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Big Time. Not long after Ross hired him, Thurber was puzzled to find that he had a secretary, which he had never heard of a reporter having; he supposed that things were different on magazines. He was amazed when she handed him the office weekly payroll to sign, and the fine print of the "Goings On" department to check and okay. He asked her why, and her answer left him thunderstruck. "Because you're the managing editor," she said.
In that era, New Yorker managing editors had a life expectancy hardly greater than that of May flies. In addition to hiring & firing managing editors, Ross was combating his restlessness by having the office walls torn down. The editorial floor was cluttered with scaffolding; workmen bashed out plaster and lath with sledge hammers and crowbars; a chalky haze permeated the halls, assailing-the lungs of staff and visiting contributors.
Thurber wanted to write. He hated being managing editor, but Ross kept encouraging him. Once in an editorial conference, Ross snarled, "This week's issue has more mistakes in it than any we ever published. Who's responsible?" Hope rising in his breast, Thurber shot up his hand. "Good," Ross said. "Only honest managing editor I ever had."
Thurber stood it for six months and, in spite of his misery as an executive, managed to write seven pieces that were accepted, but for which he did not get paid. At last Ross said, "I guess you're a writer. All right then, goddammit, write." So Thurber continued to write pieces and, in addition, he and White and one legman for 7½ straight years got out "The Talk of the Town," which, nowadays, requires virtually a platoon. Between them, White and Thurber pretty much set the tone of the magazine that Ross had created.
Thurber learned a great deal from White, and he is the first to acknowledge the debt. "I learned more about writing from White than from anybody," he has said. "He taught me to write a simple declarative sentence. I still send my things to him to read."
World of His Own. Of his old colleague, White has written: "Most writers would be glad to settle for any one of ten of Thurber's accomplishments. He has written the funniest memoirs, fables, reports, satires, fantasies, complaints, fairy tales and sketches of the past 20 years, has gone into the drama and the cinema, and on top of that has littered the world with thousands of drawings. Most writers and artists can be compared fairly easily with contemporaries. Thurber inhabits a world of his own.
"When I first knew him, his mind was unbelievably restless and made him uncomfortable at all hours. Now, almost 25 years later, I can't see that it lias relaxed. He still pulls at his hair and trembles all over, as though he were about to sell his first piece. His thoughts have always been a tangle of baseball scores, Civil War tactical problems, Henry James, personal maladjustments, terrier puppies, literary tide rips, ancient myths and modern apprehensions. Through this jungle stalk the unpredictable ghosts of his relatives in Columbus, Ohio."