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Thurber Connection
written by Gazette Publisher Tom Thomson
September 2010

Drinking Career

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James Thurber's era was once labeled "The Lost Generation," but when a reporter once asked him about this, he replied, "We knew where we were." Then he considered the question for a moment more and added, "Ours was the generation that stayed up all night."

And, of course, that usually meant drinking. Interestingly enough, Thurber's drinking career didn't start when he was a college student at OSU. Oh, he might have had a few beers, but there's no evidence that he was a binge drinker, or that alcohol influenced his life one way or the other.

It seems he first developed a real taste for alcohol in 1918 while he was working as a code clerk in Paris. Not a dependency, mind you, just a flirtation. The temptress? Pommard wine. Maybe it even helped him from coming down with influenza, which was sweeping the world, including back home in Columbus, Ohio.

Thurber's drinking career seems to have gone through several stages, which more or less coincided with his personal and professional life. Well, how could it not? This happens to darn near everybody! First, there is the period of discovery. Every imbiber passes through this period. It consists of investigating all the choices that are available, before settling in on one or two that seem to fit.

The dating and courtship years produce interesting drinking patterns for young men, sometimes greasing the skids to matrimony, at other times helping to mend broken hearts. Thurber went through all of this, and with each affair his drinking increased. It reached a plateau with Ann Honeycutt's rejection of his marriage proposals and continued on for another six or seven tortuous years during his mis-matched marriage to Althea Adams.

Ironically, it was during these tipsy years, from 1922 to 1935, that he ascended from a relatively unknown columnist for The Columbus Dispatch to an inter-nationally known writer and artist. In New York City, working at the New Yorker, Thurber found plenty of drinking compatriots, and more than a few bars to hang out in. As he once confided to newspaper friends in Columbus, "Every man should have more than one bar. If things go wrong in one, then you have a few others as back-ups." Then he smiled, and added, "Half a dozen might do the trick." It was about this time that he came up with his famous advice to martini drinkers: "One martini isn't enough. Two martinis are too many. Three or more martinis are just right."

When Thurber first went to work for the New Yorker, prohibition was in full swing, and he and his cronies spent a lot of time at Bleeck's speakeasy, which was also referred to as the Artist and Writers' Club. Located behind a Greek diner on West 40th Street, the popular spot dispensed illegal booze and filling German food dished out by Jack Bleeck, a reactionary political conservative who was liberal enough to make a lot of money operating his illegal business behind the back of the law.

Bleeck's not only attracted New Yorker writers but many of the men from the Herald Tribune. (Women weren't allowed at Bleeck's until after the repeal of prohibition in 1933.) Tribune reporters who haunted the bar included such noteworthy reporters as Joseph Mitchell, John O'Hara, and Alva Johnston. Patrons recall that these guys would bring in big rolls of paper, scissors, marking pencils, and galley proofs. While they were eating and drinking the hours away, they would lay out entire pages of the next day's paper on a couple of commandeered tables. Then they would drop their layouts off at the pressroom for the printers to work on.

Enlightened journalism? I guess so! One other thing. Bleeck's was the kind of bar where everyone yelled at one another, the conversation usually revolving around sports or scandals. Thurber reveled in this kind of raucous atmosphere, the yelling, the posturing, the good-natured insults. Oh, yes, one more thing. Bleeck's was famous for bar games, during the course of which the contestants would gamble everything from their wits to the number of match sticks hidden in their hands. You got it! Thurber also loved this kind of tomfoolery.

In 1935, the New Yorker offices were moved from 25 West 45th Street to more spacious quarters at 25 West 43rd Street, practically in the shadow of the famous Algonquin Hotel, where it remained for over 50 years. Included in the cast-off furniture was an old couch that had offered refuge to a befuddled Thurber on many a drunken night when he couldn't quite navigate his way home.

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