Books in Brief: The Clocks of Columbus

The Clocks of Columbus: The Literary Career of James Thurber, by Charles S. Holmes (Atheneum, 360 pp., $10). More, really, than you ever wanted to know about Thurber—the whole life and oeuvre, cut up and neatly arranged, and delivered in solemn professorese. Holmes loves Thurber not wisely but too thoroughly; he would have his reader do the same. Myself, I’ll take the short pieces, leave the goddam fairy tales alone, and continue to regard Thurber as all in all an unattractive genius. Like Beethoven.

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The Clocks of Columbus: The Literary Career of James Thurber, by Charles S. Holmes (Atheneum, 360 pp., $10). More, really, than you ever wanted to know about Thurber—the whole life and oeuvre, cut up and neatly arranged, and delivered in solemn professorese. Holmes loves Thurber not wisely but too thoroughly; he would have his reader do the same. Myself, I’ll take the short pieces, leave the goddam fairy tales alone, and continue to regard Thurber as all in all an unattractive genius. Like Beethoven.