The Thurber Carnival

Author: James Thurber

Release: January 6, 1945

Publisher: Harper

Genre: Humor, Essay, Fable, Short Story, Collection

ASIN: B01K3LSP16

Declassified by Agent Palmer: The Thurber Carnival is short and sweet

Quotes and Lines

“This book contains a selection of the stories and drawings the old boy did in his prime, a period which extended roughly from the year Lindbergh flew the Atlantic to the day coffee was rationed. He presents this to his readers with his sincere best wishes for a happy new world.”

There is, of course, a certain amount of drudgery in newspaper work, just as there is in teaching classes, tunneling into a bank, or being President of the United States. I suppose that even the most pleasurable of imaginable occupations, that of batting baseballs through the windows of the R.C.A. Building, would pall a little as the days ran on.

And now, in closing, I wish to leave with my little readers, both boys and girls, this parting bit of advice: Stay out of the magazine game.

The trouble, quite simply, is that I told too much about what went on in the house I lived in and not enough about what went on inside myself.

There is no doubt that Della is considerably worried about my mental condition. One morning when I didn’t get up till noon because I had been writing letters until three o’clock, Della told my wife at breakfast what was the matter with me. “His mind works so fast his body can’t keep up with it,” she said. This diagnosis has shaken me not a little. I have decided to sleep longer and work less. I know exactly what will happen to me if my mind gets so far ahead of my body that my body can’t catch up with it. They will come with a reeve and this time it won’t be a red-and-green one for the window, it will be a black one for the door.

The undisciplined mind, in short, is far better adapted to the confused world in which we live today than the streamlined mind. This is, I am afraid, no place for a streamlined mind.

Every person carries in his consciousness the old scar, or the fresh wound, of some harrowing misadventure with a contraption of some sort. I know people who would not deposit a nickel and a dime in a cigarette-vending machine or push the lever even if a diamond necklace came out. I know dozens who would not climb into an airplane even if it didn’t move off the ground. In none of these people have I discerned what I would call a neurosis, an “exaggerated” fear; I have discerned only a natural caution in a world made up of gadgets that whir and whine and whiz and shriek and sometimes explode.

“Achievement,” he used to say, “is the fool’s gold of idiots.” He never believed in doing anything or in having anything done, either for the benefit of mankind or for individuals. He wold have written, but for his philosophical indolence, very great novels indeed. We all knew that, and we treated him with a deference for which, now that he is gone, we are sincerely glad.

174 unfortunate bottom
***

Until a man can quit talking loudly to himself in order to shout down the memories of blunderings and gropings, he is in no shape for the painstaking examination of distress and the careful ordering of event so necessary to a calm and balanced exposition of what, exactly, was the matter.

Moral: It is better to ask some questions than to know all the answers.

Moral: You might as well fall flat on your face as lean over too far backward.