Tag Archives: James Thurber

You Can’t Say ‘Hello’ Without ‘O’

Callie Feyen writes about James Thurber’s The Wonderful O, in which a sailor named Black hates the letter O. She says it’s terribly funny.

Despite Black’s efforts, the people of Ooroo bring O back. They do it by speaking the names of characters in beloved stories: Romeo, Robin Hood, Shylock, and Captain Hook. Black scoffs at their efforts; these characters, he says, are mere creatures of fantasy, made of ink, and “ink can be destroyed . . . books can be burned.”

(via Prufrock News)

New James Thurber Story Published

A mock Western written by an eighteen-year-old James Thurber was found in an archive and has been unleashed on the world in the Strand magazine.

“This was the first time Thurber tried his hand at penning a satirical story in the wild west, which features a gun-slinging bartender, a couple of wild bullies, and a very odd sheriff,” said Andrew Gulli of the Strand.

That sheriff in “How Law and Order Came to Aramie” is like a pre-incarnation of Thurber’s Walter Mitty.

Gulli said the story “uses every single western cliche and, in Thurber style, turns them all into something very funny.”

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James Thurber's Guide to English Usage

[first posted October 22, 2004] In an earlier post, I referred to this collection of useful usage articles by James Thurber. On the question of using “bad” or “badly” within a sentence like “I feel bad(ly),” Thurber advises not to use either word.

There is, of course, a special problem presented by the type of person who looks well even when he doesn’t feel well, and who is not likely to be believed if he says he doesn’t feel well. In such cases, the sufferer should say, “I look well, but I don’t feel well.” While this usage has the merit of avoiding the troublesome words “bad” and “badly,” it also has the disadvantage of being a negative statement. If a person is actually ill, the important thing is to find out not how he doesn’t feel, but how he does feel. He should state his symptoms more specifically—“I have a gnawing pain here, that comes and goes,” or something of the sort. There is always the danger, of course, that one’s listeners will cut in with a long description of how they feel; this can usually be avoided by screaming.