James Thurber

OK, I confess. I thought I was made of sterner stuff, but I'm starting to officially miss "Countdown With Keith Olbermann." Rachel Maddow is just fine. Lawrence O'Donnell has potential. And Chris Matthews, well, has he ever gone 20 seconds......

The White House says President Barack Obama has not made a decision on where to locate his re-election headquarters for 2012, but observers expect the campaign to return to its 2008 base: Chicago. Such a decision would buck recent history. Every two-term...

Although Nathanael West was not a well-known writer in his time, he wrote two lasting novels -- "The Day of the Locust" and "Miss Lonelyhearts" -- before he was killed in a car crash in 1940 (he was on his......

It was a funny short story by Depression Era wit James Thurber, and a pretty funny 1947 film starring Danny Kaye. The Secret Life of Walter Mitty was about a grown man with a hysterically vivid and action-packed imagination, a man child. Let's face it,...

Jon Thurber will leave his position of managing editor, print to become the new Book Review editor of the L.A. Times. The news was announced Monday, and while his exact start date hasn't been announced, I've already begun bugging him......

It may not be as dramatic or spark the (surprising) interest the Broccoli Incident did during the first Bush administration, but the Obama White House does offer this bit of vegetable news: Michelle Obama hates beets. This tidbit comes from......

You don't hear much about James Thurber (1894-1961) anymore, and it's not just because the glory days of the New Yorker as a humor magazine are many decades in the past. His work is perennially in print, and his "Writings and Drawings" have merited a...

Mike Myers is the latest star to think he has what it takes to explore "The Secret Life of Walter Mitty." The industry trade reports that the "Austin Powers" star will take the title role in "Mitty," currently set up at 20th Century Fox. Samuel...

by Mark Silva Indiana Sen. Evan Bayh is viewed as a possible do-no-harm running mate for Sen. Barack Obama of Illinois. But the corporate work that Bayh's wife has done could be cause for doubts in the running-mate vetting department.......

WASHINGTON--In selecting little-known Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin as his running mate, John McCain has underscored his determination to run as a reformer intent on ending the cozy deal-making of big-money special interests in Washington. But an architect of...

Minnesota excels at producing unlikely pairs. In the field of literature there is the dissimilar duo of F. Scott Fitzgerald and Sinclair Lewis (Riviera and prairie); in politics, Eugene McCarthy and Harold Stassen; in music, Bob Dylan and the Artist...

In the mid-1970s, the writing of Tom Stoppard had a great deal in common with the writing of Monty Python. A much-ignored connection, that. Sure, Stoppard's "Travesties," the subject of a very funny, savvy and spirited revival at the Court Theatre from...