Description
Good+ dust jacket has rub wear at corners and spine, 1″ tear at bottom of spine, price clipped some soiling. Very Good+ binding is light green paper over boards, dark green cloth-backed, gilt lettering on the spine. Several back line illustrations within. The binding is tight and pages are clean. The book measures 8.6″ tall x 5.9″ wide.
About the book (from the dust jacket)
Next to pleasure, which we have come to expect from James Thurber, reassurance is his principal get to his readers in this book: the reassurance that somebody (Thurber) is still sane, and that he still cares enough about our world and certain of its works, notably our once sweet English tongue, to go on fighting for their slim chance of survival.
Many of the pieces here, none of which has ever before appeared in book form, are concerned with exposing the frightful losses which our language has already suffered without anyone noticing. Like Churchill in the thirties, or Paul Revere Suage has in the seventies, it will not be Thurber’s fault if we fail to recognize that the enemy) is within our gates. “Such a Phrase as Drifts Through Dreams, The Spreading ‘You Know,”” “Conversation Piece; Connecticut,” send out their shafts of light like brave red lanterns marking an abyss of mangled meanings. “And so they decided to leave it where sleeping dogs lie,” somebody’s mother-in-law explains. “You don’t even have to not be Gloria Mundy announces confidently, And all about us sounds the hideous hum home, Miss of nouns or adjectives being converted into verbs (the market firms its losses) while transitive and intransitive are pulped together into magazines or books that read easily.” Lance at the ready light held high, Thurber charges the witless hosts of chaos.
Lanterns and Lances provides further reassurance in what someone is bound to call an affirmation as opposed to accusative, vein In “The Wings of Henry James,” for example, Thurber uses English as it should be used, and his mind for what minds were meant for, to produce wholly extraordinary appraisal of that much-a discussed genius. After that one, no reader is going to doubt that people and the English language are worth saving. All the way through, of course, laughter infiltrates these pages-sometimes exploding with lunatic delight as in “Midnight at Tim’s Place, sometimes fraught with pity as when Thurber goes down to defeat at the hands of a child fiend named Mandy, or tries, hopelessly, to confine the wandering attention of `Alice Groper, who should her martinis. Laughter burbles watch through the “self-help” pieces: “How to Get Through the Day,” how to conquer insomnia keep authors from fighting at a party. how to. And as for “sheer wit-it flashes everywhere in Lanterns and Lances, puncturing poppycock and lighting up dark places.
About the author (from the dust jacket)
JAMES THURBER was born in Columbus, Ohio, and attended Ohio State University. After working for the State Department he became a newspaper reporter. In 1927 he joined the staff of The New Yorker, and was a frequent contributor to that magazine and many others. Is Sex Necessary?, written in collaboration with E. B. White, was published in 1929 and was the first appearance between covers of his drawings. Mr. Thurber describes himself as “cartoonist, writer, playwright.” His many successful books include Fables for Our Time, My Life and, Hard Times, The Seal in the Bedroom, The Thurber Carnival, Alarms and Diversions, and The Years with Ross. With Elliott Nugent he wrote the play. The Male Animal. Under the title A Thurber Carnival Mr. Thurber adapted sketches from his published works for a unique and very successful Broadway entertainment.
