SOURCE: "The Cottage of Smugness," in The Threepenny Review, Vol. XV, No. 3, Fall, 1994, pp. 26-8.

In the following mixed assessment, Seligman finds that some of Thurber's work retains a peculiar charm but that most of it is overwrought and dated, the product of a talent that never achieved its potential.

In reviewing these skeptical reflections on the centenary of James Thurber, I find there is an aspect of his output that I've tended to slight, and so I had better acknowledge it up front: his charm. I can't deny Thurber's charm. His work is full of it; his silly drawings, especially, are rife with it. You have probably encountered the story, told in many places, of how in the late 1920s E. B. White retrieved some of his friend's doodlings from the floor of the office they shared at The New Yorker, inked in the penciled squiggles, and...