers, who probably didn’t read his short stories and see his cartoons when they first appeared in the New Yorker or were first published in books, but know his work and still have a deep affection for him now.
But you can still find some younger readers who know and love him, especially at a book fair where most of the browsers are voracious readers. A twenty-something woman who carried so many books she might have been looking for a wheel barrow rental still found time to stop at my table and ask about Thurberville. When I explained what the title meant, she broke into a big grin.
“I didn’t know Thurber was from Columbus. Seriously? I never knew that. I’m from Cleveland and I love Thurber’s stories. I can’t believe that I didn’t know.”
Her enthusiasm for Thurber made me happy, even if it bothered me a little that she didn’t connect him to the place I’ve called home since the 1970s. I’ve always considered Thurber one of the city’s civic treasures, one of the little pieces of Columbus history that make it a special place.
My book fair neighbor, Chagrin Valley Times editorial cartoonist, illustrator and author Ron Hill, knew all about Thurber, as you might expect. He probably heard me talk about the direction of the book more than once during the course of a 6 ½ hour day, admitted that “it intrigues me” a couple of times and at the end of the day told me he wanted to buy one.
Knowing how much Thurber loved Columbus Dispatch editorial cartoonist Billy Ireland – and how he always considered himself a newspaper man, even though his newspaper career was rather brief – I have a feeling that he would have appreciated Hill’s purchase more than any of the others.
And the poor, ignorant fools who didn’t know who he was?
He probably would have written a funny story about them.
