The Home Front
BOHN, WILLIAM E.
The Home Front By William E. Bohn Ego Against Environment I SUPPOSE I have read a dozen articles touched oft* by the publication of The Thurber Carnival. I had no fault to find with any of them....
...It provides that a candidate must b* sn enrolled member of the party which nominate* him and could not accept nomination* from any other group...
...Two hunters, whose business it is to kill ducks, are strangely affected...
...We have, alt grinned and laughed and squealed and howled our joy over the pictures and the prose...
...He hate* what science and the bolt line threaten to do to human nature...
...The Pennsylvania Stat* Legislature is probing an anti-Semitic weekly letter, The State Newt Service, at the suggestion of Stat* Senator Elmer Holland, close friend of Philip Murray...
...Daparfmant of rolltlcal Idiocy ? • Eddie Rickanbacker, that great admirer of the Soviet method of regimenting labor, stated thst "If Russia keeps going to the right, she will wind up a* th* greatest democracy in the world...
...Why the sudden reticence...
...This would prevent the new parties from nominating such national leaders as Roosevelt or Wagner...
...he was going home...
...And then there was the bookkeeper who rebelled againat the efficiency expert and did moat unbookkeeperly things after business hours...
...All representatives of these industries in other silled nations have bass oxcludsd from these territories, see Watch for the new camouflaged Ka Klux Klan drive to *je aimed almoat exclusively at the CIO with the night-riders using the Political Action Committee for propaganda where their forefathers used ths Negro menace...
...Ford makes a man stand in one place and do on* thing...
...The police have been asked to guard the New York Newspaper Guild'* radio broadcast ovor WMCA because of a fracas which resulted last week during a diacuaaion of wartime strikes...
...And I—in the very act of pounding my typewriter— am lining myself up alongside the others...
...The Dotty Worker is the only newspaper in New York playing down the secret army trial of the two saboteurs who were landed up in Mains by a submarine last November...
...Instead of being a respected citizen of Columbus, Ohio, he might come straight out of Shakespeare or Barrie...
...Yet the big bad British have opened Greece to all comera...
...the AFL is now broadcasting regularly over 115 stations...
...The thing couldn't be dons...
...A speeding car symbolizes the impact of our mechanised might on the free and happy denizens of forest and field...
...AH of the authors expressed the greatest of admiration for'the drawings snd text...
...Robertson, fat and very black, was always hearing voice* and seeing vision...
...And 1 suspect that our beloved Thurber took the warning more than half seriously...
...Some one should tell Flynn that Hart cooperated with the worst elements among the anti-British crowd which packed the America First Committee meetings before the war...
...Take the father, for example...
...New York fusion leader*, who launched Mayor LaGuardia on hi* mayoralty career, ar* determined this yesr not to nominate him, and if he I* nominated to fight his re-election unless the Democrats name a completely unacceptable ward heeler...
...Muggs, the dog who bit people, is given a complete character-sketch with due regard to both conscion* and subconscious motivation...
...To put it bluntly and inaccurately, James Thurber Is a persistent and pertinent protest again mechanisation...
...Commonplace automobiles whizz by on the dreary concrete highway...
...Possibly they are to he regarded as links to the eternal veritiea...
...Juanemma Kramer would be instantly hypnotised by practically anything or anybody...
...Samuel O. Bruhl, the most inoffensive of white-collar worker*, goo*—in imagination at least—the whole wsy to romantic gangsterism...
...i • Some Philadelphia-Republicans are starting a morning dally news-magazine called AM...
...I will close with a remark about his attitude toward the automobile...
...The Communist* finally havs begun U> trot out their Spanish fronts...
...But when you come to write about it, what can you say that really makes sense...
...Hi* wife* wishes him to buy rubbers and put them on...
...Nothing less will make the old man seem respectable...
...Our painfully artificial existence is, after all, surrounded by the original wilderness— which may be home to many a creature outside the duck family...
...But it was wild...
...There is a whole series of tale* in which the most conventional little men discover within themselves the most amasing resource...
...His simple motivations make human creatures seem messy and unsatisfactory...
...One ha* been published and three more are planned...
...New York Republican Assemblyman Bree* of Binghamton has introduced a bill which would seriously cripple the Liberal Party snd ths ALP...
...But I have a notion that this sensitive snd erratic man coming at this time and writing aa he doe* has a special meaning for us...
...We have grabbed relatives and friends by lapels or forelocks and compelled them to listen...
...Just read Carnival over again and And—or fail to And—my proof...
...Think of the treatment of character...
...It was just "a small, trim duck...
...A lot of author* have written about their father...
...I recall how John Burroughs tried to describe the sonar of a meadow lark...
...Old John could write, but that time he fell down completely...
...Mte-Record-.r .o...T cu.« NOT only did the Offte* of War Information broadcast the Communist platform of Vito Mareantonio's American Labor Party on 22 programs to Europe, but it also used the pro-Communist Herbert Klein, Federated Press correspondent now in London, for it* broadcasts of report* of the international labor conference there...
...James Carey, Phil Murray and William Green, speaking officially for the CIO and AFL, havs endorsed the Jewish Labor Committee of which Adoiph Held is chairman and David Dubinaky is treasurer snd on which are the representatives of virtually all other New York needle trades union...
...But Thurber presents his immediate ancestor sleeping, dreaming, waking, doing completely irrational and ridiculous thing...
...You may say that 1 am the sort of unfeeling guy who would writ* s grocery list on the wing of a butterfly...
...It all goes to show that a respectable citizen may have a fairyland encircled by his conventional derby...
...palled to do his stuff...
...Max Lerner, In hi* voyage of exploration in Europe, mad* a remarkable discovery—the French Communists have changed their line and now suppport do GaulU, not because of ths pact with Stalin, but because Tbores has found out that th* French peopl* ar* innately conservative and not ready for Socialism...
...The New York Communists are urging Republicans to nominate LaGuardia although such a victory of the Republican-Communist ticket would strengthen Gov...
...Thurber prefers Inefficiency and dream* to high production levels and sanity...
...Dewey's chances for renomlnation for President in 1»48...
...Dora Gedd, the "mousy girl of 82," shot a man in her room and shouted at him things out of Shakespeare...
...Walter Mitty was such a one...
...There was an apparent effort on the part of each one to top the others snd to tabs aome credit for himself for his super-admiration...
...Marshal Tito has admitted only one foreign correspondent to Yugoslavia, H D. Harrison, of Reuters, who ones lived In Belgrade...
...Evan the mice ar* taken in and given a point of view...
...A couple of weeks ago it had dropped in out of its mysterious world...
...Dogs are the real heroes of the Thurber universe...
...It seems that during the excitement, s member of the independent telephone operators federation almoat floored Prank Klngdon, who was chairman of ths show...
...Or perhaps nonsense isn't mere nonsense...
...I could also have written one to prove that fear of asx is at the heart of all the man ha* written or drawn...
...H*r*"s Democracy for foil And the procession of servants at the Thurber establishments are all paths that lure straight into Nonaen**land...
...There you have your humans, ordinary snd unromantic Connecticut villagers, buying apples and cider at a roadside stand...
...The duck is knocked unconscious...
...Some of them went so far as to suggest the birth of a Thurber cult...
...Franch If the servants wore on the edges of fairyland, the cats, dog* and other domestic animals wot* constantly scurrying back and forth over the border...
...Klein was selected although the Sciipps Howard Fred Parkin* and the New York rimes' Louis Stark are in London covering the conference, aa ar* a corps of regular correspondents...
...The whole group of humans unite to protect the wounded bird againat the attack of a lama and crazy old setter who feels automatically i...
...Doody had the religious conversion of the household on her conscience and took after father with a bread knife...
...Rex, the American bull terrier, i* its noblest inhabitant...
...A Fanny St...
...This Is a straight party-line affair and the radio commentator*, church leader*, businessmen and American Legion officers should re-examine the sponsors before they apeak at the Hotel Towers next Feb...
...Vashti was involved in the most improbable love affair...
...You senae the man'* inner, irresponsible, flighty and insubstantial ago...
...We have read the book through and then gone back and picked out this -section or that until we have gone over the whole collection again and again...
...The lam* wood duck brought the magic of dark' forests end limitless space to the most stubbornly utilitarian of surroundings...
...And—in the same way and for similar reasons—the essence of Thurber cannot be translated into terms of our pedestrian prose...
...Each critic seemed to be saying to the others: "Look, I see further into the mystery of this child of nature than you do - so I am a deeper and a better man...
...The Russians ar* maintaining complete control of the radio, pros*, • .- * motion picture* snd all mean* of communication in all areas liberated from the Nazis by the powerful Red Army...
...The machine that is to the rest of ua a simple vehicle is to him s threat reaching out from the assembly line...
...Let some candidate for the doctorate do that...
...You may, if you like, say that 1 am touching the holy altar with rude and unsanctified hands...
...The latest is the Queens County Citizens' Committee for Breaking Relations with Fascist Spain...
...I have a foaling that I have skirted round everything important...
...But the topic has a fascination, and her* 1 am sticking my neck out...
...They fit him into our social scheme...
...The Get-Ready Man, who kept shouting, "The worllld Is coming to an end," was thought of as being a mare adjunct of his big Red Devil car...
...Upton Close, who recently was dropped by a large broadcasting chain, soon will leave for the Philippine* to cover the Pacific War for the National Newspaper Service of Chicago...
...Mention of the vivacious singer, Ella Logan, is banned from ths Daily Newt because she called the paper's publisher, Captain Patterson, a "fascist...
...Barney Haller, who might be just an ordinary hired man to you or to me, had "lightning playing about hi* shoulders, thunder following him like s dog...
...Proud analyses all the mysteries of hi* inside* and hopes to produce s state of normality bars of had Demotions...
...Others in the studio joined in...
...I could have written an sassy to prove that Thurber sidesteps ssx...
...And not a single foreign newspaperman hat been permitted in any Balkan country occupied by the Russians...
...Certainly tome one is being taken in by the proCommunist ALP "All Brooklyn Conference oa Legislation fat Wartina...
...But he live* adventurously in hi* dream-world...
...The bird recovers and makes for the woods: "a sure, atavistic urge was guiding him...
...To him the internal combustion engine is aa mysteriously menacing ss whatever it is that makes human beings,tick...
...if the United States keepa going to th* left, we will wind up where the Russians were 20 years ago...
...He ia equally at odd* With Ford and with Proud...
...With it he carries on none of the simple sort of foolery which we get from S. J. Parolman...
...John T. Plynn is writing pamphlets for the proFranco Mervin K. Hart...
...The other* all give economic detail*, toll how their progenitor mad* his living...
...Now don't expect me to back up my theory with carefully marshaled citation...
...Francis had nothing at all on Jams* Thurber...
Vol. 28 • February 1945 • No. 7
