Let Your Mind Alone

James Thurber

Description

A collection of humorous essays, accompanied by the author's own bizarre drawings, presenting Thurber's unremitting retort to the multitude of "self-help" books which were widespread in the 1930s and whose successors are still with us today.

Sujets

• Form
• Humor
• Essays

Informations

• Publié par: Rare Treasure Editions
• Date de parution: 04 novembre 2021
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781774642627
• Langue: English

Extrait

Let Your Mind Alone!
by James Thurber

First published in 1937
This edition published by Rare Treasures
Victoria, BC Canada with branch offices in the Czech Republic and Germany
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All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage or retrieval system, except in the case of excerpts by a reviewer, who may quote brief passages in a review.
Let Your Mind Alone!



by
James Thurber


WITH DRAWINGS BY THE AUTHOR
Bateman Comes Home

FOR HELEN
¶ The essays and stories in this book were originally printed in The New Yorker , with the exception of "After the Steppe Cat,What?", which appeared in The Forum , and "Women GoOn Forever," which appeared in For Men Only .

Part One

Let your mind alone!
1. Pythagoras and the Ladder
It was in none other than the black, memorable year 1929that the indefatigable Professor Walter B. Pitkin rose upwith the announcement that "for the first time in the careerof mankind happiness is coming within the reach of millions ofpeople." Happy living, he confidently asserted, could be attainedby at least six or seven people out of every ten, but he figuredthat not more than one person in a thousand was actuallyattaining it. However, all the external conditions required forhappy living were present, he said, just waiting to be used.The only obstacle was a psychological one. Figuring on a basisof 130,000,000 population in this country and reducing theProfessor's estimates to round numbers, we find that in 1929only 130,000 people were happy, but that between 78,000,000and 91,000,000 could have been happy, leaving only 52,000,000,at the outside, doomed to discontent. The trouble with all theunhappy ones (except the 52,000,000) was that they didn'tKnow Themselves, they didn't understand the Science ofHappiness, they had no Technique of Thinking. ProfessorPitkin wrote a book on the subject; he is, in fact, alwayswriting a book on the subject. So are a number of other people.I have devoted myself to a careful study of as many of thesebooks as a man of my unsteady eyesight and wandering attentioncould be expected to encompass. And I decided to write aseries of articles of my own on the subject, examining whatthe Success Experts have to say and offering some ideas of myown, the basic one of which is, I think, that man will be betteroff if he quits monkeying with his mind and just lets it alone.In this, the first of the series, I shall abandon Professor Pitkin tohis percentages and his high hopes and consider the author of abest-seller published last summer (an alarming number of thesebooks reach the best-seller list). Let us plunge right intoDr. James L. Mursell's "Streamline Your Mind" and see whathe has to contribute to the New Happiness, as Professor Pitkinhas called it.

Conducting a Lady to a Table in a Restaurant
In Chapter VI, which is entitled "Using What You've Got,"Dr. Mursell deals with the problem of how to learn and howto make use of what you have learned. He believes, to beginwith, that you should learn things by doing them, not by justreading up on them. In this connection he presents the caseof a young man who wanted to find out "how to conduct alady to a table in a restaurant." Although I have been goredby a great many dilemmas in my time, that particular problemdoesn't happen to have been one of them. I must have juststumbled onto the way to conduct a lady to a table in a restaurant.I don't remember, as a young man, ever having giventhe matter much thought, but I know that I frequently worriedabout whether I would have enough money to pay for thedinner and still tip the waiter. Dr. Mursell does not touch onthe difficult problem of how to maintain your poise as youdepart from a restaurant table on which you have left no tip.I constantly find these mental authorities avoiding the largerissues in favor of something which seems comparatively trivial.The plight of the Doctor's young man, for instance, is asnothing compared to my own plight one time in a restaurantin Columbus when I looked up to find my cousin WilmerThurber standing beside me flecked with buttermilk and makinga sound which was something between the bay of a beagleand the cry of a large bird.
I had been having lunch in the outer of two small roomswhich comprised a quiet basement restaurant known as theHole in the Wall, opposite the State House grounds, a placemuch frequented by elderly clerks and lady librarians, in spiteof its raffish name. Wilmer, it came out, was in the otherroom; neither of us knew the other was there. The Hole in theWall was perhaps the calmest restaurant I have ever known;the studious people who came there for lunch usually lunchedalone; you rarely heard anybody talk. The aged proprietorof the place, because of some defect, spoke always in whispers,and this added to an effect of almost monasterial quiet. It wasupon this quiet that there fell suddenly, that day, the mostunearthly sound I have ever heard. My back was to the innerroom and I was too disconcerted to look around. But from theastonished eyes of those who sat in front of me facing the doorwayto that room I became aware that the Whatever-It-Washad entered our room and was approaching my table. It wasn'tuntil a cold hand was laid on mine that I looked up and beheldWilmer, who had, it came out, inhaled a draught of buttermilkas one might inhale cigarette smoke, and was choking.Having so fortunately found me, he looked at me with wide,stricken eyes and, still making that extraordinary sound, alow, canine how-ooo that rose to a high, birdlike yeee-eep , hepointed to the small of his back as who should say "Hit me!"There I was, faced with a restaurant problem which, as I havesaid, makes that of Dr. Mursell's young man seem very unimportantindeed. What I did finally, after an awful, frozenmoment, was to get up and dash from the place, without evenpaying for my lunch. I sent the whispering old man a check,but I never went back to his restaurant. Many of our mentalauthorities, most of whom are psychologists of one school oranother, will say that my dreadful experience must have implantedin me a fear of restaurants (Restauphobia). It didnothing of the sort; it simply implanted in me a wariness ofWilmer. I never went into a restaurant after that without firstmaking sure that this inveterate buttermilk-drinker was notthere.
But let us get back to Dr. Mursell and his young man'speculiar quandary. I suppose this young man must have gotto worrying about who went first, the lady or himself. Thesethings, as we know, always work out; if the young man doesn'twork them out, the lady will. (If she wants him to go first, shewill say, "You go first.") What I am interested in here is notthe correct procedure but Dr. Mursell's advice to the youngman in question. He writes, "Do not merely learn it in words.Try it over with your sister." In that second sentence he reveals,it seems to me, what these inspirationalists so frequently reveal,a lack of understanding of people; in this case, brothers andsisters. Ninety-nine brothers out of a hundred who were worryingabout how to conduct a lady to a table in a restaurant wouldstarve before they would go to their sisters and ask them howthe thing is done. They would as lief go to their mothers andhave a good, frank talk about sex. But let us, for the sake ofthe argument, try Dr. Mursell's system.
Sister, who is twenty-one, and who goes around with a numberof young men whom her brother frankly regards as pussy-cats,is sitting by the fire one evening reading André Gide, or Photoplay , or something. Brother, who is eighteen, enters."Where's Mom?" he asks. "How should I know?" she snaps."Thought you might know that, Stupid. Y'ought to knowsomething," he snaps back. Sister continues to read, but sheis obviously annoyed by the presence of her brother; he ischewing gum, making a strange, cracking noise every fifthchew, and this gets on her nerves. "Why don't you spit outthat damn gum?" she asks, finally. "Aw, nuts," says herbrother, in a falsetto singsong. "Nuts to you, Baby, nuts."There is a long, tense silence; he rustles and re-rustles theevening paper. "Where's Itsy Bitsy Dicky tonight?" he asks,suddenly. "Ditch you for a live gal?" By Itsy Bitsy Dicky, herefers to one Richard Warren, a beau of his sister's, whomhe considers a hollyhock. "Why don't you go to hell?" askshis sister, coldly. Brother reads the sports page and begins towhistle "Horses," a song which has annoyed his sister sinceshe was ten and he was seven, and which he is whistling forthat reason. " Stop that!" she screams, at last. He stops for aboutfive seconds and then bursts out, loudly, " Cra -zy over hor -ses, hor -ses, hor -ses, she's a little wi-i-i-ld!" Here we have, I think,a typical meeting between brother and sister. Now, out of it,somehow, we have to arrive at a tableau vivant in which thebrother asks the sister to show him how to conduct a ladyto a table in a restaurant. Let us attempt to work that out."Oh, say, Sis," the brother begins, after a long pause. "Shutup, you lout!" she says. "No, listen, I want to ask you a favor."He begins walking around the room, blushing. "I've askedGreta Dearing out to dinner tomorrow night and I'm not surehow to get her to the table. I mean whether—I mean I don'tknow how we both get to the table. Come on out in the hallwith me and we'll p