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James Thurber and Thomas Wolfe were both great American authors. They both wrote during the Modern period of writing. Though their writings are very different many of them contain the same elements. The modernist movement called for bold experimentation and a wholesale rejection of traditional themes and styles. Thurber and Wolfe’s writings are far from the old, traditional styles of writing. Their writing shows the switch from the previous period of Realism to the new period of the Moderns. James Thurber and Thomas Wolfe lived different lives, in different places, and wrote in different styles but they still share some similarities. The Moderns really began after World War one or the Great War. This changed the American voice in fiction. Idealism turned into cynicism and America lost its innocence. The Stock Market Crash caused the Great Depression and that caused a more depressing kind of writing. This style calls for bold experimentation, and a sweeping rejection of all traditional themes. American soon became known as a beautiful, bountiful, and rewarding land. The independent person that relies only on himself was shown to have the ultimate triumph. The new writers were skeptical of the New England Puritan tradition and the courtesy, which had been central to the literary. The center of American Literature had finally shifted from New England. Writers were now from the South, Midwest, and the West. There was a breakdown in traditional morality and values. This change could be an explanation for the non-traditional writings of Thurber and Wolfe. Even with these great changes Thurber and Wolfe still have their own style they are unlike any other authors of their time. James Thurber was born in Columbus, Ohio. His father, Charles Leander, was a minor politician. His mother, Mary Thurber, was a strong-minded woman and loved practical jokes. Thurber depicted his mother in his autobiographical stories My Life and Hard Times (1933). Thurbers father was the basis of the typical small, slight man of Thurber’s stories. Thurber was partially blinded by a childhood accident; his brother William shot an arrow at him. He was unable to participate in games and sports so he developed a rich fantasy life. This life inspired his later fiction. He studied at Ohio State University between 1913 and 1918. He was a code clerk in Washington, DC, and at the US embassy in Paris. He worked as a journalist for several newspapers during the early 1920s. He also lived in Paris writing for the Chicago Tribune as an attempt to further his writing career. Thurber went to New York in 1926. He became a reporter for the Evening Post. In 1927 he joined the newly established The New Yorker, where he found his clear, concise prose style and where 15 of his books first appeared. Thurber later published his memoirs from this period The Years With Ross (1959). Thurber’s first book, Is Sex Necessary?, Appeared in 1929.
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