Thurber Tonight: Part 3 of "A Dime a Dozen" from "The Years with Ross"

So far in this opening chapter of The Years with Ross, Thurber has explained that The New Yorker's founding editor, who considered writers "a dime a dozen," bizarrely hired him to be one of his long series of editorial geniuses who by magic would make the magazine appear each week with effortless brilliance and perfection. It quickly became clear to Thurber how badly suited he was to this role; the trouble was getting Ross to understand. When he did, the whole relationship changed. -- Ken

"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.'"

-- Thurber, in "A Dime a Dozen"

FOR OUR THIRD AND FINAL INSTALLMENT
OF "A DIME A DOZEN," CLICK HERE


TOMORROW NIGHT: About Wolcott Gibbs (including Thurber on Gibbs, Gibbs on Thurber, and The New Yorker's obituary of Gibbs by E. B. White)


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

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