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Not to Say Violent. Most Americans know James Thurber for the funny fellow who draws cartoons and who analyzed the daydream of grandeur in The Secret Life of Walter Mitty. Yet Thurber is only every other inch a comic writer; in between, he is a psychologist as keen as any now writing in the U.S. Like most writers of unusual, not to say violent imagination, Thurber cannot always control it. There are passages in all his fairy tales (especially in The White Deer) so loaded with verbal gems—and costume jewelry too—that they clink.
In The Thirteen Clocks, Thurber's narrative is less bedizened with verbal gimcrackery, but it is still a bit too tricky for every taste. Nevertheless, there is no living author who moves about in fairyland with such wit and easy familiarity. As for inner meanings, please yourself.