Thurber Tonight: An encore presentation of "The Curb in the Sky"

AN ANTHOLOGIST CAN'T PLEASE EVERYONE, BUT --: As you can see from this June post, I wasn't pleased to discover that Garrison Keillor, editor of the Library of America Thurber volume, had omitted "The Curb in the Sky" (along with the whole of "The Ladies' and Gentlemen's Guide to Polite English Usage"). -- Ken

Again,* from "The War Between Men and Women"
(and again, you can click on it to enlarge it)

[*The previous night's post, noted below, which featured "The Topaz Cufflinks Mystery," had also come with a drawing from "The War Between Men and Women." -- Ed.]

"When Dorothy grew up she became quite pretty and so even more of a menace. Gentlemen became attracted to her and then attached to her. Emotionally she stirred them, but mentally she soon began to wear them down."

-- from "The Curb in the Sky"

by Ken

Tuesday night I described "The Curb in the Sky" as "seriously amusing but also strikingly, ineffably poignant." As compared with last night's "The Topaz Cufflinks Mystery," another tale of a, shall we say, "unintact" marriage, this one falls on the other side of the invisible line that, as I put it, "once you've stepped over, you've overstepped."

I noticed in Keith Olbermann's "Fridays with Thurber" reading of "The Greatest Man in the World" that he announced at the outset that he was reading as always from the Library of America edition of Thurber Writings and Drawings edited by Garrison Keillor. I guess it's a useful book, with so much swell stuff included, but one of the first things I discovered when I finally acquired a copy a year or two ago was the omission of what I consider one of the most essential Thurber texts, "The Ladies' and Gentlemen's Guide to Modern English Usage" (from The Owl in the Attic).

Now, looking at the online contents listing for the LoA volume (somehow or other I quickly managed to misplace my copy), I'm shocked, shocked, to discover that "The Curb in the Sky" is omitted! Now I love Garrison Keillor immoderately (didn't I just quote him at length the other night?), but jeepers, to not include "The Curb in the Sky"? What the dickens was he using for brains?


DON'T LISTEN TO THAT DOPE KEILLOR! TO
READ "THE CURB IN THE SKY," CLICK HERE


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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