The tragedy of James Thurber.  Reading between the lines. Sept.
18 2003 3:33 PM  Blind Wit  James Thurber's tragedy.  (Continued
from Page 1)  Maybe Thurber's last years were not quite as bad
as they seem on paper. Certainly his steady drumbeat of
complaints in the letters seems fairly standard for a New Yorker
writer of the period. Grumbling was the house style, and Ross
saw to it that his people always had plenty to grumble about by
paying shoe-pinching royalties and editing like one of his
dreaded schoolmarms. Also he used to reject even his stars just
often enough to maintain maximum jumpiness. Later, Thurber would
talk about how well he and Ross had worked together, but I
surmise that this was mainly because he'd been riding so high at
the time and was awfully easy to be nice to. It would be Ross'
successor, William Shawn, who would inherit the delicate task of
taking Thurber down a peg or two without bruising his self-
importance.  Theoretically at least, The New Yorker still needed
him, because his name