Alarms & Diversions

What fun it is to visit an old friend. I stumbled upon "The Secret Life of Walter Mitty"? in my grade school years, and soon discovered this book on my parents' bookshelves. It has recently returned to me, part of the distribution of objects from the homestead when my Mother moved to the mountains. Thurber's style and language are antique but his enthusiasm and inquisitive nature remain fresh. He was a masterful, inventive and whimsical essayist, and his cartoons are still paradoxically light and dark at once. He was a humorist never far from the grim. After my forty years between, immersed in televisionisms and mushy prose, it is a delight to re-read one of the 20th Century's great stylists. In tackling word butchery, he writes: "The word 'insecurity' by the way, seems to have been taken over by the psychiatrists as their personal property. In politics, as in penology, 'security' itself has come to mean 'insecurity.' Take for example, this sentence: 'He was considered a 'maximum security' prisoner because of his police record and was never allowed out of his cell block.' ... "... I could prove that 'maximum' in the case of the prisoner mentioned above, really means 'minimum,' but I don't want to get us in so deep that we can't get out." And later he writes: "'It's a bad city to get something in your eye in,' the nurse said. 'Yes,' the interne agreed, 'but there isn't a better place to get something in your eye out in.' I rushed past them with my hair in my wild eyes, and left the hospital." Everyday people, politicos, crooks (and crooked politicos), the battle between the sexes, literature, modern art -- all fall under his wild eye and practiced hand. If you haven't read Thurber in a while, get thee to a library and sample one or two. Like a wine tasting, it will leave your palate cleansed.