It took a month to get through it, but Your Humble Blogger is glad The Thurber Letters: The Wit, Wisdom, and Surprising Life of James Thurber (New York: Simon & Schuster 2003) didn’t wind up getting returned to the library unfinished. It’s a disturbing and depressing book, in a lot of ways, which ain’t so bad, either.
Disturbing and depressing, unfortunately, in that as a young man, Mr. Thurber was a mean drunk, and unpleasant to his mistresses. I suspect that somebody reading my own letters might tisk over a few. Hmph. I hope they’ve been burnt. Anyway, Gentle Readers might not actually be shocked to learn I’ve behaved badly, while I never associated James Thurber with ashtray-throwing jealous rages, nor yet hungover manipulative apologies the next day.
More disturbing and depressing in his truculence about the New Yorker editing his stuff, or on occasion daring to reject it. Some of that truculence was expressed with wit, if not charm, which made worthwhile reading. He writes “I assure you that that “that” that worries you is completely correct.” In fact he writes it twice, to two different editors.
The stuff about going blind is disturbing and depressing as well, in a much more moving way. The struggle to continue writing letters, the slow regretful giving up of cartooning (after several shifts to delay the inevitable), and the subtle hints in the later letters to old friends that even when they come to visit, he doesn’t see them. I’m particularly squeamish about eyes, so perhaps I was more disturbed and depressed over this than another reader would be.
Another thing that comes off as somewhat disturbing and depressing is just the long decline of literary influence over the twentieth century. There was a time when playwrights, novelists and essayists had a pretty substantial impact on American culture. It’s clear in the early letters how true that is, how prominent a place the writer had. Even before Mr. Thurber begins writing professionally, the world he perceives is shaped by writers, and when he does begin to become one of those writers, he starts shaping the world. By the end, it’s pretty clear that the famous and influential James Thurber is in a field like chamber music or, heck, plate-spinning, that amuses people but is off to one side of the main stream. And, of course, things have gotten much much worse for writers (in terms of cultural prominence) since then. And since I like writers, and plays and so on, that arc is disturbing and depressing.
On the other hand, the letter collection does, as letter collections tend to do, give me a sharp if inaccurate sense of the person. Which is great. Plus there’s that whole snooping thing, which is always fun.
,
-Vardibidian.
You’re right that writers no longer have the cultural prominence that they once did, but I think writing is still shaping the world. (On reflection, by “world” I mean “American society”.)
People get their news from Leno and Letterman, both of whom use teams of writers. People get their impression of politicians from scripted speeches and scripted advertisements and scripted news conferences. When television writers go on strike, prime time television basically shuts down. And the immense popularity of the Internet lies primarily in its textual content (imho), much of which was written.
Individual prominence has been reduced, though there are still blockbuster authors, and bylines in newspapers, and even some readers who know the names of the bloggers or cartoonists or columnists they read every day. Far more important are teams of writers, often functionally anonymous, who put the words into the mouths of the celebrities and politicians we worship. This separation of the writer from the written is an artifact of the rise of television (a visual and mind-numbing medium; we see the actor or anchor, and we forget that there is a writer behind them) and the rise of huge corporations (which, in striving to break free of the bonds to individuals, enforce anonymity). Writers become the invisible hand of culture, rather than celebrities themselves.
The shift Michael is describing has its analogue in academia.
The literature department teaches people to interpret the work of major authors and to develop their voices as writers.
The communication department teaches the mechanisms of communication, so that its students can learn to skillfully convey content for businesses.
I agree with you in general, Michael, but not altogether. A smaller percentage of the US watches Leno or Letterman than used to watch Johnny Carson (or earlier incarnation of the Tonight show). A much larger percentage of the television that people watch is ‘unscripted’, at least by writers. I do take your point about the internet, though. The absurd Ender’s Game bit where major cultural shift is accomplished by anonymous writers may not actually be altogether absurd, after all.
,
-V.