Thurber Tonight: Part 1 of "A Dime a Dozen" from "The Years with Ross"

"Ross was never conscious of his dramatic gestures, or of his natural gift of theatrical speech. At times he seemed to be on stage, and you half expected the curtain to fall on such an agonized tagline as 'God, how I pity me!' . . .

"He once found out that I had done an impersonation of him for a group of his friends at Dorothy Parker's apartment, and he called me into his office. 'I hear you were imitating me last night, Thurber,' he snarled. 'I don't know what the hell there is to imitate -- go ahead and show me.' All this time his face was undergoing its familiar changes of expression and his fingers were flying."

-- Thurber, in "A Dime a Dozen," the opening
chapter of his memoir The Years with Ross

In the foreword to The Years with Ross, his account of "various aspects of the life and career" of the founding editor of The New Yorker, Harold W. Ross (1892-1951), based on his own 24-year association with Ross, Thurber explains:

This book began as a series of a few pieces for the Atlantic Monthly, but it soon became clear to me that the restless force named Harold Wallace Ross could not be so easily confined and contained. What set out to be a summer task of reminiscence turned out to be an ordeal of love. I say ordeal, not only because of the considerable research that had to be done, over a period of a year and a half, but because the writing of the pieces necessitated my dealing with so many friends and colleagues, whom I had to bother continually. I need not have worried about this, for, without exception, everyone I turned to for opinion and guidance and help seemed to drop everything and come running to my assistance. There are far too many of them to list here, but their names and their contributions to this collection of memories sparkle on almost every page.

From the very beginning of the enterprise, I determined that it should not become a formal schematic biography, of the kind that begins: "There was joy in the home of George and Ida Ross that November day in 1892 when their son Harold was born, and emitted his first cries of discontent and helplessness," and then proceeds, step by step, and year by year, to trace the career of the subject up until the day of his death. This book, perversely perhaps, begins with the death of its subject. The pattern is not one of strict and familiar chronological order, and the unity I have striven for, whether I have achieved it or not, is one of effect. I have taken up various aspects of the life and career of H. W. Ross, and treated each one as an entity in itself. The separate pieces are not progressive chapters, and the reader may pick up Ross at any point, beginning with any of the installments. Each one runs a deliberately planned gamut of time, in which the scheme is one of flashbacks and flashforwards.

The dedication of the book is:

To Frank Sullivan

Master of humor, newspaperman, good companion, friend to Ross, this book is dedicated with the love and admiration I share with everybody who knows him.

We last encountered Frank Sullivan via the affectionate introduction he wrote for the posthumous collection of pieces by his friend Robert Benchley, Chips Off the Old Benchley, in which he suggested that, given the frenetic nature of Benchley's dealings with his bank, "I should like to have seen this book enriched by a piece called 'Banking With Benchley' by the Bankers' Trust Company."

In the foreword to The Years with Ross, as we've seen, Thurber writes of the unstinting cooperation he received from the many New Yorker colleagues he consulted in the course of his research and preparation for the book. However, as the Atlantic Monthly pieces began appearing, even before the book's publication in 1959, he seems to have been surprised by the deeply unappreciative response of his old colleagues Andy (E.B.) and Katharine White. The rift between Thurber and the Whites had been a long time in the making, but The Years with Ross seems to have hardened it into an estrangement, which I hope we'll be able to look at a little as this miniseries unfolds.


TO READ OUR FIRST INSTALLMENT
OF "A DIME A DOZEN," CLICK HERE


TOMORROW NIGHT, IN PART 2 OF "A DIME A DOZEN":

We learn about Ross's dream of "a Central Desk at which an infallible omniscience would sit, a dedicated genius, out of Technology by Mysticism, effortlessly controlling and coordinating editorial personnel, contributors, office boys, cranks and other visitors, manuscripts, proofs, cartoons, captions, covers, fiction, poetry, and facts, and bringing forth each Thursday a magazine at once funny, journalistically sound, and flawless," and about the mostly wildly ill-suited people, like Thurber, he hired to fill the role of this genius.


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

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