NOTE: Today’s book review was inspired by another book entitled Letters. That book was a memoir of scientist and storyteller Dr. Oliver Sacks, told through a lifetime of his personal correspondence with friends, family, patients and many other interesting people. Over the course of his letter writing, Dr. Sacks often made reference to the written works of others. Today’s book is one such work that he referenced.
The Context in Which Dr. Sacks Made Reference to The Secret Life of Walter Mitty by James Thurber
When Oliver Sacks left England in 1960 to come to North America, the end goal was to start his medical training at the University of California Medical Center in San Francisco. Before beginning his studies, Sacks gave himself time to travel. It was in the early stages of his travel itinerary that he came to Canada and, specifically, to the Rocky Mountains and the Columbia icefields. After spending a week or two in British Columbia, Sacks traveled into the United States and moved southward along the coast of the Pacific Ocean, eventually arriving in San Francisco. Being the good son that he was, he wrote to his parents along the way so that they would know that he was safe and could learn what he was up to. In a letter dated August 24, 1960, Oliver Sacks wrote to his mom and dad, Elise and Samuel Sacks. In that letter (on page No.16 of the book Letters) Sacks wrote of the contrasts in population density between Canada and the U.S. He stated that because the U.S. had more highly concentrated areas of population than did Canada, it allowed those regions to specialize in various things in a way that just wasn’t possible north of the border. To Oliver Sacks, the most important area of specialization to him was in the area of medicine. He was impressed by the seemingly large number of working and teaching hospitals that could be found in California. He told his parents that financial investment in medicine seemed apparent by virtue of the size and scope of the hospitals and universities located there. When he arrived at the University of California Medical Center for the first time, these were his words…
”I have put my head in at the U. of California Medical Center, which is a triad of gigantic white buildings overlooking Golden Gate Park, with an incomparable vista of San Francisco from the upper storeys, and its distant bridges, ocean and hills. They have two neurologists there and three neurological residents. The Med. School faculty buildings were only rebuilt this year and are a sort of Walter Mitty fantasy of what such buildings should be like….”
A Brief Outline of the Plot of The Secret Life of Walter Mitty by James Thurber
James Thurber was an American humourist and cartoonist who gained fame primarily through his time working at the New Yorker Magazine. While at the New Yorker, Thurber typically wrote articles and short stories. His most famous short story was called The Secret Life of Walter Mitty. In this short story, we meet Mr. and Mrs. Mitty as they set out on their weekly shopping trip into town. It quickly becomes apparent that Walter Mitty is a henpecked husband and that he is embarrassed by the life he is living and wishes that he was somewhere, anywhere else. To escape the tedium, monotony and soul-crushing nature of his existence, Mitty frequently lapses into bouts of fantasy in which he is a dashing, heroic man of action and daring, admired by all who encounter him. It is these contrasts between the excitement and glamour of his fantasies and the mundane reality of the life he actually lives that has given The Secret Life of Walter Mitty such appeal to so many.
My thoughts on The Secret Life of Walter Mitty by James Thurber (for what that is worth)
I thought that this short story was very well written. Thurber does an excellent job of transitioning between the scenes when Mitty is being harangued by his wife for driving too fast or for forgetting to wear his boots out in the slush and snow and those scenes where there are bursts of fast-paced action. I also liked the way he constructed his sentences and how he used vocabulary in each type of scene. The action scenes are filled with exciting and evocative words which are then placed in short, rapid fire sentences that are constructed in such a way that the pace feels frenetic. In the scenes with Mitty and his wife, Thurber tend to use simple words and longer sentences that give a ponderous feel to the moment, which is exactly how Walter Mitty is feeling as he is experiencing it all. Overall, I enjoyed this piece of writing and can see why Oliver Sacks would have drawn upon it in a moment where the grand scope and scale of his new teaching hospital had just come into view.
However, as we all know, there is often a thin line between comedy and sadness. Thurber often drew from situations in his own life when writing his short stories. Many reviewers believe that he is the person being represented in print as Walter Mitty and that this story is actually about his own first marriage (which was failing at the time). Absolutely, there is humour to be mined in situations like this but there is also a sadness that I could not escape as I read about how completely and totally unhappy Walter Mitty was and how ill-suited he was with his wife.
A third and final thought that I had as I read this had to do with my own mother, who is 94 years old as of the date of the writing of this post. My mother has dementia. Whenever we manage to spend time together, our conversations always begin with me having to figure out where my mother actually is in her mind. Sometimes she is in the present. Sometimes she is back in her childhood days. Other times she is lost in the memories of her working days as a nurse. Once I can determine where she is, I know how to proceed but until that moment of clarity emerges, she sits in a Walter Mitty-esque world of her own creation that doesn’t necessarily include me. I guess one of the marks of a well-written story is that readers can enter into it from a number of differing perspectives and still get something useful out of it. That was certainly the case for me.
A Few Fun Facts and the Real Reason Why I Believe That The Secret Life of Walter Mitty Became an Important Work of Literature for Dr. Oliver Sacks in his Life and his Career
The man who originally helped to get author James Thurber hired at the New Yorker Magazine was none other than E.B. White (author of Charlotte’s Web and Stuart Little), who worked as an editor at the New Yorker at the time.
The New Yorker Magazine is as famous for its cartoons as it is for its stories and articles. One of the first cartoonists to gain fame at the magazine was James Thurber. Initially, Thurber did not feel that he had the drawing talent necessary to warrant inclusion with the pages of the magazine. But once again, it was E.B. White who came to the rescue. One day White came upon a series of drawings that Thurber had made and subsequently had tossed into the garbage can in his office. White retrieved those drawings, studied them and thought that they possessed merit. He convinced Thurber to trust him enough to include a few cartoons in the next issue of the magazine to see what readers thought. Thurber agreed to allow the public to act as judge. The response to his cartoons was overwhelmingly positive. Thus, Thurber’s career in cartooning came to life thanks to his lifelong friend E.B. White.
As for Dr. Oliver Sacks, he made a career out of studying the brains of people who suffered from abnormal conditions or else, who possessed abnormal abilities. Seeking to understand how the human brain could allow some to suffer so greatly while allowing others to attain savant-like greatness was a lifelong area of interest for Dr. Sacks. Author James Thurber was one of the first people that Sacks encountered in his life who fell into one of those two categories. The story goes that as a child, James Thurber and his brother decided to play a game of William Tell where they would take turns shooting an apple off of each other’s heads. A century ago, there were no Nerf darts or spongy arrows. In those days, we kiddies played outdoors with blades of steel and arrowheads that were actually capable of doing damage. The old expression that it is all fun and games until someone loses an eye applies here. James Thurber’s brother shot him in the eye with an arrow, causing Thurber to lose that eye and to nearly go completely blind altogether. That sudden loss of vision altered the trajectory of Thurber’s life. Instead of pursuing a life of action, Thurber was forced to retreat into the world of his imagination. As it turned out, Thurber’s imagination proved to be a source of strength going forward.
However, of interest to Dr. Sacks was the work of a neurologist from India named V. S. Ramachandran. This doctor would prove to be a mentor and friend to Sacks over time. He initially came to the attention of Dr. Sacks for his work with patients suffering from Charles Bonnet syndrome, which is a condition found in people who suffer traumatic vision loss. Charles Bonnet lived in the 1700s and was the first to notice a tendency in people with vision loss (after having had full vision) to suffer from profound hallucinations afterwards. Dr. V. S. Ramachandran declared this theory to be true in a book entitled Phantoms in the Brain: Probing the Mysteries of the Human Mind in 1998. One of the most famous people thought to have suffered from Charles Bonnet syndrome was writer and cartoonist James Thurber. Dr, Ramachandran profiled Thurber in one chapter of his book. However, conclusive evidence that this is, in fact, true in Thurber’s case, remains unknown. But knowing what we know about Thurber’s tendency to draw from his own life for his story ideas has led many to speculate with a fair degree of confidence that the theory that Thurber had Charles Bonnet syndrome is true. Furthermore, it is also believed that his most famous story, The Secret Life of Walter Mitty is, in fact, not just a story of Thurber’s marriage ending but that the fantasy elements came straight from his own world of hallucinations that many believe he suffered from. Regardless as to if this was actually the case, Dr. Oliver Sacks spent his career telling the stories of people whose brains caused unusual things to happen. I am not surprised in the least that he would have been interested in the life of James Thurber and in the fantasy aspect of his most famous work, The Secret Life of Walter Mitty.
The official website for James Thurber can be found here. A short video biography can be found here.
The official website for New Yorker Magazine can be found here.
The official website of Dr. V. S. Ramachandran can be found here.
For anyone interested in learning more about the story of William Tell and, specifically, the musical composition of The William Tell Overture by Rossini, I wrote a post on this subject that you can access here.
For anyone interested in learning more about Charles Bonnet syndrome, more information can be found here.
The link to the official website for Dr. Oliver Sacks can be found here.
Finally, the link to the page containing the links to all books reviewed in this series on Dr. Sacks library can be found here.
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Hello again. Reading about Walter Mitty brought back memories of Grade 9 English. I did not know about Thurber’s background. I find it interesting that sadness can evolve into comedic writing, acting and singing…all the arts.
To be honest, I thought the humour to be more like Punch and Judy or Mr. Bean that hilariously funny. But sadness comes from the heart as much as happiness does so it isn’t a surprise that some good can come from it under the right circumstances. ❤️