Volume 51, Number 18 · November 18, 2004
Libido Lite
By John Updike
For some years, including the months of 1929 when they jointly composed Is Sex Necessary?, James Thurber and E.B. White shared, during office hours, a small room at The New Yorker. White had already become the darling of the magazine's editor, Harold Ross; it was through White's suggestion, in 1927, that Ross had hired Thurber, who at the age of thirty-two was still a struggling writer from Columbus, Ohio, with little to show for several journalistic stints and aspiring sojourns in Manhattan and Paris. While they shared their close quarters, White tutored Thurber in the art of writing for 'Talk of the Town,' and Thurber gradually became the chief 'Talk' writer and rewrite man. When Thurber died in 1961, White remembered the period fondly:
Feature, 2764 words
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