The Owl in the Attic Author:James Thurber "Word has somehow got around that a split infinitive is always wrong. This is of a piece with the sentimental and outworn notion that it is always wrong to strike a lady." This is Thurber the grammarian. — Then there's Thurber the authority on pets. He solves readers' problems such as the case of the police dog who was acting strange "on accou... more »nt of my father coming home from work every night for the past two years and saying to him, 'If you're a police dog where's your badge?', after which he laughs (my father)."
But more than any other thing, as E. B. White points out in his introduction, Thurber is "ciponcerned with the relation between people rather than animals." This is a third Thurber.
There is also Thurber the artist, whose "talent for drawing simple objects with an un-sharpened pencil he decided to leave undeveloped, on the advice of friends."« less