In Conversations with James Thurber, this remarkable man who has been called America's twentieth-century Mark Twain and who was one of the great talkers of his time expresses his opinions on just about everything and recounts stories and anecdotes about his life which provided the basis for much of his humor. In this captivating anthology of interviews with a great American humorist, James Thurber can be heard again, sharing his memories and insights and regaling us with his wit and imagination. These interviews span 22 years, from 1939 to 1961. In them Thurber recalls his youth in Columbus, Ohio, his struggles as a student at Ohio State University and his days of literary and journalistic apprenticeship in Europe as a code clerk and newspaperman who had to recreate entire articles from a few words of coded copy provided by the wire services. ...Thurber tells too, of his early days in New York city when joined the staff of The New Yorker, of the origins of his drawings, of the pleasures that word games and mental puzzles gave him, and of his increasing blindness and its effect on his work and his perceptions of the world. In these pages one can hear Thurber again and can visualize the Thurber men, the Thurber women, the Thurber dogs and the Thurber drawings as he reveals his own unique world and his interactions with it.