New Releases by James Thurber

A book of humor and satire covers topics from baseball to Macbeth.

Tommy Turner is an English teacher at football-crazed Midwestern University. Although he is uninvolved with the politics of the day, Tommy suddenly finds himself the center of a free-speech debate on campus. An editorial in a student magazine praises him for planning to read Bartolomeo Vanzetti''s sentencing statement to his class as an example of eloquent composition, even in broken English composed by a non-professional. The school''s conservative trustees, led by Ed Keller threaten to fire Tommy if he doesn''t withdraw the reading from his lecture. The subject of free speech and Tommy''s dilemma of conscience anchor the dramatic subplot''s social significance. The lighter comic triangle plot concerns a return visit to attend the big football game by Joe Ferguson, a former football hero and onetime love interest of Turner''s wife Ellen. Joe is recently divorced and he rekindles Ellen''s romantic notions at the very moment when her marriage to Tommy is being tested by the events on campus.

Many of his short stories are humorous fictional memoirs from his life, but he also wrote darker material. The Middle-Aged Man on the Flying Trapeze features several short stories with a tense undercurrent of marital discord. The book was published the year of his divorce and remarriage.

In 1923, the young reporter James Thurber was given a half a page in the Sunday Evening Dispatch of Columbus, Ohio, every week to fill with anything he wanted. For most of that year, he turned out book reviews, humorous commentary, jokes, stories, and even literary criticism. He also wrote a series of 13 short Sherlockian parodies — 10,000 words in all — starring Blue Ploermell, a “psychosocial” detective with a fondness for animal crackers. Aided (and occasionally impeded) by his Chinese manservant, Gong Low, Ploermell investigates cases marked by his cock-eyed deductions, loopy logic, and a knack for leaping to the wrong conclusion. These juvenilia represents Thurber’s first attempts at learning the craft of humor writing. Looking back at this work years later, he even considered publishing the Ploermell stories. The Cases of Blue Ploermell, for the first time in a century, collects the 13 stories. Edited and annotated by Bill Peschel, they show Thurber trying his hand at characterization, story structure, ethnic humor, and serial writing in a style rarely seen at any newspaper. In addition to the annotations, Peschel wrote essays on Thurber’s years in Columbus, Ohio; journalism in the 1920s; the state of Sherlockian parodies; and depictions of Chinese men and women in American popular culture. Note: The 13 stories are very short, and take up 40 pages of this 200-page book. The rest of the book consists of these essays: “Becoming James Thurber” (39 pages); “Journalism in Thurber’s Time” (4 pages); “Sherlockian Parodies in the 1920s” (8 pages); “The Ancestors of Gong Low” (13 pages); “The Chinese in Popular Culture” (35 pages); movie reviews (19 pages); chronology (9 pages); lists (7 pages). SHORT DESCRIPTION: In 1923, a young James Thurber wrote 13 short Sherlockian parodies (10,000 words) for his newspaper in Columbus, Ohio. They starred Blue Ploermell, a “psychosocial” detective with a fondness for animal crackers. Aided by his Chinese manservant, he solves cases with his cock-eyed deductions and a knack for leaping to the wrong conclusion. This book contains the stories plus essays about Thurber.