Thurberville

by Bob Hunter

James Thurber’s Columbus was not today’s Columbus—or even yesterday’s. It was a Columbus he both knew and created, a place perched on the fringe of reality and the fringe of his imagination. It is the place Bob Hunter revisits in  Thurberville , a book where the author separates truth from fiction and identifies what parts of the famous humorist’s hometown of 180,000 exist in the burgeoning metro area of more than two million today.
Thurber’s Columbus was a wild and crazy place, a city full of fascinating and sometimes peculiar characters, many in his own family. Because of the widespread popularity of his stories, that was also the Columbus that many of his readers around the world came to know.
Thurberville  chronicles those characters and explores that world. But it also examines the real city where Thurber struggled and then blossomed as a college student, worked as a newspaper reporter and a press agent, and achieved international fame as a humorist and cartoonist after he left town, in part by writing about the subjects he left behind.
Much of Thurber’s best work was cultivated by experiences Thurber had in Columbus and in his dealings with family, friends, teachers, and acquaintances there. They are worth a revisit and, in some cases, an introduction.
 

344 pages, Paperback

Published April 28, 2017

Reviews

[Mike]

Well-researched history of Thurber and his Columbus adventures and cohorts.

NOTES:
2... the Get Ready Man (end of the world warner)
142... The Male Animal ... a football-crazed populace
161... footballer Chic Harley
170... Prof Taylor ... Bellows, Henry James
193... missing O Henry mss
234... Billy Ireland profile
238... hired Milt Caniff
239... fell in Buckeye Lake w/president Harding
242... ObscureHollywood.net
285... Deshler hotel at Broad & High ... wrote some of Further Fables there
288... The Night the Ghost Got In
302... Doral Chenoweth ... grilled cheese sandwiches at the Club Restaurant
311... Green Lawn cemetery
Rickenbacker is there ... owned Indy Speedway, CEO Eastern Airlines
EB White ... the extravagance of his clowning
314... Buckeye Lake photo

[Mark Singer]

I haven’t read Thurber since high school. But As someone who has spent 60 of his 66 years in Columbus I was fascinated by this exploration of Columbus during the early part of the last century.