The Greatest Man in the World ; The Secret Life of Walter Mitty
by James Thurber
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Presents two stories by James Thurber. Includes reading and writing exercises.Tags
Member Reviews
This was the shortest audiobook ever, but I loved it! If you've ever wondered what's going on in someone's head, this short story gives you some ideas. Recommended!
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135+ Works 18,239 Members
Born in Columbus, Ohio, Thurber was blinded in one eye in a childhood accident. He attended Ohio State University but left without earning a degree. In 1925 he moved to New York City, where he joined the staff of the New Yorker in 1927 at the urging of his friend E. B. White. For the rest of his lifetime, Thurber contributed to the magazine his show more highly individual pieces and those strange, wry, and disturbing pen-and-ink drawings of "huge, resigned dogs, the determined and sometimes frightening women, the globular men who try so hard to think so unsuccessfully." The period from 1925, when the New Yorker was founded, until the death of its creator-editor, Harold Ross, in 1951, was described by Thurber in delicious and absorbing detail in The Years with Ross (1959). Of his two great talents, Thurber preferred to think of himself primarily as a writer, illustrating his own books. He published "fables" in the style of Aesop (see Vol. 2) and La Fontaine (see Vol. 2)---usually with a "barbed tip of contemporary significance"---children's books, several plays (two Broadway hits, one successful musical revue), and endless satires and parodies in short stories or full-length works. "The Secret Life of Walter Mitty," included in My World---and Welcome to It (1942), is probably his best-known story and continues to be frequently anthologized. T. S. Eliot described Thurber's work as "a form of humor which is also a way of saying something serious." (Bowker Author Biography) show less
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Common Knowledge
- Canonical title
- The Greatest Man in the World ; The Secret Life of Walter Mitty
- People/Characters
- Jack Smurch; Walter Mitty; Mrs. Mitty
- Important places
- New York, New York, USA; Waterbury, Connecticut, USA
- Related movies
- The Secret Life of Walter Mitty (1947 | IMDb); The Secret Life of Walter Mitty (2013 | IMDb)
- First words
- Looking back on it now, from the vantage point of 1950, one can only marvel that it hadn't happened long before it did. ("The Greatest Man in the World")
We're going through! The Commander's voice was like thin ice breaking. ("The Secret Life of Walter Mitty") - Last words
- (Click to show. Warning: May contain spoilers.)There, under his stern scrutiny, Mrs. Emma Smurch bowed her head above two hamburger steaks sizzling on her grill -- bowed her head and turned away, so the Secret Service man could not see the twisted, strangely familiar, leer on her lips. ("The Greatest Man in the World")
(Click to show. Warning: May contain spoilers.)Then, with that faint, fleeting smile playing about his lips, he faced the firing squad; erect and motionless, proud and disdainful, Walter Mitty the Undefeated, inscrutable to the last. ("The Secret Life of Walter Mitty") - Disambiguation notice
- "'The Greatest Man in the World' by James Thurber. Copyright 1935, James Thurber. Copyright 1963, Helen W, Thurber and Rosemary Thurber Sauers. From The Middle-Aged Man on the Flying Trapeze, published by H... (show all)arper & Row. Originally printed in The New Yorker."
"'The Secret Life of Walter Mitty,' by James Thurber. Copyright 1942, James Thurber. Copyright 1970 Helen Thurber. From My World -- and Welcome to It, published by Harcourt, Brace, Jovanovich. Originally printed in The New Yorker.
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- 1,384,412
- Reviews
- 1
- Rating
- (4.33)
- Languages
- English
- Media
- Paper
- ISBNs
- 1
