![]() Yes, my grandfather was always giving his drawings away, especially to family members. Ross’s portrait, framed by my mom, has always hung in our house, which is kind of funny, but then it’s true that he’s an interesting-looking person.ĭid Rosemary grow up with drawings from her dad? She met Harold Ross, the magazine’s first editor, whom she had lunch with and sees as a larger-than-life character. Father and daughter both had this fondness for black standard poodles, which they always said were the smartest dogs.Īfter her parents’ divorce, my mom would spend summers in Connecticut with Thurber and Helen, and she would also sometimes visit her dad in New York. Later, after my grandparents’ divorce, when my mother was away at school, her new beloved poodle went to live with my grandfather and his second wife, Helen, in West Cornwall, Connecticut. Thurber wrote a thoughtful note to her when the dog had to be put down. When my mother, Rosemary, was a child, they had a prize-winning black standard poodle, Medba, who lived until my mother was about eight. At some point, I ran across a letter that mentioned they had fourteen dogs at home. My grandmother, Althea, Thurber’s first wife, raised and showed dogs, mostly Scotties but also poodles. No one knew exactly what was the matter with him, and Thurber’s mother would have to go around apologizing at Christmastime, giving chocolates to an ever-growing list of people that the dog had harmed or challenged. One of them, Muggs, came out of the basement and chased people down. She raised a lot of dogs who were famous in the neighborhood. “Probably no one man should have as many dogs in his life as I have had, but there was more pleasure than distress in them for me except in the case of an Airedale named Muggs” is how he starts “The Dog That Bit People,” a story in what we’d now call his autofiction, “ My Life and Hard Times.” His mother, Mame, was quite a character. Tell me about the Thurber family and dogs. For the September 4, 2023, issue, I talked to Thurber’s granddaughter, Sara Sauers, a book artist herself, who gathered her own and her mother’s recollections of growing up in the orbit of the great artist and writer. (It used to be more leaden and dialogic.) His simple line drawings-in contrast with painterly images more common to the times-and waggish humor also made way for the eerie and fanciful later work of William Steig and ultimately for the refinement of Saul Steinberg’s sharp wit. Thurber invented the one-liner gag cartoon as we know it today. These drawings bred the humor that defined The New Yorker in its early years they endure in their brilliance. (Gottlieb called him “first, last, and always a writer.”) Nonetheless, Gottlieb also called Thurber’s “amazing, outlandish” cartoons the “unquestionable achievement” of his career. ![]() ![]() Harold Ross, The New Yorker’s co-founder and editor, hired Thurber in 1927 he was, as Robert Gottlieb wrote, “a crucial element in the magazine’s development.” He was an inadvertent cartoonist. ![]()
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |