Fables for Our Time and Famous Poems Illustrated by James Thurber (1940)

A collection of fables updated for the modern age.

Book Review: Fables for Our Time is Aesop brought into the 20th Century and made humorously dark or darkly humorous. A satirical menagerie poking fun in an acidic (but funny) commentary on society. James Thurber presents a form of humor rarely seen today, but sadly still relevant. As with our friend Aesop, the morals tell the story: "It is not so easy to fool little girls nowadays as it used to be"; "If you live as humans do, it will be the end of you"; "It is better to ask some of the questions than to know all the answers"; "You can fool too many of the people too much of the time"; "Run, don't walk, to the nearest desert island." All quite obviously true, but the fun is in seeing how Thurber gets there. While some of the fables provide a sharp insight to every day life, others address more serious issues such as the paranoia of communities, as may be focused on refugees, Jews, Reds, or Muslims. In "The Very Proper Gander" a rumor sparked the crowd to gather sticks and stones till they "set upon him and drove him out of the country." The people are oh-so-afraid of those oh-so-dangerous ganders! Even darker are the lessons of "The Birds and the Foxes" and "The Rabbits Who Caused All the Trouble." Fables for Our Time also includes a section, as noted above, of "Famous Poems Illustrated." These are story-poems by writers such as Longfellow, Scott, Tennyson, Housman, and Whittier, all of whose work I assume were safely in the public domain. This section is interesting as an introduction to popular verses of yesteryear, but may be of more interest to fans of Thurber's drawings, as he provides an illustration for most every stanza of the poems. Otherwise, I think the poems were included as a way to fill up a too-slender book. Fables for Our Time isn't indispensable and may be difficult to find, but it's a pleasant enough book representing a lost art form and a sharp eye into human nature. Some fables are dated in a Steve Harvey/battling Bickersons kind of way, but spot on in their evaluation of people.  [3½★]