HAPPY BIRTHDAY, James Thurber. The great New Yorker writer-cartoonist was born 100 years ago today.
Some journalists, and especially at the Sunpapers, are a little miffed that Thurber gets a postage stamp (with a self sketch) for his centennial. For H. L. Mencken's 100th birthday back in 1980, the Postal Service turned down a bid for a Mencken stamp.
Thurber and Mencken have a few things in common. Both started writing for newspapers and then became nationally famous writing for magazines. Both were humorists in essence. Both were politically incorrect by today's standards -- and, to a degree, by the standards of their own time. But they are also different: Thurber lives on more for his fiction than for his reporting and commentary. Mencken lives on in his journalism (and scholarship).
That both live on is testimony to the enduring power of the best of those who write for what detractors call fish wrappers and slick paper vehicles for upper-crust advertisement. According to Books in Print," there are 18 titles by Mencken still in print and 19 by Thurber. I think Mencken's record is the more noteworthy. Lots of old collections of fiction survive generation after generation, but few of journalism. (Will Rogers has 21 titles in print, but that's a special project of the University of Oklahoma.)
Mencken lives on in another way. He is quoted routinely in daily newspapers. Too routinely, according to Jonathan Yardley. The Pulitzer Prize-winning critic of the Washing ton Post, who lives in Baltimore, chided The Sunpapers last week for invoking Mencken so much. He was the speaker at a luncheon for the 1994 winner of the H. L. Mencken writing award, Charles Levendosky of the Casper (Wyo.) Star-Tribune.
I think perhaps we do. This is my third column this year mentioning Mencken. The Baltimore Sun has had a total of 56 different articles and commentaries mentioning him this year. (The Washington Post has had 20.)
I also think we may do so less and less. I don't get a sense around 501 N. Calvert, nor at Johns Hopkins, where I teach a journalism course, that young people are as aware of Mencken as they used to be.
Ditto Thurber. Or so I thought. But maybe not. On Tuesday, Neil Grauer was interviewed on a radio talk and call-in show in Washington about his fine new biography of Thurber, "Remember Laughter." Several callers identified themselves as 20- or 30-somethings who had read Thurber for years.