New Addition(s) To The Spill Library

With the arrival this week of the Armed Services edition of Thurber’s masterpiece, My Life And Hard Times, the Spill library has moved closer to a completing the Thurber Armed Services editions. Just The Thurber Carnival and Is Sex Necessary remain. All in good time! (I’m in no hurry).

Read more about the Armed Services editions here.

below: the other Thurber titles in the Spill library

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Also this week

Some time back I posted the above photo of the well-used (tattered?) dust jacket covering my copy of Burton Bernstein’s Thurber: A Biography. I bought this copy in 1975, the year it was published, when I was in my last year of college, diving deep into The New Yorker‘s history. I’ve read Mr. Bernstein’s book through and through, again and again (and it shows). Each time the book comes off the shelf I imagine the jacket loses a small piece or two (I’ve been patching it for years).

Strolling through the internet the other day I was so pleased to see a copy of Mr. Bernstein’s book in near new condition (price paid: $3.85). My 51 year old copy can now take it easy; from now on this “new” one will do the heavy lifting.

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Attempted Bloggery On A Recently Auctioned Thurber Original 

A Spill fave site, Attempted Bloggery, is all over the recently auctioned Thurber original shown above. Read it here!

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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