SOURCE: "Laughter Improves Everything," in Christian Science Monitor, December 14, 1981, pp. B1, B3.

This review of Selected Letters of James Thurber warmly appreciates the substance of the volume but comments unfavorably on the selection criteria for which letters are included.

James Thurber deftly took care of the whole business of collecting authors' letters when he reviewed an imagined volume of his own correspondence. "A certain Groping, to be sure, is discernible," he wrote, "but it doesn't appear to be toward anything." Used as a Foreword to this book of actual Thurber letters, his critique demonstrates in spades the vision of humor that glints through the following pages—a vision undiminished by the impaired eyesight that looms large in the letters but not without an edge of humorous perspective, too.

"Laughter need not be cut out of anything, since it improves everything." Thurber writes. "The power that created the poodle...