The best example of my editing of my own stuff is worth looking up. It was a Talk interview I had with Jack Johnson way back in [Ralph] Ingersoll’s time. I rewrote it for my book The Beast in Me. It might help a young editor of twenty to get the hang of rewrite, or at least to find out what was the matter with Thurber in Ingersoll’s time.
12. I was not so much dismayed as amused when I discovered that the editors, in a jittery mood, or during certain phases of the moon, are “down readers.” That is, they read the last word of each line from top to bottom and thus once encountered “Dixie cups.” When an editor becomes a down reader, madness is just around the coroner. I am sure that this magazine’s back files, if read down, instead of from left to right, would produce “girl laid,” “trousers open,” and God knows what other shocking atrocities. I always begin at the left with the opening word of the sentence and read toward the right and I recommend this method.
13. I have unfortunately lost a long letter sent me ten years ago by a professor of English in London, whose speciality is punctuation. He queried twelve or fifteen commas in twelve or fifteen different New Yorker pieces, finding them “unnecessary and disturbing.” From one casual of mine he picked this sentence. “After dinner, the men moved into the living room.” I explained to the professor that this was Ross’s way of giving the men time to push back their chairs and stand up. There must, as we know, be a comma after every move, made by men, on this earth.
John Duncan Miller, formerly the Times of London man in Washington, said to me in 1955, “The biography of Harold Ross should be called ‘The Century of the Comma Man.’”
14. I once heard a former football player say to his wife, “Let’s skip it, shall we?” This was the only time I ever heard him use “shall,” which we use too rarely and the English use too much. If you keep visiting London and staying there for months, you do begin using “shall” properly, and sometimes wrongly. The Thurber theory is that it fell into disrepute west of the Appalachians because it was considered, by guys like my old city editor Gus Kuehner, a schoolteacher’s word, used only by men who flourished canes, drank tea, and ate ladyfingers. It can’t be left out of some things without killing their force and effect—”The gates of hell shall not prevail,” “They shall not pass.”
Its overuse in England was demonstrated by a line in a play now in London called Flowering Cherry, in which a woman says, “I shall want to talk it over with my husband.” Oh, she shall, will she? You either want to talk it over with your husband, or you don’t, and you know it at the time.
15. I don’t want to be the only one around here that (Let’s not make that who, shall we?) keeps waking up and evoking the image of Ross getting snarled up in this sentence from [William Ernest] Henley: “One or two women (God bless them!) have loved me.”
One or two women (God bless her or them!) has or have loved
“One or two” is another spelling of the word “several.” Some of this may be in Fowler, I don’t know. Some of it is a reasonable crapsimile of Fowler. For a long time now I have had a four-cornered exchange of letters—one of the others is Lewis Gannett—about this line, “The boy stood on the burning deck whence all but he had fled.” Fowler and Gannett are for “he,” whereas my position is that the boy was a goddamn fool not to get off that burning deck.
16. I have written three parodies of Henry James—I guess one of them is a what-you-call-it not triptych but that other thing, called “The Beast in the Dingle.” It took me nine months to write and when Ross found this out he demanded to see it even though I had promised it to Cyril Connolly for his late lamented Horizon. This is the piece Ross gave back to me, saying, “I only understand 15 per cent of its illusions.” I went back over the piece and I felt confident that he only understood 4 per cent of the illusions. That piece could have been printed in The New Yorker today, even though it’s a darling of professors of English literature throughout mummum land. All of them know that I once intended to call it “The Return of the Screw.”
17. Authors should sometimes consult editors about titles they want to use for their books ([William] Maxwell discussed A Folded Leaf with a lot of guys before he decided on it). In one year Gibbs and White and I came out with the world’s most unwieldy titles, in order: “Bed of Neuroses,” “Quo Vadimus? or The Case for the Bicycle,” “The Middle-Aged Man on the Flying Trapeze.” Incidentally, a woman in London asked me who had written “The Case for the Bisexual.”
All pieces should be called by the best of New Yorker titles, “The Girls in Their Summer Dresses.”
18. The what-you-call-it is a pastiche.
19. Editors should say to themselves, “Am I causative or costive or do I have a cause?” They should, I think, become trend fighters. “The Wings of the Falcon,” combining two separate kinds of writing, could have gone in either of two different directions—the long, serious, comprehensive essay, or the short parody. It’s true that the long essay was better done, but it is also true that the short parody could have been taken out, rewritten, and improved. The decline of humor in The New Yorker reflects the decline of humor in the world, in the country, and in the century. The unconscious trend is to encourage this decline, on behalf, God save us all, of “importance.” The editorial board of every magazine should contain a practicing humorist. All our editors have humor but we have no practicing humorist and the belief has always been that such a person’s opinion, as Ross used to say, was “without practical value.”
I have never written more than a dozen pieces that I thought could not have been improved. Most writers who are any good have this belief about their work. Henry James made the mistake of rewriting some of his pieces, such as “The Reverberator,” in his later years. But [F. O.] Matthiessen has painstakingly showed how this rewrite benefitted other stories and some of the novels. Editors, on the other hand, are inclined to arrive at rigidity of opinion. This is their greatest danger. Why don’t you all get together and collaborate on “The Theory and Practice of Criticizing the Criticism of the Editing of New Yorker Articles"?
20. The Ross book by actual quote from Ross shows the development of one phase of New Yorker lunacy. The almost abject fear of repetitions, such opinion sheet lines as this, for example: “You have the word ‘make’ on galleys 3, 9, and 1 1.” For God’s sake.
Shakespeare used “to be” twice in one line and “tomorrow” three times in one line. Where were The New Yorker editors then? A curious flatness of style can occur where there are no repetitions, for repetitions are often the heart and spirit of poetic prose, and he who cannot write poetic prose is not a writer. Ross used to say we need a staff psychiatrist for the behavior of writers, but we need a staff psychologist for the understanding of the cyclical in the abilities and output of writers as well as for the seasonal ups and downs of individual editorial perception and ability. There are days when no surgeon should be allowed to operate. The biggest mistake I made here is when I insanely agreed to let somebody else try to cut out 4,500 words from a story of mine that was not intended for this magazine. If it were not for our lunacy we would all have known that was lunacy.
21. This magazine has had talk meetings, art meetings and news meetings, and at least one gathering of writers, to discuss the Reader’s Digest crisis of some years ago. What it has never had, and badly needs, is a semi-annual meeting of Writers and Editors for the purpose of discussing the suggestions I have covered here, and others.
22. When Lobrano was alive he was one of two editors on the board of directors, but his place was taken by a corporation lawyer as The New Yorker moved slowly and inexorably from magazine to corporation. Lobrano should have been replaced by a writer or editor, unless, of course, our rivals and competitors are no longer magazines, but corporations. Does the danger lie in the increasing popularity of Esquire or in the fact that the American Can Company may drive us out of business?
23. There seems to have been a great, but groundless, fear that The Years with Ross would consist in part of
an “attack” on The New Yorker. One learns how to take this kind of thing in his stride if he works here long enough, and I have been here 32 years this month. The New Yorker was born and brought up in the tradition of the spoiled child of literature. Hence it has always been able to dish it out and never able to take it. It took apart Luce and his magazines, to name just one man and organization it has taken apart, but it was scared to death that Newsweek would “attack” The New Yorker. I never saw so much panic in my life. The Newsweek article turned out to be a great big valentine. For a time, to avoid publicity, New Yorker editors actually seemed to believe that they could become anonymous. But no man can deny, or delegate, identity. Our hypersensitivity is perhaps our greatest fault. The tendency of such a temperament is to get both writers and editors down and to confuse the outside world. I move through all of this serenely, with occasional outbursts of rage or indignation, recently described by White as “explosions in the air high above 44th Street.” If these explosions ever cease, it will be because I no longer love The New Yorker and I doubt that that could ever be possible.
In a letter to Frank Sullivan, Ross wrote, in his last year, “Thurber talks a lot about maturity.”
I hadn’t said maturity, I had said maturing, for I believe with Margaret Mead that maturity should be a goal never quite reached but always sought after. The process of going there is the process of human development.
Unfamiliar Misquotations
It began in the country one Sunday morning at dawn when I was awakened by a phoebe. Without my glasses I could just see the light outside my windows, pallid, like the bust of Pallas, by no means rosy-fingered. The dawn of a new day, I thought drowsily … the dawn of a new world … the dawn of the World of Tomorrow … the World of Tomorrow is too much with us. I wanted to get up and write down that paraphrase of Wordsworth, which the mystery of association had brought to me. You know how it is when your mind stands with reluctant feet where the night and morning meet: an urgent perfection appears to shape your thoughts; the stream of consciousness runs so pure and clear you seem to see the pebbles of Truth on the bottom. Of course, after I had got up and lighted a cigarette and walked around, I realized that “The World of Tomorrow is too much with us” was really nothing to telephone the papers about, certainly not the New York papers. “What do you mean, ‘too much’?” they would have asked. “What do you mean, ‘us’?” “Me and Wordsworth,” I would have answered, and they would have hung up. I got back in bed.
Since I couldn’t go to sleep again, I took to recalling other old verses, and old maxims, which contained the word “world” or the word “tomorrow,” and I began tinkering with them. None that I could remember seemed very apt; that’s the trouble with becoming fully awake: a glory passes. “All the World of Tomorrow’s a stage” gave me only a vague sense of satisfaction; “The World of Tomorrow, the flesh, and the devil” gave me none at all; I dismissed “The World of Tomorrow is my oyster” as both flippant and untrue. It couldn’t be anybody’s oyster. Certainly it is not mine. I suppose you should know right here that I am not fond of the World of Tomorrow, in capitals or in lower case, in Flushing or over the edges of time. No special reason; no hard feelings. I tried to think of some ancient line of poetry or of prose which would cast an amusing slur on these pleasure palaces in Xanadu. I thought I had it, finally, in “The World of Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow creeps in this petty pace from day to day, to the last syllable of recorded time,” but it occurred to me that it was too soon for that. That will be suitable for bitter chanting later on, when it begins to seem that this Fair will never end, that it must go on forever.
I realized, at a quarter of six, that I would have to go downstairs and get my Bartlett’s Familiar Quotations; which I did, falling down the last four steps. The Bartlett’s I own belonged to old Grandpa Taylor (whose father once killed a man with the flat of his hand) and it is the 1882 edition. This edition, according to a prefatory note, contains one hundred and twenty-five authors who were not represented in the edition of 1875. That seemed a frightful number of new authors to deal with before breakfast, but it came to me that if a hundred and twenty-five new authors have been added every seven years since 1882, the current Bartlett must contain a thousand writers who were not represented in my edition. I suddenly felt cozy with that old edition, chummy with Milton, almost a little lonely, there in the waxing light. I found that there were dozens of old writers who had made pronouncements about the world of their day which could easily be turned into pronouncements about the World of Tomorrow. If most of them are sad and some of them are savage, so run the worlds away.
Byron, of course (you will have remembered it), wrote the perfect line for those unhappy people living near the Fair who have lost such peace and quiet as they once had: “There’s not a joy the World of Tomorrow can give like that it takes away.” For those who want to dismiss the whole business lightly and have done with it, there is Francis Bacon’s “The World of Tomorrow’s a bubble,” and Thomas Moore’s “The World of Tomorrow is all a fleeting show.” Horace Walpole goes into the thing more deeply: “The World of Tomorrow is a comedy to those who think, a tragedy to those who feel.” A. F. F. von Kotzebue (1761-1819) has a slogan which he could sell to the San Francisco Exposition: “There is another and better World of Tomorrow.” George Herbert believes you should get your mind on higher things and the hell with it: “Do well and right, and let the World of Tomorrow sink.” Shakespeare comes out flatly against the gorgeous spectacle without making a single bone about it: “Vain pomp and glory of this World of Tomorrow, I hate ye.” In case Mr. Whalen has convinced himself that all is well and everything is going to be all right, let him list to the Old Testament, which saith, “Boast not thyself of the World of Tomorrow; for thou knowest not what a day may bring forth.” Good old Dryden has made his peace and had his fun and calmly awaits whatever may come: “World of Tomorrow, do thy worst, for I have lived today.” And finally, Cowper sums up the general inadequacy of the whole enterprise in a quatrain:
What peaceful hours I once enjoy’d!
How sweet their memory still!
But they have left an aching void
The World of Tomorrow can never fill.
There must be hundreds of others in the latest Bartlett, and you can look them up yourself if you have a mind to. For those who don’t care to confine themselves to verses or sayings which have the word “world” or “tomorrow” in them, on the ground that these could finally get to be a little stuffy, there is after all the whole field of proverbs and the whole range of paraphrasis. Just change any word or any phrase to read “World of Tomorrow.” I’ll show you what I mean; I’ll start you off: “Who steals the World of Tomorrow steals trash.” Lots of people, oh, millions, oh, hundreds of millions, will want to make up proverbs that glow and sparkle with a proper praise, and that is all right with me. I happen not to have been sleeping well and it makes me cross.
“It’s nothing serious, Madam. They’re writers.”
8 Important Characters in James Thurber’s New Column.
If You Ask Me
(THE ENVELOPE OF MISCELLANY)
(James Thurber, who for years [and years] has been writing what he feels, has turned to saying what he thinks for PM. His brand new column, “If You Ask Me,” will appear every Tuesday and Thursday, complete with opinion, guesswork, men, women, dogs and seals, [signed] James Thurber)
Just the other afternoon I was going through an old Manila envelope containing the odds and ends, the snippets and symbols of my life in the 30s—the century’s 30s and my own.
In the old envelope I found familiar and forgotten things: page 3 of a piece of mysterious writing, fluttering yellowly between a vanished beginning and a lost ending, making no more sense than the shouting of children at play on a frosty night; a dance program, a challenge to a duel, a memorandum of heavy losses at the gaming tables in Key West, a news item about an aged Columbus woman who shot a truant officer (“I just pulled the trigger
and let ‘er go”), and, in between everything, still as fresh and sharp and clear as ever, a timely anecdote sent in to The New Yorker by a man named Price in 1931.
Attached to this long buried message from the past was a slip of red paper meaning: “Rush! Priority A!” On the red slip was written in only slightly faded pencil: “Must go this week.” Nothing had ever been done about it.
My executors, in their stiff collars and Sunday shoes, will come upon it in a mysterious safety-deposit box containing, in addition to the urgent anecdote, a box of carbide for old-fashioned motorcycle lamps, three blank checks signed by Button Gwinnett (signature forged), and a telegram (undelivered) to Rush Holt.
I will have to have a separate old Manila envelope for letters like the two that arrived last week under the same cover. This cover also contained three or four poems in longhand. One of the two letters in this remarkable envelope (on which was printed “The Woman”) was from an old cook of mine in Connecticut named Martha; the other letter was from Louise Denny, who is associated with a magazine called Modern Woman, to Helen Stelzenmuller, assistant editor of The Woman; the poems were by my former cook’s sister Dorothea, who Martha tells me lives in Hoboken, N.J., and is gifted.
You may wonder why Martha’s introduction of her sister and her sister’s work should be all tangled up with an exchange of professional amenities between Miss Denny and Miss Stelzenmuller. However, it finally turned out Martha decided that the simplest way to reach me would be by writing to a magazine called The Man.
Collecting Himself Page 3
