Thurber Tonight: Keith Olbermann reads "The Greatest Man in the World," Part 1

Keith Olbermann reads Part 1 of Thurber's "The Greatest Man in the World."

by Ken

As I mentioned in the "postscript" to our reading of Ring Lardner's "Champion,": "With 'Champion' under our belts we've got an obvious segue" to Thurber's "The Greatest Man in the World."

I noticed that Keith Olbermann did a reading of the story in his "Fridays with Thurber" series on Countdown, in three parts -- of which the third, if I understand his introduction correctly, appeared only online because of a scheduling crunch. Believe it or not, I've never seen any of Keith's Thurber spots till now. (I guess Countdown didn't often figure in my Friday night routines, such are they are.) But naturally a number of people have mentioned to them, and I've long been aware that Keith also has a passion for such luminaries as Jean Shepherd and Bob and Ray, and had the good fortune and good sense to get to know Bob Elliott, one of my personal heroes. So it all kind of fits together.

Anyway, since Keith has already done a ton of heavy lifting on "The Greatest Man in the World," and since the three parts of his reading are available online, I thought I'd defer to him on this one. Here's Part 1, with Part 2 to follow tomorrow night and Part 3 on Tuesday.

(I find it interesting that the 1969-70 series My World and Welcome to It, in which William Window played a Thurber-like writer enduring Thurber-like situations, was Keith's turn-on to Thurber. I wish I was as enthusiastic about the show, which seemed to me to have about the same relationship to actual Thurber as the fictional Alan Brady Show depicted on The Dick Van Dyke Show did to the Sid Caesar shows on which series creator Carl Reiner distantly based it, by a process known as "white-breading." I swear, that, when I thought up this analogy, I had no recollection that My World and Welcome to It like The Dick Van Dyke Show was produced by Sheldon Leonard's production company.)


THURBER TONIGHT (including BENCHLEY, WILL CUPPY, WOLCOTT GIBBS, RING LARDNER, BOB AND RAY, E. B. WHITE, and JEAN SHEPHERD TONIGHT): Check out the series to date

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