Meet Walter Mitty.

 

He's a Husband.

 

He's a Captain of a Navy ship

 

He's a toughest man on the trial

 

He's the man who can a woman from distress and is a hero to all man kind.

 

He's also worrying his wife, his co-workers, his boss and his shrink.

 

Walter Mitty has dreams. Dreams of being a hero. But he's not dreaming them in bed, like everyone else is. He's dreaming these events while driving, while shopping, talking to his wife, walking down the street. He "sees" himself as a hero to everyone, but doesn't really do anything about it. He's just your average Joe that is taking his wife to get her hair done. And while she is getting her hair done, he runs errands. But everyday life, everything that we see, feel, touch, hear generates this scene in his head where he is the hero to the story and he's living it right then and there!! While everyone looks at him like he's weird, he doesn't see what wrong with this!!

 

As a writer I was thrilled that I am not the only person that this is happening too!!! I can't tell you how many times I will be sitting at the Library that I work at and there will be an event that will take place, or someone says something to me and it triggers a scene playing in my head and I'm living that story out (in my head of course). I am a writer and I am always getting scenarios playing out in my head that sometimes leave me speechless until I am writing that out in my laptop. Sometimes I talk out loud the scenes but hey, I'm a writer it's allowed. (I think....)

An odd little story full of wordplay.

What happens when the letter O is banned?  Chas! Cnfusin!

Much of the text has a singsong quality--but not all of it. A little uneven. I would actually love to see this performed on stage. It could make a great high school performance, as it would be quite short and the wordplay would be very fun.

Deducted 1/2 star for being too short.  Otherwise an excellent example of midcentury, midwestern humor excellently written.

 

This slim volumes reads as a collection of short essays about the early part of Thurber's life and his eccentric family.  I won't go so far as to say they are laugh-out-loud funny, but they are very humorous.  I'll be looking at his other works in the future with a much more open mind.

I find it difficult to categorize the genre which will fully describe The Thurber Carnival. It is humor with a generous helping of autobiography sprinkled with cartoons. There's short stories such as The Secret Life of Walter Mitty which I mentioned previously. There are also twists on fairytales (of which you know I'm overly fond). It was obvious from the preface that this was going to be an interesting read because Thurber wrote the preface himself in the third person. O_O A contemporary of E.B. White (remember Charlotte's Web), Thurber was a well-known essayist, humorist, and cartoonist of his time (early to mid 20th century) and was one of the leading voices of The New Yorker. He's considered the Mark Twain of the 20th century in fact and I'm sad to say I had never heard his name before I had watched the Ben Stiller film (thanks, Hollywood!). I found the anthology to be quite good but I do caution you all to remember the time it was written in as it's definitely not politically correct (sexism, racism, etc). If you're looking for a quick, fun read that features some rather interesting cartoons this is probably the book for you.

I downloaded this free audiobook from audible and decided to finally take the time to listen to it during my walk today. I was not impressed. The narration was great and I thought that Ben Stiller did a fantastic job but I found the story lacking. I really cannot believe that this is a well loved classic story to be honest. Maybe I am missing something as I often do.

Basically the story focused on a man who lives in a world of daydreams as his wife nags him constantly. This story was VERY short and only took about 15 minutes to complete. I haven't seen the movie but I wonder if this may be a case where the movie could be better than the written story.