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The Middle-Aged Man On The Flying Trapeze
Subtitled "A Collection of Short Pieces, Mainly Humourous But with a Few Kind of Sad Ones Mixed in with Drawings by the Author".
Darker in tone than "My Life and Hard Times", "The Middle-Aged Man" draws on Thurber's troubled marriage for material. The humor is ridden with pathos, and yet is quite sharp.
This collection has 36 stories including: "The Gentleman is Cold," "Everything is Wild," "Mr. Preble Gets Rid of His Wife," "Hell Only Breaks Loose Once," "If Grant Had Been Drinking at Appomattox," and "How to See a Bad Play."
Darker in tone than "My Life and Hard Times", "The Middle-Aged Man" draws on Thurber's troubled marriage for material. The humor is ridden with pathos, and yet is quite sharp.
This collection has 36 stories including: "The Gentleman is Cold," "Everything is Wild," "Mr. Preble Gets Rid of His Wife," "Hell Only Breaks Loose Once," "If Grant Had Been Drinking at Appomattox," and "How to See a Bad Play."
The London Times said, "There may be greater humorists writing in America today than James Thurber, but none with quite his individual touch and his flavor."
226 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1935
About the author
James Thurber
363 books614 followersThurber was born in Columbus, Ohio to Charles L. Thurber and Mary Agnes (Mame) Fisher Thurber. Both of his parents greatly influenced his work. His father, a sporadically employed clerk and minor politician who dreamed of being a lawyer or an actor, is said to have been the inspiration for the small, timid protagonist typical of many of his stories. Thurber described his mother as a "born comedienne" and "one of the finest comic talents I think I have ever known." She was a practical joker, on one occasion pretending to be crippled and attending a faith healer revival, only to jump up and proclaim herself healed.
Thurber had two brothers, William and Robert. Once, while playing a game of William Tell, his brother William shot James in the eye with an arrow. Because of the lack of medical technology, Thurber lost his eye. This injury would later cause him to be almost entirely blind. During his childhood he was unable to participate in sports and activities because of his injury, and instead developed a creative imagination, which he shared in his writings.
From 1913 to 1918, Thurber attended The Ohio State University, where he was a member of the Phi Kappa Psi Fraternity. He never graduated from the University because his poor eyesight prevented him from taking a mandatory ROTC course. In 1995 he was posthumously awarded a degree.
From 1918 to 1920, at the close of World War I, Thurber worked as a code clerk for the Department of State, first in Washington, D.C. and then at the American Embassy in Paris, France. After this Thurber returned to Columbus, where he began his writing career as a reporter for the Columbus Dispatch from 1921 to 1924. During part of this time, he reviewed current books, films, and plays in a weekly column called "Credos and Curios," a title that later would be given to a posthumous collection of his work. Thurber also returned to Paris in this period, where he wrote for the Chicago Tribune and other newspapers.
In 1925, he moved to Greenwich Village in New York City, getting a job as a reporter for the New York Evening Post. He joined the staff of The New Yorker in 1927 as an editor with the help of his friend and fellow New Yorker contributor, E.B. White. His career as a cartoonist began in 1930 when White found some of Thurber's drawings in a trash can and submitted them for publication. Thurber would contribute both his writings and his drawings to The New Yorker until the 1950s.
Thurber was married twice. In 1922, Thurber married Althea Adams. The marriage was troubled and ended in divorce in May 1935. Adams gave Thurber his only child, his daughter Rosemary. Thurber remarried in June, 1935 to Helen Wismer. His second marriage lasted until he died in 1961, at the age of 66, due to complications from pneumonia, which followed upon a stroke suffered at his home. His last words, aside from the repeated word "God," were "God bless... God damn," according to Helen Thurber.
Thurber had two brothers, William and Robert. Once, while playing a game of William Tell, his brother William shot James in the eye with an arrow. Because of the lack of medical technology, Thurber lost his eye. This injury would later cause him to be almost entirely blind. During his childhood he was unable to participate in sports and activities because of his injury, and instead developed a creative imagination, which he shared in his writings.
From 1913 to 1918, Thurber attended The Ohio State University, where he was a member of the Phi Kappa Psi Fraternity. He never graduated from the University because his poor eyesight prevented him from taking a mandatory ROTC course. In 1995 he was posthumously awarded a degree.
From 1918 to 1920, at the close of World War I, Thurber worked as a code clerk for the Department of State, first in Washington, D.C. and then at the American Embassy in Paris, France. After this Thurber returned to Columbus, where he began his writing career as a reporter for the Columbus Dispatch from 1921 to 1924. During part of this time, he reviewed current books, films, and plays in a weekly column called "Credos and Curios," a title that later would be given to a posthumous collection of his work. Thurber also returned to Paris in this period, where he wrote for the Chicago Tribune and other newspapers.
In 1925, he moved to Greenwich Village in New York City, getting a job as a reporter for the New York Evening Post. He joined the staff of The New Yorker in 1927 as an editor with the help of his friend and fellow New Yorker contributor, E.B. White. His career as a cartoonist began in 1930 when White found some of Thurber's drawings in a trash can and submitted them for publication. Thurber would contribute both his writings and his drawings to The New Yorker until the 1950s.
Thurber was married twice. In 1922, Thurber married Althea Adams. The marriage was troubled and ended in divorce in May 1935. Adams gave Thurber his only child, his daughter Rosemary. Thurber remarried in June, 1935 to Helen Wismer. His second marriage lasted until he died in 1961, at the age of 66, due to complications from pneumonia, which followed upon a stroke suffered at his home. His last words, aside from the repeated word "God," were "God bless... God damn," according to Helen Thurber.
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July 6, 2016Prodavač se mě zeptal, co si přeju.
"Máte bednu?" zeptal jsem se, "takovou velkou bednu? Potřebuju bednu, abych se do ní mohl schovat."
"Bednu?" zeptal se.
"Potřebuju bednu, abych se do ní mohl schovat."
"Jak to myslíte?" zeptal se. "Myslíte jako takovou velkou bednu?"
Řekl jsem, že myslím takovou velkou bednu, abych se do ní vešel.
"Já bedny nemám" odpověděl. "Jenom kartony, co v nich chodějí konzervy."
Zkusil jsem to ještě v několika obchodech se smíšeným zbožím, ale nikde neměli tak velkou bednu, abych se do ní mohl schovat. Nedalo se dělat nic jiného než prostě pohlédnout životu nebojácně tváří v tvář. Necítil jsem se nijak silný a byl jsem plný té mohutné touhy schovat se na dlouhou dobu do bedny.
"Co tím myslíte, že se potřebujete schovat v té bedně?" zeptal se mě jeden kupec.
"Je to jistá forma úniku", vysvětlil jsem mu, "když se člověk schová do bedny. Člověk si tím omezí starosti a zúží si tak prostor svých úzkostí. A taky nevidí žádné lidi."
"Máte bednu?" zeptal jsem se, "takovou velkou bednu? Potřebuju bednu, abych se do ní mohl schovat."
"Bednu?" zeptal se.
"Potřebuju bednu, abych se do ní mohl schovat."
"Jak to myslíte?" zeptal se. "Myslíte jako takovou velkou bednu?"
Řekl jsem, že myslím takovou velkou bednu, abych se do ní vešel.
"Já bedny nemám" odpověděl. "Jenom kartony, co v nich chodějí konzervy."
Zkusil jsem to ještě v několika obchodech se smíšeným zbožím, ale nikde neměli tak velkou bednu, abych se do ní mohl schovat. Nedalo se dělat nic jiného než prostě pohlédnout životu nebojácně tváří v tvář. Necítil jsem se nijak silný a byl jsem plný té mohutné touhy schovat se na dlouhou dobu do bedny.
"Co tím myslíte, že se potřebujete schovat v té bedně?" zeptal se mě jeden kupec.
"Je to jistá forma úniku", vysvětlil jsem mu, "když se člověk schová do bedny. Člověk si tím omezí starosti a zúží si tak prostor svých úzkostí. A taky nevidí žádné lidi."
May 26, 2015
I enjoyed most of these stories immensely. A couple still have me chuckling every time I think of them.
June 4, 2017
Knížky, u kterých se člověk směje, jsou stejně důležité jako ty, u kterých brečí. A všichni jsme tak trochu filozof, a tak trochu ústřice. Kéž by tahle knížka šla nacpat do maturitní četby.
June 1, 2021
This book is a great collection of the varied voices of James Thurber. Granted some may not have aged well but if viewed in the tongue in cheek form of author, and the social realities of the period, 1935, then there's still plenty to gain.
Some of my favourites were: Snapshot of a dog, & One is a wanderer.
Some of my favourites were: Snapshot of a dog, & One is a wanderer.
April 22, 2025
The fiction's weaker, but the Andy Rooney type pieces -- The Gentleman is Cold, How To See A Bad Play, A Preface to Dogs (on raising kids and feminism), his sendup of Gertrude Stein in There's An Owl in my Room, I Went To Sullivant (his grade-school days) and A Box To Hide In -- are stellar.
June 15, 2018
I remember reading a Thurber collection with amusement, but I must like his comics better than his stories. A few I enjoyed, but many felt cruel instead of funny, especially towards women.
March 25, 2019
I've read all of these before in other collections, but it's lovely to read it in its original state.
My love for Thurber still remains strong 35+ years later.
My love for Thurber still remains strong 35+ years later.
June 30, 2021
Wonderful tidbits of life and Americana.
December 31, 2024
A collection of essays by Thurber. Some funny, some very serious. At least with this batch, the serious ones were better than the funny ones.
August 22, 2014
I read "Middle Age Man on the Flying Trapeze," at 29 years old, on the brink of manhood and middle age, and I adored every story. I'd been reading a lot of the heavyweights up until this time - Dostoevsky on the Russian front, Jean Genet on the French front, Joyce and Beckett on the Irish front, though both had exiled to Paris - but I started lowering my expectations of myself as a reader, perhaps intuiting the future of my fiction, because I'm not sure I have a big novel in me, or as I used to say 'big books, big belly's.' I'm more of a sketch writer at heart, and Thurber is a master of the form, and to emphasize it he's also one of the great 'doodlers' of the 20th century, maybe the greatest that didn't have the pretense to call himself an Artist (capital A),' just a doodler, nothing more. Yet he defined the iconic "New Yorker" cartoons based on abstract humor that pre-dated 'The Far Side' by a good thirty of forty years, and I'm sure a good argument could be made that Thurber is really best remembered as a drawer, not a writer, or a humorist at best. His prose almost lacks style, though it has a lot of substance, voice, and vision, but just not a new literary style like Gertrude Stein writing, "A rose is a rose is a rose," but Thurber's drawings, say 'Thurber.' I'm sure he's been copied by millions of 'doodlers' including John Lennon and me.
Most of the stories in this collection are pretty light like in all of Thurber's collections, but he was one of the most deceptive light-hearted writers of all time, because almost all of his stories are imbued with a real dark humor, or love of life, that cuts to the soul, as effectively as a romantic poet, even if the conceit of the stories is relatively mundane, and why they are more like sketches than actual stories, because very little happens, nor do I remember suspenseful endings. Two stories really stand out in this book and taught me that you could tell as much in a few pages as you could in a novel, and that a story could be like a song, filling the reader's mind with impressions for years to come, even if it lacked the moral depths implied in a novel, and maybe why I write novellas, or long stories, told quickly. I never really wanted to be a moralist with a point of view, just an observer of life in all of its emotional highs and lows, and most importantly the absurd reason of our being that knows no end of questioning, and hopefully laughing about, even if it's sad, or that's how I see Thurber, a great comic clown, with a dark underbelly, that secretly drove America mad, with his insightful 'humorous' tales delving into the human soul, albeit whimsically, making us not afraid to look, even while he was rearranging our thoughts about life. He was a truly important artist to me for a year of my life, making me see the world anew, and when he wrote his longer story 'My Years with Ross,' to the great cardinal seminal editor of the "New Yorker," it was a memoir, seen through another man's eyes, a great point of view, but still a sketch, just a very long one, reordering the years.
I can't find my copy of "The Middle Age Man" right now, but it's in my head forever and especially 'One is a Wanderer,' about a lonely man living in a flea bag motel after work on a typical day with nothing to do but kill time in post war America, living on the fringe, without the delights of a suburban wife tickling his fancy, an almost early kind of "Midnight Cowboy," if that's possible; though it's more like a Bukowski story of a wannabe writer in the Forties ambling into the big city for a little adventure, but finding only loneliness and the bottle to get him through the night, an incredible sketch. The other story was about his best friend that was the great 'unknown genius' of his times, and just a warm touching thought response to a great but maddening individual that changed Thurber forever, a mild mannered man by comparison, but I can't remember the title, and it's driving me crazy. What struck me most was that in six or seven pages Thurber managed to write a story as good as the tome that my mentor was working on for half his life that was also about his best friend, a great unknown genius of the world, and a character type that every artistic/creative group of friends must have, or at least a version of it, and everyone always thinks that their undiscovered genius is the greatest of all, and the most worthy of posthumous praise. It's a hilarious, sad, and unforgettable story of an idle zeitgeist, one of the great themes of art.
Most of the stories in this collection are pretty light like in all of Thurber's collections, but he was one of the most deceptive light-hearted writers of all time, because almost all of his stories are imbued with a real dark humor, or love of life, that cuts to the soul, as effectively as a romantic poet, even if the conceit of the stories is relatively mundane, and why they are more like sketches than actual stories, because very little happens, nor do I remember suspenseful endings. Two stories really stand out in this book and taught me that you could tell as much in a few pages as you could in a novel, and that a story could be like a song, filling the reader's mind with impressions for years to come, even if it lacked the moral depths implied in a novel, and maybe why I write novellas, or long stories, told quickly. I never really wanted to be a moralist with a point of view, just an observer of life in all of its emotional highs and lows, and most importantly the absurd reason of our being that knows no end of questioning, and hopefully laughing about, even if it's sad, or that's how I see Thurber, a great comic clown, with a dark underbelly, that secretly drove America mad, with his insightful 'humorous' tales delving into the human soul, albeit whimsically, making us not afraid to look, even while he was rearranging our thoughts about life. He was a truly important artist to me for a year of my life, making me see the world anew, and when he wrote his longer story 'My Years with Ross,' to the great cardinal seminal editor of the "New Yorker," it was a memoir, seen through another man's eyes, a great point of view, but still a sketch, just a very long one, reordering the years.
I can't find my copy of "The Middle Age Man" right now, but it's in my head forever and especially 'One is a Wanderer,' about a lonely man living in a flea bag motel after work on a typical day with nothing to do but kill time in post war America, living on the fringe, without the delights of a suburban wife tickling his fancy, an almost early kind of "Midnight Cowboy," if that's possible; though it's more like a Bukowski story of a wannabe writer in the Forties ambling into the big city for a little adventure, but finding only loneliness and the bottle to get him through the night, an incredible sketch. The other story was about his best friend that was the great 'unknown genius' of his times, and just a warm touching thought response to a great but maddening individual that changed Thurber forever, a mild mannered man by comparison, but I can't remember the title, and it's driving me crazy. What struck me most was that in six or seven pages Thurber managed to write a story as good as the tome that my mentor was working on for half his life that was also about his best friend, a great unknown genius of the world, and a character type that every artistic/creative group of friends must have, or at least a version of it, and everyone always thinks that their undiscovered genius is the greatest of all, and the most worthy of posthumous praise. It's a hilarious, sad, and unforgettable story of an idle zeitgeist, one of the great themes of art.
December 28, 2007
I'm so sad that this book is out of print! These stories aren't literary, nor do they pretend to be. What they do, however, they do well: each is a masterpiece of American comedy coupled with honest, intimate portraits of a family and the sort of characters to whom any of us can relate, whether we want to or not. This is beautiful writing in its own way, and Thurber is a genius of deadpan delivery. To me, this is better than Wodehouse.
September 14, 2013
Philosoph & Oyster as czech translation says. It takes times to get to Oysters not to mention way to it, is rather slippery.
Thurber's short stories accompanied by humorous satires takes us into land of animals instead of humans and in so many ways show us some interesting insights.
Even though this books has some interesting points I can't say I was interested by all of them. Be it as it may - Trapeze is interesting writer and this stories worth reading.
Thurber's short stories accompanied by humorous satires takes us into land of animals instead of humans and in so many ways show us some interesting insights.
Even though this books has some interesting points I can't say I was interested by all of them. Be it as it may - Trapeze is interesting writer and this stories worth reading.
March 30, 2014
Mr. Preble Gets Rid Of His Wife competes with his "The Night the Bed Fell" (not found in this collection) for my favourite Thurber story.
I first found Thurber in a flea market stall when I was about 15 and haven't stopped laughing since.
Disclaimer: Misogyny does abound in these pages, as his men generally tend to be victims of the women in their life. But I'd still give Thurber a try, if you've never read him.
I first found Thurber in a flea market stall when I was about 15 and haven't stopped laughing since.
Disclaimer: Misogyny does abound in these pages, as his men generally tend to be victims of the women in their life. But I'd still give Thurber a try, if you've never read him.
November 14, 2015
A quietly funny and wonderfully written blueprint for modern American humor — like Woody Allen in waiting. I was surprised to see that several of the pieces take on a decidedly darker tone, exploring loss and loneliness in the same quirky manner of his blithe absurdism. This was my first Thurber read, unlikely my last.
January 25, 2008
Thurber is my favorite society writer. His short stories are humorous and hilariously descriptive and his sketches border on stylized surrealism; a true treat for a session Sunday afternoon lounging.
February 2, 2011
Thurber is my hero. The day I discovered Thurber, I discovered true wit.
January 12, 2016
A collection of short stories from the creator of Walter Mitty. Some hits, more misses than I expected.
December 29, 2018
Prvú časť tvoria poviedky nie nepodobné absurdnu Danila Charmsa, druhú časť "bájky" s autorovými ilustráciami, ktoré sa mi zas také dobré nezdali.
Displaying 1 - 19 of 19 reviews