Saturday, November 14, 2015

11/14/1942 The Catbird Seat

November 14, 1942.  One of the great "perfect crime" stories appeared in the issue of The New Yorker with this date.  James Thurber wrote of Mr. Martin, one of his "Little Men" protagonists, finding his life overturned by a new arrival in his office: a woman named Mrs. Ulgine Barrows, a loud brassy slang-slinging force of nature who is destroying all the careful patterns of Mr. Martin's peaceful existance.  So he decides to rub her out.  "The term rub out pleased him because it suggested nothing more than the correction of a error..."

I liked "The Catbird Seat" enough to make it the first entry in the book Thurber on Crime.  Read it and see why.

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