Thurber Tonight: About Wolcott Gibbs

If the cut-off signature in the lower-right corner of the jacket front looks familiar, it is indeed that of "Chas Addams," who's credited on the inside flap with the jacket design, which as you can see wraps around to the spine.

"Mr. Thurber has . . . a romantic heart that has enabled him to think of his place of business as the most picturesque establishment in publishing history. This is a touching illusion, and I hesitate to correct it."

-- Wolcott Gibbs, in his foreword to the 1958
anthology of his writing, More in Sorrow

by Ken

In last night's concluding installment of the opening chapter of Thurber's The Years with Ross, the author wrote about the aftermath of his transformation from Central Desk editorial "miracle man" to "dime a dozen" writer:

"I became one of the trio about whom [Ross] fretted and fussed continually -- the others were Andy White and Wolcott Gibbs. . . . Once, and only once, he took White and Gibbs and me to lunch at the Algonquin, with all the fret and fuss of a mother hen trying to get her chicks across a main thoroughfare. Later, back at the office, I heard him saying to someone on the phone, 'I just came from lunch with three writers who couldn't have got back to the office alone.'"

I'm not sure how well-known even White would be today if he hadn't found his way into the publishing big time with his children's books (Stuart Little, Charlotte's Web, and The Trumpet of the Swan -- all of which I have to confess I've always found all but unreadable). Gibbs today is hardly known, except in the form of pieces written by people wondering why he's so little known.

Eventually we're going to get around to some of Gibbs's own writing (as everybody who writes about him notes, it doesn't hold up all that well on its own, at least not without a certain amount of context or explanatory background), but tonight, simply in partial answer to the question "Who the heck was Wolcott Gibbs?," we have three documents: short ones by Thurber on Gibbs and by Gibbs on Thurber, and then the obituary White wrote for The New Yorker upon Gibbs's death.


FOR TONIGHT'S CIRCULAR RECOLLECTIONS
OF/BY THURBER, GIBBS & WHITE, CLICK HERE


TOMORROW NIGHT: either a sample of Gibbs's own writing, or some notes on the rift between Thurber and the Whites


THURBER TONIGHT (now including BENCHLEY TONIGHT and WILL CUPPY TONIGHT): Check out the series to date

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