SOURCE: "The Business of Being Funny," in New York Times Book Review, November 5, 1989, p. 36.

This brief review finds most of the works included in Collecting Himself not worth a new anthology but nonetheless appreciates a few of Thurber's more insightful essays.

I somehow assumed that James Thurber's literary bones had been picked clean long ago. After all, posthumous collections had been published in 1962 and 1966 (Thurber died in 1961), and even then there was not enough new material to fill the books—both included work from previous collections. How, then, can there be at this late date unanthologized Thurber worthy of yet another volume?

Well, there can't. The fact is that although Collecting Himself contains many drawings never before published—reason enough to buy it—only some of the writing deserved to be resurrected. Several parodies are dated and no longer amuse, and many of the "casuals" (The New Yorker...