"James Thurber was a comedic genius. His fables are not simply
parodies of Aesop. They are wry, accurate, and powerful reflections of
ourselves, our foibles, our follies, and, above all, our
self-importance. And they are very, very funny." -- Neil Gaiman
James Thurber has been called "one of the world's greatest humorists" by
Alistair Cooke (The Atlantic), and "one of our great American
institutions" (Stanley Walker)--and few works reveal Thurber's genius as
powerfully as his fables. Perennially entertaining and astutely
satirical, Thurber pinpricks the idiosyncrasies of life with verbal
frivolity, hilarious insights, political shrewdness, and, of course,
quirky, quotable morals.
Now, readers can savor 85 fables by the twentieth century's preeminent
humorist collected for the first time in a single anthology. Here,
Fables for Our Time, Further Fables for Our Time, and ten previously
uncollected fables--illustrated by ten contemporary artists including
Seymour Chwast, Mark Ulriksen, Laurie Rosenwald, and R. O. Blechman--are
presented in Collected Fables, a must-have for readers of all ages.