CHAPTER VIII

FRIGIDITY IN MEN

I hesitate to approach the subject of male unresponsiveness. Frigidity in men is a theme sociologists have avoided. Frigidity in women, on the other hand, forms a vast chapter in the sex research of today; the part it plays in marital discord is known to students of sociology as well as to the lay reader, although probably less well. It has occupied the attention of many noted writers, and has taken the lives of such men as Zaner and Tithridge, who carried some of their experiments too far.[20]

[20] Tithridge especially.

Any discussion of frigidity in men calls for an unusual degree of frankness on the part of the writer, since it entails such factors as the “recessive knee,” Fuller’s retort, and the declination of the kiss. Further, before attacking this subject, it will be necessary to reëvaluate some of the more fundamental hypotheses of Man’s erotic nature, and what a nuisance that is going to be!

Let us go back a little way. There are two fundamental urges in nature: the desire to eat and the desire to reproduce one’s kind. Which of these two impulses is the stronger depends somewhat on the individual and somewhat on the circumstances surrounding the individual—that is, it is apt to vary with the quality of the food and of the women. There are, Zaner shows, men who would rather eat than reproduce, and there are isolated cases of men who would rather reproduce than eat. But it is the less simple types that provide the important case histories for the student of masculine frigidity, and no broad conclusions can be drawn about the relative merits of eating and reproducing without a consideration of the contributing factors.

Quite regardless of which urge comes first in Man’s scheme of existence, it is safe to state dogmatically that the second urge (the “sex” urge) has caused more stir in the last few years than the first, or “nourishment,” urge. Sex is less than fifty years old, yet it has upset the whole Western World. The sublimation of sex, called Love, is of course much older—although many purists will question the existence of Love prior to about 1885 on the grounds that there can be no sublimation of a non-existent feeling. What I shall try to show, without carping, will be that there is a very good reason why the erotic side of Man has called forth so much more discussion lately than has his appetite for food. The reason is this: that while the urge to eat is a personal matter which concerns no one but the person hungry (or, as the German has it, _der hungrige Mensch_), the sex urge involves, for its true expression, another individual. It is this “other individual” that causes all the trouble.

Except in rare instances, all of which have been dealt with by Sumner, the urge involves an individual of the opposite sex; that is, for a man it involves a woman, and for a woman it involves a man. I use the word “involve” advisedly. _Just the minute another person is drawn into some one’s life, there begin to arise undreamed-of complexities_, and from such a simple beginning as sexual desire we find built up such alarming yet familiar phenomena as _fêtes_, _divertissements_, telephone conversations, arrangements, plans, sacrifices, train arrivals, meetings, appointments, tardinesses, delays, marriages, dinners, small pets and animals, calumny, children, music lessons, yellow shades for the windows, evasions, lethargy, cigarettes, candies, repetition of stories and anecdotes, infidelity, ineptitude, incompatibility, bronchial trouble, and many others, all of which are entirely foreign to the original urge and way off the subject, and all of which make the person’s existence so strangely bewildering that if he could have foreseen these developments his choice would have been the “eating” urge, and he would have just gone quietly out somewhere and ordered himself a steak and some French fried potatoes as being the easier way out.

Still, that is just a hypothetical alternative. Life, as we know, is very insistent; almost daily people become involved with other people. And that brings us to our real theme, namely, frigidity in men.

_The Recessive Knee._ The first symptom of frigidity in men is what I call the recessive knee. To the study of this phenomenon I have given some of my best years. My laboratory has been the laboratory of life itself. Probably I would never have discovered the recessive knee had I not noticed it, some ten years ago, in myself. Questioning my colleagues, I found to my amazement that they too had had similar experiences which they were unable to account for, and this led me to continue my investigations. Since then I have gone into taxicabs, terminal lunch rooms, boat liveries, and all other places where it is possible or usual for a girl to let her knee rest lightly against that of her companion, have gained the confidence of the young men and women whom I was watching, and have accumulated a mass of data showing that frigidity in men, instead of being almost a non-existent characteristic, is one of the commonest attributes of our national sexual life. Inasmuch as the juxtaposing of the knee by the female, which causes the recessive (or “pulled away”) knee in the male, usually occurs fairly soon after dinner, my experiments and observations have had to be made largely in the evening. It has been my custom to sleep late mornings to make up for this.

Simply stated, the knee phenomenon is this: occasions arise sometimes when a girl presses her knee, ever so gently, against the knee of the young man she is out with. The juxtaposing of the knee is brought about by any of a thousand causes. Often the topic of conversation has something to do with it: the young people, talking along pleasantly, will suddenly experience a sensation of compatibility, or of friendliness, or of pity, or of community-of-interests. One of them will make a remark singularly agreeable to the other person—a chance word or phrase that seems to establish a bond between them. Such a remark can cause the knee of the girl to be placed against the knee of the young man. Or, if the two people are in a cab, the turning of a sharp corner will do it. In canoes, the wash from a larger vessel will bring it about. In restaurants and dining-rooms it often takes place under the table, as though by accident. On divans, sofas, settees, couches, davenports, and the like, the slight twist of the young lady’s body incident to receiving a light for her cigarette will cause it. I could go on indefinitely, but there is no need. It is not a hard push, you understand—rather the merest touch of knee to knee, light as the brush of a falling blossom against one’s cheek, and just as lovely.

Now, a normal male in whom there are no traces of frigidity will allow his knee to retain its original position, sometimes even exerting a very slight counter-pressure. A frigid male, however, will move his knee away at the first suggestion of contact, denying himself the electric stimulus of love’s first stirring. Why? That is what my research was conducted to discover. _I found that in 93 per cent of all cases, the male was suspicious; in 4 per cent he was ignorant; and in 3 per cent he was tired._ I have presented these figures to the American Medical Association and am awaiting a reply.

It is the female’s subtlety in her laying-on of the knee that annoys the male, I found. His recession is for the purpose of reassuring himself of his own integrity and perspicacity. If the female were to juxtapose in a forthright manner, if she were to preface her gesture with the remark: “I am thinking of letting my knee touch yours for the fun of it, Mortimer,” she might gain an entirely different response from the male.

Many men with recessive knees have confided to me that they felt incapable of answering the pressure because of the effect it might have on their minds, with the accompanying loss of self-respect. I have established the fact that no _physical_ detriment is incurred by answered pressure—the only harmful effects are psychological. Some males admitted to an unwillingness to give any woman the satisfaction of believing that she was able to take her companion unaware. Still others told me that they feared the consequences of such an act: they were afraid that if ever they let down the bars and failed to turn away from knee pressure, they would likewise be unable to resist other juxtapositions in life and would continually be responding amiably to other amusing stimuli—sales talks, stock promotion, and the like.

It was a young Paterson, N. J., girl by the name of Lillian Fuller who let drop the remark that has epitomized, for the sociological and anthropological world, the phenomenon of the recessive knee. “Fuller’s retort” is now a common phrase in the realm of psychotherapy.

Miss Fuller was an unusually beautiful woman—young, accurate, sensitive. She was greatly attached to a man several years her senior in the buffing department; wanted to marry him. To this end she had laid her knee against his innumerable times without a single return of pressure. His frigidity, she realized, was gradually becoming prejudicial to his mental health, and so one evening, after experiencing for the hundredth time the withdrawal of his knee, she simply turned to him with a quiet smile playing on her face and said, “Say, what is the matter with you, anyway?”

Her retort somehow summed up the whole question of frigidity in men.

_The Declination of the Kiss._[21] Many men have told me that they would not object to sex were it not for its contactual aspect. That is, they said they would be perfectly willing to express their eroticism if it could be done at a reasonable distance—say fifty paces. These men (the frigid-_plus_ type) found kissing intolerable.

[21] Now we’re getting down to business.

When they had an opportunity to kiss a young lady, they declined. They made it plain that they would be willing to blow a kiss across the room from their hand, but not execute it with their lips.

I analyzed scores of these cases, questioning both the women and the men. (The women were mad as hornets.) I found that a small number of the kiss-declining men were suffering from a pathology of the eyes—either astigmatism or farsightedness—so that when they got really close to a girl, she blurred on them.[22] The vast majority of cases, however, were quite different. Their unwillingness I traced to a much subtler feeling than eye-strain. Your true anti-contactual, or kiss-decliner, is a very subtle individual indeed.

[22] Incidentally, I might say that this blurring of the female before the eyes of the male is not entirely unpleasant. It’s kind of fun.

In effect, he is a throw-back to another period in history, specifically to the Middle Ages. He is a biological sport. (Note: this is very confusing, calling him a “sport,” because the ordinary “sport” is not a kiss-decliner at all—anything but. Please keep in mind, then, that when I use the term “sport” I want the strict biological interpretation put upon the word. I want it, and I intend to get it. If there are any of you who think you are going to find the use of the word “sport” in this connection so confusing as to make the rest of the chapter unintelligible, I wish you would drop out. Get something else to read, or, better yet, get some exercise.)

No one can quite comprehend the motives and the successes of a kiss-decliner who does not recall his counterpart in mediæval history. In the Middle Ages, when men were lusty and full of red meat, their women expected as much. A baronial fellow, finishing his meal, made no ado about kissing a Middle Age woman. He just got up from the table and kissed her. Bango, and she was kissed. Love had a simple directness which was not disturbed until the arrival, in the land, of the _minnesingers_. It got so no baronial hall of the Middle Ages was free from these _minnesingers_. They kept getting in. They would bring their harps with them, and after dinner they would twang a couple of notes and then sing a frail, delicate song to the effect that women should be worshiped from afar, rather than possessed. To a baron who had just drunk a goblet of red wine, this new concept of womanhood was screamingly funny. While he was chuckling away to himself and cutting himself another side of beef, his wife, who had listened attentively to the song, would slip out into the alley behind the castle and there the _minnesinger_ would join her.

“Sing that one again,” she would say.

“Which one?”

“That one about worshiping me from a little distance. I want to hear that one again.”

The _minnesinger_ would oblige. Then he would illustrate the theme by _not_ kissing the woman, but dancing off lightly down the hill, throwing his harp up into the air and catching it again as he went.

“What a nice young man,” the baron’s wife would think, as she slowly turned and went in to bed.

The kiss-decliner of today is a modern _minnesinger_. He is a sport in that he has varied suddenly from the normal type—which is still baronial. Of course, the amusing thing about his conduct is that oftentimes a woman assumes that she is being worshiped from afar, when as a matter of fact she is merely being _ignored from afar_. That is part of the trick of an anti-contactual person—he takes a perverse delight in allowing the woman whose kiss he has declined, to think of him as more lyrical than other men. When he leaves her presence, she is apt to think of him as off somewhere by the bank of a stream, lying flat on his back, his shaggy head buried in the tall grasses, dreaming of something or other—probably of her, whereas, if she would take the trouble to go to the nearest Liggett’s drug store she would probably find him there, getting a sundæ.

By the mere gesture of declining a kiss a man can still make quite a lot of ground, even in these depleted days. The woman thinks: “He would not dream of embracing my body; now that’s pretty white of him!” Of course, it would be wrong to ascribe motives of sheer deliberateness to the frigid male. Often he is not a bad sort—merely is a fellow who prefers an imagined kiss to the real kind. An imagined kiss is more easily controlled, more thoroughly enjoyed, and less cluttery than an actual kiss. To kiss in dream is wholly pleasant. First, the woman is the one of your selection, not just anyone who happens to be in your arms at the moment. Second, the deed is garnished with a little sprig of glamour which the mind, in exquisite taste, contributes. Third, the lips, imaginatively, are placed just so, the right hand is placed just so, the concurrent thoughts arrive, just so. Except for the fact that the whole episode is a little bit stuffy, it is a superior experience all round. When a kiss becomes actual, anything is likely to happen. The lips, failing of the mark, may strike lightly against the end of the lady’s nose, causing the whole adventure to crack up; or the right hand may come in contact with the hard, jagged part of the shoulder blade; or, worst of all, the man’s thoughts may not clothe the moment with the proper splendor: he may be worrying about something.

So you see, frigidity in men has many aspects, many angles. To me it is vastly more engrossing than frigidity in women, which is such a simple phenomenon you wonder anybody bothers about it at all.

ANSWERS TO HARD QUESTIONS

[Note: These questions have been selected from among the many thousand inquiries that were received by Dr. Karl Zaner during the past year. They come from people who are sexually inquisitive—people from every walk of life. The authors wish to thank Dr. Zaner for allowing them to have access to his sex files. It is with a sense of high adventure that we face the task of answering, to the best of our ability, these perplexing questions that deal so intimately with human lives.—THE AUTHORS.]

_Q._ _My youngest boy, age 28, turned against love because in a book he was reading, where the writer meant to say, “A woman in love is sacred” there was a misprint and it came out, “A woman in love is scared.” How would you go about this?_

_A._ We do not regard the case as typical. Presumably your boy is badly frightened himself, or he wouldn’t be reading books; he would be out somewhere. The way to overcome this is to build up his general health.

_Q._ _Should a woman live with her husband if they are separated?_

_A._ Yes. There is nothing that brings two people so close together as separation. In situations of the sort, the woman’s presence gradually becomes necessary on account of the condition of the man’s shirts. On first being separated from his wife, the husband commonly will be found to neglect his dirty clothes, from spite and from self-indulgence. Instead of gathering them into a pile and sending them to a laundry, he will put on yesterday’s shirt in the morning, and stop in a gentleman’s furnishing store to pick up a clean one on the way to the office. This procedure has a threefold allure for the man. First, it gets him to the office half an hour late; second, it takes him into a furnishing store; and third, when he looks into his shirt drawer in the morning and finds no shirts it assures him of the disorganized state of his life. To feel disorganized is to be perfectly happy.

Things might go on this way indefinitely were it not for the economic side of the question. At three dollars a shirt (which is a conservative figure for a man separated from his wife) the shirt bill runs into eighteen dollars a week, plus another six dollars for underwear and socks. Furthermore, there is now a congested condition in the husband’s office, caused by the accumulation of dirty shirts which he has tucked into bottom drawers and filing cabinets. This shows up in his work.

The impracticability of two people living apart becomes apparent, too, in the matter of the old 1916 Cadillac touring car which they own. On separating, the husband will generously give the car to his wife to use, but that doesn’t alter the fact that he, and he alone, knows what you have to do when the car “does that funny thing.” Thus, the husband is apt any time during the day to pick up the phone and hear his wife’s voice:

“Dear, I’m on the Merrick Road between Bellport and Patchogue, and the car is doing that funny thing again.” This means dropping whatever work he is doing, taking a cab to the Penn station and a Long Island train to the scene of the breakdown. This also shows up in his work. It never could happen if husband and wife were living together, because in that case they would never be on cordial enough terms for him to let her use the car.

There is another phase of separation that is perhaps more alarming than those we have mentioned, namely, the possible effect the news of it might have on the health of the wife’s parents or the health of the husband’s parents. I recall the case of a couple who over a period of years tried to live apart without telling the wife’s mother—who had a frail heart and who liked to see young people together, not apart. (Note: old ladies don’t know _why_ they like to see young people together—they can give no reason; yet just the thought of two young people separating excites them unduly, and, when their heart is unreliable, is apt to carry them off.) So this young pair, out of consideration, although separated, sent community Christmas presents to the parents and wrote letters describing joint experiences, until, after two years and eight months of struggling along and scheming, they finally gave up the battle and decided it would be simpler to take an apartment together somewhere. Sheer fatigue united them. They are residing, to this day, in North Pelham, and the wife’s mother is still alive and well. Getting better every day, doctors say.

So our advice to any couple is just this: separate if you must, but by all means live together—no matter how your friends and neighbors talk.

_Q._ _I have an aquarium and I got a snail for it because they told me it would keep the water clean, and the snail unexpectedly bore young, although it was in there all alone. I mean there weren’t any other snails in there, only fish. How could it have young, very well?_

_A._ The snail in your aquarium is a mollusc. It is quite likely an hermaphrodite, even though it came from a reputable department store. For being hermaphroditic, nobody can blame a snail. We cannot tell you everything we know about the gastropods because we know, possibly, more than is good for us. In the absence of specific information to the contrary, we would say that the snail in your aquarium had been going around a good deal with other snails before you got him (her). Some molluscs (not many) can have children merely by sitting around and thinking about it. Others can have children by living in a state of reciprocity with other hermaphrodites. Still others are like us, diœcious, possessed of only one sexual nature but thankful for small favors.

The shellfish and the snails are a great group, though it is a pose with many people to consider them dull. Usually the people who find molluscs dull are dull themselves. We have met molluscs in many parts of the world: in gardens in France, on the rocks at low tide on Long Island Sound, in household aquaria, on the sidewalks of suburban towns in the early mornings, in restaurants, and in forests. Everywhere we found them to be sensitive creatures, imaginative and possessed of a lively sense of earth’s pleasant rhythm. Snails have a kind of nobility. Zoölogists will tell you that they occupy, in the animal kingdom, a position of enviable isolation. They go their own way.

We can understand your curiosity about sex in snails. Molluscs are infinitely varied in their loves, their hates, and their predilections. They have a way of carrying out ideas they get in their head. They are far from cold, as many people suppose them; indeed, one of the most fascinating love stories we ever read was in the _Cambridge Natural History_, in which was described the tryst kept by a pair of snails on a garden wall. We have never forgotten the first sentence of that romantic and idyllic tale, nor have we forgotten the name of the snail, L. Maximus. The story started: “L. Maximus has been observed at midnight to ascend a wall or some perpendicular surface.” It then went on to relate how, after some moments spent greeting each other, crawling round and round, the snails let themselves down on a little ladder of their own devising, and there, suspended in the air ten inches or so from the top of the wall, they found love.

Often very fecund, molluscs are rarely too busy to give attention to their children after birth, or to prepare for their coming. There is, in Algeria, a kind of mollusc whose young return for shelter to the body of their mother, somewhat in the manner of little kangaroos. There is, in the Philippines, a snail who is so solicitous for her expected babies that she goes to the trouble of climbing, with infinite pains and no little discomfort, to the top of a tall tree, and there deposits her eggs in a leaf, folding the leaf adroitly for protection. Another kind of mollusc, having laid her eggs upon a stone, amuses herself by arranging them like the petals of a rose, and hatches them by holding her foot on them. Molluscs tend to business.

Sometimes different species intermarry, but this is rare. The interesting point about it is that such unions generally take place when the air is heavily charged with electricity, as before a storm, or when great rains have made the earth wet. The Luxembourg Garden in Paris is a place snails go to for clandestine matches of this sort. H. Variabilis goes there, and Pisana. The moisture, the electricity, the fragrant loveliness of a Paris night, stir them strangely.

Probably, if you know so little of the eroticism of snails, you have not heard of the darts some of them carry—tiny daggers, hard and sharp, with which they prick each other for the excitement it affords. These darts are made of carbonate of lime. The Germans call them _Liebespfeil_, “love shaft.” Many British molluscs are without them, but that’s the way it goes.

We could tell much more. We could tell about molluscs that possess the curious property of laying their eggs on the outside of their own shell, and of the strange phenomenon of the Cephalopod, who, when he takes leave of his lady, leaves one of his arms with her, so that she may never lack for an embrace. But we feel we have answered your question.

GLOSSARY

AARON’S DISEASE: Put in here merely because it might confuse the reader if we started right off with Admiral Schley.

ADMIRAL SCHLEY: American naval hero in whose splendid achievements men took an interest when their absorption in love died down, circa 1900.

AMATORY INSTINCTS: Interest in sex.

APATHY: Almost total loss of interest in sex.

ATROPHY: Total loss of interest in sex.

ATTACK: Man’s method of showing interest in women, so called because of his brusque desire to get at the matter in hand and have done with it.

BEGONIA-ISM: Tendency of the male to raise small potted plants, and not go out.

BENIGN STUPOR: Alarming condition in a husband or lover which causes him to sit around in his bathrobe and slippers, brooding, instead of working or anything.

BIOLOGICO-CULTURAL: A feminine type; one who expresses her erotic nature verbally.

BOTHER: Annoyance; frequently confused with “pother,” which means uncalled-for interest in something, usually sex.

BOXED-IN: Caught, or trapped, as a husband by a wife, or the delusion of being caught or trapped.

BUTCHER’S TWINE: A kind of stout cord of no particular interest to anybody.

CAUSATION: The factors back of a male’s doubt or suspicion.

CHARADES: (1) Parlor game devised by women to fend off men (1900–1909); (2) acting up in a skittish manner about the facts of life, instead of getting right down to them; twitching, nervous twitching.

COMPLEX: Mental crack-up caused by an emotional, or physical, inability to get away from, or wind things up with, a person of the opposite sex.

COMPLEX, NUCLEAR: Shock caused by discovery of a person of the opposite sex in his or her true colors; beginning of a general breakdown.

DEFENSE: Feminine excuses, tricks, devices, etc.

DELAY MECHANISM: Pother.

DETERIORATION (BENIGN): Going quietly to pieces as the result of marriage or a love affair.

DETERIORATION (MALIGNANT): Going loudly to pieces under the same circumstances; fidgeting, bawling, berating, etc.

DIVERSION SUBTERFUGE: Trick employed by women to keep men’s minds on ethereal, rather than physical, matters.

EMPIRIC: National viewpoint of sex.

EROTIC: Of or pertaining to sex, usually in a pretty far-fetched manner.

EXHIBITIONISM: Going too far, but not really meaning it.

EXOTIC: Of an alarming nature, particularly to parents.

FIXATION: Too great dependence on one woman.

FRAGMENTATION OF PERSONALITY: Inception of general decline on the part of the male.

FRIGIDITY (in men): Suspicion, ignorance, or fatigue, mostly suspicion.

FUDGE-MAKING: Feminine trick or device.

FULLER’S RETORT: A remark made by a Paterson, N. J., girl one night in Paterson, N. J.

GEORGE SMITH: A despondent Indianapolis real-estate man. Pulling a George Smith: attempting to find something more important than, and just as interesting as, women.

JULIA MARLOWE: Actress.

LIBIDO: “Pleasure-principle.”

LOOSENESS OF SYSTEMATIZATION: The going to pieces of a husband.

LOVE: The pleasant confusion which we know exists.

LOVING: Being confused by, or confusing some one.

MASCULINE PROTEST: Male disdain for things which he does not understand.

NARCISSISM: Attempt to be self-sufficient, with overtones.

NEURO-VEGETATIVE REFLEXES: A male’s, particularly a husband’s, quick, unpremeditated reactions to stewed vegetables, especially spinach, and to certain salads.

NEUROSIS: The beginning of the end, unless the husband can go away somewhere.

NEUROTIC: Wanting something, but she doesn’t know what; desirous of something she hasn’t got and probably can’t, or shouldn’t, have.

1907, PANIC OF: Result of woman’s inhumanity to man (1900–1907).

NO BETTER THAN SHE OUGHT TO BE (woman’s definitions): (1) indiscreet; (2) charming; (3) pretty and vivacious; (4) oversexed; (5) living in sin.

NORM: All Quiet.

NUMERICAL PROTECTION: Other people in the room.

OSCULATORY JUSTIFICATION: Reasons for kissing, growing out of the early American credo that kissing for kissing’s sake would send one straight to hell.

PARANOIA: The last stages of what was once a bridegroom.

PASSION: Expression of the sex principle without so much fuss.

PEDESTALISM: The American male’s reverence for the female or, better yet, her insistence on being revered, which amounts to the same thing.

PHYSICO-PSYCHIC: State in which the physical gets tangled up with the spiritual, after the manner of a setter pup throwing a huntsman by getting between his feet.

PLEASURE-PRINCIPLE: See Libido.

POSSESSIVE COMPLEX: Innocent desire to kiss and fondle, sometimes to maul or wool.

POTHER: Uncalled-for interest in something—almost always sex.

PROTECTIVE REACTION: Putting a man in his place.

PSYCHE: Wings for the feet of clay.

PSYCHO-NEUROSIS: Same as neurosis, only worse.

PSYCHOSIS: State of being beside oneself to such an extent that it is doubtful if one can pull oneself together.

PULLED-AWAY: Refers to the knee of a man who is suspicious or tired.

RECESSIVE KNEE: The outstanding phenomenon of masculine frigidity; man’s refusal to answer the pressure.

SCHMALHAUSEN, SAMUEL D.: Student of misbehavior.

SCHMALHAUSEN TROUBLE: Illness commonly found in young ladies who read in cramped quarters.

SMITH, GEORGE: Same as George Smith.

SWASTIKA: Symbol which distracted American suitors used to scrawl on desk pads, margins of books, and so on.

TROUBLE, SCHMALHAUSEN: See Schmalhausen trouble.

ÜBERTRAGUNG: Period of transition during which the male strives to transmute his ardor for women into the semblance of ardor for games.

VOYEURISM: Sex Kibitzing.

A NOTE ON THE DRAWINGS IN THIS BOOK

The inclusion, in this volume, of some fifty-two drawings by James Thurber, was on the whole intentional. Because, however, of the strong feeling of suspicion which they will arouse in certain quarters, it may not be amiss to offer some explanation. For this task I feel peculiarly fitted, for it was I who, during those trying months when the book was in the making, picked up the drawings night after night from the floor under Thurber’s desk, picked them up when I was so tired in body and soul that I could scarcely stoop; it was I who, by gaining the confidence of the charwomen, nightly redeemed countless other thousands of unfinished sketches from the huge waste baskets; and finally, it was my incredible willingness to go through with the business of “inking-in” the drawings (necessitated by the fact that they were done in such faint strokes of a broken pencil as to be almost invisible to the naked eye) that at last brought them to the point where they could be engraved and reproduced.

To understand, even vaguely, Thurber’s art, it is necessary to grasp the two major themes which underlie all his drawings. The first theme is what I call the “melancholy of sex”; the other is what I can best describe as the “implausibility of animals.” These two basic ideas motivate, subconsciously, his entire creative life. Just how some of the animals shown in these pages “come in” is not clear even to me—except in so far as any animal must be regarded as sexually relevant because of our human tendency to overestimate what can be learned from watching it.

When one studies the drawings, it soon becomes apparent that a strong undercurrent of grief runs through them. In almost every instance the _man_ in the picture is badly frightened, or even hurt. These “Thurber men” have come to be recognized as a distinct type in the world of art; they are frustrated, fugitive beings; at times they seem vaguely striving to get out of something without being seen (a room, a situation, a state of mind), at other times they are merely perplexed and too humble, or weak, to move. The _women_, you will notice, are quite different: temperamentally they are much better adjusted to their surroundings than are the men, and mentally they are much less capable of making themselves uncomfortable.

It would be foolish to attempt here a comprehensive appreciation of the fierce sweep, the economy, and the magnificent obscurity of Thurber’s work, nor can I adequately indicate the stark qualities in the drawings that have earned for him the title of “the Ugly Artist.” All I, all anybody, can do is to hint at the uncanny faithfulness with which he has caught—caught and thrown to the floor—the daily, indeed the almost momently, severity of life’s mystery, as well as the charming doubtfulness of its purpose.

E. B. W.

TRANSCRIBER’S NOTE

Illustrations in this eBook have been positioned between paragraphs and outside quotations. Illustrations without captions have had descriptions added, these are indicated with parentheses.

Obvious typographical errors and punctuation errors have been corrected after careful comparison with other occurrences within the text and consultation of external sources.

Some hyphens in words have been silently removed, some added, when a predominant preference was found in the original book.

Except for those changes noted below, all misspellings in the text, and inconsistent or archaic usage, have been retained.

Pg 16: “Chickamaugua” replaced with “Chickamauga”. 89: “Schmaulhausen” replaced with “Schmalhausen”. 162: “hungrig” replaced with “hungrige”.