Over the coming weeks some of our literary collaborators will give suggestions for ‘lockdown’ reading, books of all kinds to amuse and raise our spirits. This week, Des Egan on James Thurber…
I have always had a soft spot for cartoons, even to the point of proposing some cartoon-plays consisting of a single sentence, the rest of which is ironically implicit – as in the following.
Setting: Outside a wigwam, the Chief addressing a group of young braves: ‘So there I was, minding my own business when… ’ (curtain).
So, in all the welter of cocoon-reading, to cheer myself up I went from cocoon to cartoon, and (though I also love the work of the late John Glashan) to James Thurber especially, and his Men, Women and Dogs collection, from 1943.
Impression
I enjoyed it as much as ever. Who else can convey such an impression of character with so few tiny strokes? Who better saw through human pretension to its ironically comic side?
Philosopher Roger Scruton suggests, in Confessions of a Heretic, that, there is a new kind of irony in Christ’s judgments and parables, which look at the spectacle of human folly and wryly show us how to live with it, and goes even further, to suggest that, the Christian religion has made irony central to its message.
Detachment, compassion and amusement would seem to be in question there…all Christian concerns, surely? Distinguished Spanish novelist Javier Marias goes so far as to say (Between Eternities) that “there is no real greatness without irony”.
Cartoons
Where better to come across such than in Thurber? He has given us in his short stories much to laugh at and think about – from Walter Mitty to The Macbeth Murder Mystery; but there is only time here to promote his cartoons. Rather than start analysing them, let them speak for themselves: here goes with two favourites. May they help you not to not to go cuckoo from being cocooned.
Desmond Egan’s most recent book is Last Poetry Collection: Epic (The Goldsmith Press). Much of James Thurber’s finest work can be found in The Thurber Carnival (Penguin Modern Classics, £9.99), currently available.
Cartoons from Men, Women and Dogs (New York: Harcourt, Brace and Co.); © James Thurber 1943.