Better to have loafed and lost - James Thurber

James Thurber was the most original, influential and, less we should forget, funniest American humorist of the last century. Writing and drawing cartoons for theNew Yorkermagazine from it's beginnings in the 1930s, he steadily shaped his own unique comic universe: a world governed by absurd logic where the trivial anxieties of everyday life slowly grind down its resigned citizens. Thurber's tales, alternately related in bemused deadpan and bewildered rage and are always excruciatingly funny and occasionally quietly disturbing too. This brand new selection, the first in over 50 years, reassembles his finest work for a new generation brought up on David Lynch and Jerry Seinfeld and features all his famous obsessions: the battle of the sexes, animals, travel, the delusional and certifiably insane. His 'casuals', as he liked to call his short pieces, drift between commercial fiction and surreal memoir. Spanning his whole career, this collection includes all his classic writings and cartoons, 'The Dream Life of Walter Mitty', 'The Catbird Seat', 'The Seal in the Bedroom', and half-forgotten gems that may be new even to fully qualified Thurber fans.