The Middle-Aged Man on the Flying Trapeze by James Thurber

Source of book: I own this.

 

I have been a fan of James Thurber since I first read “The Secret Life of Walter Mitty” way back in the day - I think I must have been Jr. High aged? In any case, I started collecting other Thurber books, and have read quite a bit here and there, but mostly before I started the blog. (Because that was a lot of my life before I started blogging, mostly.) I have previously blogged about The 13 Clocks and Alarms and Diversions. I also should mention that my early favorite essay collection, Lanterns and Lances, remains one of Thurber’s best, and is one of the reasons that I decided to give Henry James a try.  

 

The Middle-Aged Man on the Flying Trapeze is one of Thurber’s earlier collections, and thus, unlike the other two mentioned above, it doesn’t have quite as much of the cranky old man vibe. Well, it is still there, but not as fully developed as it would become. 

 

As with any Thurber collection, the essays are literally all over the place. Want an alternative history, where General Grant gets all sloshed before Appomattox, and inadvertently surrenders to Lee? Thurber did that. (And it is pretty funny.) Want a loving tribute to one of Thurber’s many canine companions? Oh yes there is one in here. (I literally have a collection of all Thurber’s dog writings, and it makes for a full book - he loved him some doggos.) How about a humorous account of his failed attempt to hire a temporary housekeeper for his place in Martha’s Vineyard, but she turns out to be impossibly neurotic and disappears? Yeah, back when ordinary writers could afford to have a place there. 

 

Or how about a dark farce, where a man decides to off his wife - and she cooperates knowing fully what he is doing? (It is a lot funnier than it sounds, and the story ends before any bloodshed.) And also, crazy, conspiracy-theory-obsessed aunts! A guy named Jad Peters who considers himself impossibly lucky - and collects souvenirs for every bit of luck….until he is struck by a rock and killed. And his widow dutifully places the rock with the other stuff. 

 

I also liked the one entitled “How to See a Bad Play,” which includes a diagram for a typical “multiple characters play musical chairs while having a dramatic dialogue” scene. I haven’t seen a whole lot of bad plays, honestly, but Thurber sure nails it with this one. 

 

And the collection ends with “A Box to Hide In,” which is surely the most introvert idea ever. 

 

I want to quote a few of the essays, of course. The first is also a favorite, “There’s an Owl in My Room,” which is not so much about owls, as about pigeons. And Gertrude Stein. Specifically, her famous passage about pigeons on the grass. Here is how it begins:

 

I saw Gertrude Stein on the screen of a newsreel theatre one afternoon and I heard her read that famous passage of hers about pigeons on the grass, alas (the sorrow is, as you know, Miss Stein’s). After reading about the pigeons on the grass, alas, Miss Stein said, “this is as simple description of a landscape I have seen many times.” I don’t really believe that that is true. Pigeons on the grass alas may be a simple description of Miss Stein’s own consciousness, but it is not a simple description of a plot of grass on which pigeons have alighted, are alighting, or are going to alight. A truly simple description of the pigeons alighting on the grass of the Luxembourg Gardens (which, I believe, is where the pigeons alighted) would say of the pigeons alighting there only that they were pigeons alighting. Pigeons that alight anywhere are neither sad pigeons nor gay pigeons, they are simply pigeons.

It is neither just nor accurate to connect the word alas with pigeons. Pigeons are definitely not alas. They have nothing to do with alas and they have nothing to do with hooray (not even when you tie red, white, and blue ribbons on them and let them loose at band concerts); they have nothing to do with mercy me or isn’t that fine, either….I happen to have studied the effect, or rather the lack of effect, of pigeons very carefully. A number of pigeons alight from time to time on the sill of my hotel window when I am eating breakfast and staring out the window. They never alas me, they never make me feel alas; they never make me feel anything.

 

I am an avid birder, but I am with Thurber rather than Stein here. Pigeons are about as “just there” as birds can be. They are pretty dang dumb too. Any bird can get run over and killed by a car traveling at highway speeds. It takes a pigeon to get hit by a slowly moving bicycle. Emotions in general are not their thing. They have the basic morality of seagulls, but with none of the craftiness. If you want bird drama, go with Scrub Jays, or Acorn Woodpeckers.

 

Interestingly, Thurber is not the only city-dwelling writer of his generation to have written an essay about pigeons. E. B. White observed them, and wrote a rather compelling bit about what he saw. 

 

I also want to quote a bit from “The Topaz Cufflinks Mystery,” an amusing story about a bet between a husband and wife about the reflectiveness of human eyes in car headlights. Yeah, that’s a bit…odd…but very Thurber. Here is how it begins. 

 

When the motorcycle cop came roaring up, unexpectedly, out of Never-Never Land (the way motorcycle cops do), the man was on his hands and knees in the long grass beside the road, barking like a dog. The woman was driving slowly along in a car that stopped about eighty feet away; its headlights shone on the man: middle-aged, bewildered, sedentary. He got to his feet. 

 

Classic Thurber. 

 

The final one I will mention is a rather dark one, “One is a Wanderer,” about loneliness. A man wanders the streets and drinks himself into a stupor. He thinks about the woman who told him he was “unbearable,” as well as the various couples he knows who make him feel like the odd man out. The line that I found interesting is that at one point gives he inflicts on the poor waiter the platitude advice if he wants to be happy, “There’s a simple trick to it. You just shut up and get married.” Which, as a divorce attorney, is pretty ludicrous. It seems in every Thurber collection, there is one of these achingly sad tales - I think Thurber suffered from depression, in no small part due to his early blindness and constant struggles with insomnia. (Lanterns and Lances contains some brilliant depictions of a mind that won’t stop running in circles instead of sleeping.)  While not as funny as his humor, these ring true, and show more of the man himself, perhaps, than the satires. 

 

While this collection wasn’t quite as good as Thurber’s best, it was good. I definitely had to read it while I myself am in middle age, of course. There isn’t a wrong place to start for Thurber, although I think Fables For Our Times is pretty timeless. And, of course, there is nothing like the droll fairy tale, The 13 Clocks, which should be read to all children sometime, in my opinion. In any case, though, Thurber is one of those 20th Century writers who should be better known.