Remember Laughter: A Life of James Thurber Neil A. Grauer University of Nebraska 204 pp. $20.00 Review by William Corbett Featured in BBR May1995 Most biographies by and about Americans are plump as oven-stuffer roasting turkeys. Big books must mean big lives. Of course this is nonsense, but slim biographies appear so seldom that nonsense prevails. In 1994, the 100th anniversary of James Thurber's birth (the day is December 8th) Neil A. Grauer, a first-time biographer, has given us his biography-which totals merely 204 pages. It is an affectionate and gracefully written book, full of its subject because, in part, it does not bury him in excessive detail. Grauer knows that humorists do not age well. Who, after all, remembers Artemus Ward, Petroleum V. Nasby or the Marlboro Man of my college years, Max Shulman? Precious few, and the reason for this may be that when it comes to humor, you simply have to be there. To counter this, Grauer quotes Mark Twain, "Humor must not professedly teach, and must not professedly preach, but it must do both if it would live forever. By forever, I mean thirty years." Since Grauer finds most of Thurber's books in print 30 years after his death he takes it that Thurber has met Twain's standard. Twain's "teach and preach" suggest that humor flourishes the most where it serves satire-a form, in any case, that Americans do not excel at. Thurber was no satirist. He did have fun in his life, and the fun was largely made out of words. (He had bad times too, recounted in the sad abundance in which Thurber found them.) A son of Columbus, Ohio in the early decades of this century, Thurber first worked as a newspaperman, a typical first step for writers in those days. Like other would-be writers of his generation, Thurber expatriated himself to Europe; and, like most of those who did, he returned to the United States-New York City in his case-with few prospects. Harold Ross' The New Yorker rescued him, a gesture Thurber repaid by contributing to the magazine's success before William Shawn's somewhat dour reign and Tina Brown's current hyperchic. (The reader ought to beware that he will not find any of the fun in Thurber's life recounted in this review. I do not want to spoil any of the jokes and hijinks in this book, nor do I want to present Thurber as the clown he feared his fame had made him.) The New Yorker became a nearly ideal forum for Thurber, and there his work flourished as he published the drawings, stories and bits of autobiography-the work that earned him fame and honor. Alas, it also earned him the tag of humorist-after which, in this country at least, the next stop is the dustbin. This disturbed Thurber a great deal and compounded the physical troubles (Grauer points out that Thurber wrote the lion's share of his books after he became legally blind) and alcoholism that cursed his last years. But this tag also compelled Thurber to think and write about the essence of his art. To Max Eastman, Thurber defined humor as "a kind of emotional chaos told about calmly and quietly in retrospect." He knew, as Grauer emphasizes, that we are funny "in the face of the Awful." It is this knowledge that gives Thurber's work the bottom that it has, but Grauer goes too far in bringing up Dostoyevsky and Kierkegaard in reference to the above quotes. Indeed, the one defect in this otherwise admirable book is Grauer's attempt to convince the reader that Thurber belongs in a company far beyond him. Kierkegaard and Thurber in the same breath is a joke, one that can only diminish Thurber. That said, let me also say that Grauer is not mounting a campaign to elevate Thurber to the top of Parnassus. His deep affection for the man comes through, allowing the reader to feel carried along by his nimble prose and not argued into a corner. It seems appropriate that this book's last word is "gift," for Grauer is generous in giving Thurber (and the writers around him, such as E.B. White) to his readers and only occasionally overemphasizes the man's brilliance. It must also be said that while this book is modest in size it is illustrated with photographs and with Thurber's inimitable, childlike drawings. For those who have heard of Thurber and want to know something of his life, this book will prove indispensable. It will also please and inform those who know Thurber's work and wish to be reminded of the man behind it. William Corbett is a poet who lives in Boston, MA. &copy1995. Boston Book Review. All rights reserved.

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