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Let Your Mind Alone! And Other More or Less Inspirational Pieces
A collection of humorous essays, accompanied by the author's own bizarre drawings, presenting Thurber's unremitting retort to the multitude of "self-help" books which were widespread in the 1930s and whose successors are still with us today.
225 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1937
About the author
James Thurber
365 books608 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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Displaying 1 - 19 of 19 reviews
October 2, 2023
This Thurber book is memorable for the early chapters in which he imagines how the precepts of such actual 1930s self-help titles as How To Worry Successfully and Be Glad You're Neurotic (I thought he was making up the titles until I looked them up!) would play out in real life. The rest of the book is hit or miss. Despite being generally annoyed by Thurber's near constant misogyny (every story of his about a married couple becomes, very tediously, a tired battle of the sexes) I find him mildly (and every now and then very) amusing and likeable.
October 10, 2007
One of my favorite Thurber collections. The first half of this book (I have the 1937 ed.) dissects (with snarky glee) Depression-era self-help books. Oddly enough, self-help books haven't really changed all that much in 70-plus years. There are none so pompous as those who would tell others how to behave, and Thurber skewers them deliciously.
The second half of the book contains a collection of essays, with some short fiction and some commentary, and includes Thurber's memories of the time he spent in France during and after the first World War. My favorite essay here is about French translations of American dime novels, called "Wild Bird Hickok and His Friends." I don't know if this essay appears in any of the other Thurber collections, but it's worth seeking out. One of the few humor pieces that always makes me laugh so hard I cry.
I wouldn't recommend this as anyone's first foray into the world of James Thurber, but if you've read the more well-known collections and are still yearning for more, this one will keep you laughing.
The second half of the book contains a collection of essays, with some short fiction and some commentary, and includes Thurber's memories of the time he spent in France during and after the first World War. My favorite essay here is about French translations of American dime novels, called "Wild Bird Hickok and His Friends." I don't know if this essay appears in any of the other Thurber collections, but it's worth seeking out. One of the few humor pieces that always makes me laugh so hard I cry.
I wouldn't recommend this as anyone's first foray into the world of James Thurber, but if you've read the more well-known collections and are still yearning for more, this one will keep you laughing.
June 30, 2018
A great collection that sputters out in the middle and picks back up at the end. Thurber's musings are candid and often hilarious, and read a little more like magical realism or Denis Johnson stories than accounts of real events. Thurber's men and women tend to fit a mold, the men being emotionally inarticulate and the women being overly attentive to little details. Many of his stories, especially of the marvelous things one can see with poor eyesight and broken glasses, his memories of people he thought might be D. H. Lawrence, and an imagined scenario where he might explain leftist/socially-conscious literary criticism to an average worker, will stick with me. The first part of the collection, in which he criticizes the ridiculousness rampant in many self-help books, is solid comedic gold, and certainly the strongest part of the book.
July 22, 2022
Is happiness necessary?.
Our Founding Fathers (and Mothers) thought little about happiness, being steeped in the tradition that man is a miserable sinner living in a World of Woe and that bliss awaits The Chosen in heaven. Our Constitution promises us the freedom to PURSUE happiness, but that's as far as they were willing to go.
The current "self-help" craze started during the Great Depression, when happiness was hard to come by for most Americans. A rash of books appeared, all promising the golden secret to happiness and success. James Thurber felt compelled to take a firm stand against this nonsense and it's easy to see why. Here was a man who had achieved some level of fame and financial success by writing about misery and disasters (his own and those of others.) If everyone suddenly became happy and successful, where the hell would his material come from? You can see his point.
The first third of the book bashes the "Happiness Can Be Yours" movement. The rest is composed of essays written on the subjects that Thurber wrote essays on = marital problems (inevitable), the war between the sexes (women always win), and the uncanny ability of inanimate objects to make the author's life even more miserable than it was before.
Most appeared first in The New Yorker, except for an essay on the unnerving tendency of women to outlive men by substantial margins. Thurber suggests that eventually there will be only women left. I wonder if the editors of The New Yorker refused this article on the grounds that it went Too Far? Did they believe that female readers would be incensed or (worse) encouraged to hurry along the demise of men? We'll never know.
Those who place Thurber among the minor gods will be horrified that I'm giving this book only three stars. The fact is that I love Thurber's stories of his own life and his fables. I find his essays mildly entertaining, but not more. I got this book for a dollar or two and it was well worth buying and reading. But I won't be re-reading it, as I do "My Life and Hard Times." THAT is a classic
Our Founding Fathers (and Mothers) thought little about happiness, being steeped in the tradition that man is a miserable sinner living in a World of Woe and that bliss awaits The Chosen in heaven. Our Constitution promises us the freedom to PURSUE happiness, but that's as far as they were willing to go.
The current "self-help" craze started during the Great Depression, when happiness was hard to come by for most Americans. A rash of books appeared, all promising the golden secret to happiness and success. James Thurber felt compelled to take a firm stand against this nonsense and it's easy to see why. Here was a man who had achieved some level of fame and financial success by writing about misery and disasters (his own and those of others.) If everyone suddenly became happy and successful, where the hell would his material come from? You can see his point.
The first third of the book bashes the "Happiness Can Be Yours" movement. The rest is composed of essays written on the subjects that Thurber wrote essays on = marital problems (inevitable), the war between the sexes (women always win), and the uncanny ability of inanimate objects to make the author's life even more miserable than it was before.
Most appeared first in The New Yorker, except for an essay on the unnerving tendency of women to outlive men by substantial margins. Thurber suggests that eventually there will be only women left. I wonder if the editors of The New Yorker refused this article on the grounds that it went Too Far? Did they believe that female readers would be incensed or (worse) encouraged to hurry along the demise of men? We'll never know.
Those who place Thurber among the minor gods will be horrified that I'm giving this book only three stars. The fact is that I love Thurber's stories of his own life and his fables. I find his essays mildly entertaining, but not more. I got this book for a dollar or two and it was well worth buying and reading. But I won't be re-reading it, as I do "My Life and Hard Times." THAT is a classic
June 24, 2024
Thurber is not usually at his best with topical humor, but this collection consists of almost nothing but. The first part is, as the title signals, a group of pieces poking fun at popular self-help books of the '30s. Now, alas, they are all completely obscure: the exception that proves the rule here is Dale Carnegie's "How to Win Friends and Influence People", which is only briefly mentioned. I'm not sure if that means that Carnegie was much less well known whenever Thurber wrote these pieces -- maybe the book had only just come out when he was working on them? -- or if the qualities that gave it the staying power that the other books lacked also made it harder to make fun of. At any rate, though these pieces are amusing, Thurber is unable to do more than pique my interest in a bunch of books that I've never heard of and have no interest in. And perhaps nobody could have done it, though I would've been interested to read SJ Perelman's take, it seems much more up his alley.
The rest of the pieces are better, although increasingly overshadowed, presumably because they were published chronologically, by a feeling of impending doom due to the inevitability of war in Europe. The first two are the best, I think: "The Breaking Up of the Winships" is a quite funny story about a couple who break up due to an argument over the relative merits of Greta Garbo and Donald Duck, and "My Memories of DH Lawrence" is a brilliant parody of any "meeting the Great Man" work. "A Couple of Hamburgers" is not funny but is a cutting and clever snapshot of the ongoing breakdown of a relationship. "The Hiding Generation" is a very funny parody of self-important autobiographies. Otherwise, nothing really stands out, and a few pieces -- "Why I Hate Women", "An Outline of Scientists", "What Are The Leftists Saying?" -- are too mean-spirited to be fun. Thurber fans won't regret reading it, but this is hardly an essential book.
The rest of the pieces are better, although increasingly overshadowed, presumably because they were published chronologically, by a feeling of impending doom due to the inevitability of war in Europe. The first two are the best, I think: "The Breaking Up of the Winships" is a quite funny story about a couple who break up due to an argument over the relative merits of Greta Garbo and Donald Duck, and "My Memories of DH Lawrence" is a brilliant parody of any "meeting the Great Man" work. "A Couple of Hamburgers" is not funny but is a cutting and clever snapshot of the ongoing breakdown of a relationship. "The Hiding Generation" is a very funny parody of self-important autobiographies. Otherwise, nothing really stands out, and a few pieces -- "Why I Hate Women", "An Outline of Scientists", "What Are The Leftists Saying?" -- are too mean-spirited to be fun. Thurber fans won't regret reading it, but this is hardly an essential book.
May 16, 2020
Only the best
I adore James Thurber. Reading this book I noticed he mentioned the flu of 1918. His remark was that he remembered gargaling three times a day due to the flu outbreak. How wonderful to have kindle edition James Thurber books.
I adore James Thurber. Reading this book I noticed he mentioned the flu of 1918. His remark was that he remembered gargaling three times a day due to the flu outbreak. How wonderful to have kindle edition James Thurber books.
December 29, 2022
I prefer Thurber's short stories to his essays so this book got a bit tedious for me. The first half is about self-help books some of which I found myself reading in Robert Benchley's voice since they reminded me of some of his short films.
March 17, 2020
Pb, 1973 Printing. Good.
Read
August 9, 2021As my husband once told me shortly after we met - he had never met anyone who had so many self-help books who had obviously never read them.
January 18, 2025
Hilarious!
This book is is humorous & enlightening on the perspective of the 1930s era & social norms.
I enjoyed reading it.
This book is is humorous & enlightening on the perspective of the 1930s era & social norms.
I enjoyed reading it.
November 1, 2010
"Her smile, under her considerable mustache, was quick and savage and frightening, like a flash of lightning lighting up a ruined woods." Favorites are "The Breaking Up of the Winships" and the criticism of doing a "laughing imitation of a butler" to corral cocktail party guests into the dining room. Ahhhhh time to pick the next one up.
December 27, 2007
The first half of this book is Thurber attacking the 1930s self-help book industry, which is a pretty easy target. The short writings are great but where Thurber really shines is when he is recounting funny stories, of which there are several in this book. He had me in tears more than once.
February 11, 2013
It's not the best of Thurber's collections but it's got some classic moments in it. And it does contain probably my favourite essay, "The Admiral on the Wheel."
January 31, 2008
James Thurber exposes absurdity lurking everywhere in his world. Written 70 years ago, these essays ring just as true and funny today.
March 2, 2008
One of the first replies to the (then) growing market of 'self help' gurus. Funny.
March 28, 2009
The last self-help book you will never need...
July 10, 2009
The best critic of "self help" books ever written
February 14, 2011
Thurber is the best pop psychologist / humorist / children's book author / one-eyed hallucination sufferer.
February 11, 2015
While I appreciate the sentiment behind this book, and I adore Thurber's style, I think this work is more dated and less universal than many of his other works.
Displaying 1 - 19 of 19 reviews