Remember Laughter

Book excerpt: One of the great American humorists of this century, James Thurber is still read and cherished by many readers more than thirty years after his death. He is most famous for the hilarious, often bittersweet stories that he published in the 1930s and 1940s in the New Yorker. He was also a brilliant cartoonist whose unique drawings were an eagerly awaited feature in Harold Ross’s New Yorker and in Thurber’s books. This biography is a book much in the spirit of Thurber himself. Readable, anecdotal, and often delightfully funny, Remember Laughter will be cherished by all fans of Thurber. Yet Neil A. Grauer by no means sentimentalizes Thurber. He addresses serious, and often disturbing, features of Thurber’s life while highlighting Thurber’s courage, inexhaustible humor, and unique literary and artistic talents. The result is a biography that both celebrates Thurber’s genius and shrewdly appraises his qualities as a man.