Project and content management for Contemporary Authors volumes
WORK TITLE: Thurberville
WORK NOTES:
PSEUDONYM(S): Hunter, Robert E.
BIRTHDATE: 1951
WEBSITE:
CITY: Columbus
STATE: OH
COUNTRY:
NATIONALITY:
http://www.dispatch.com/content/stories/sports/2016/09/18/bob-hunter-column.html * http://www.ohioswallow.com/author/Bob+Hunter * http://www.thurberhouse.org/new-events/2017/4/18/bob-hunter-summer-literary-picnic
RESEARCHER NOTES:
LC control no.: n 2008047968
LCCN Permalink: https://lccn.loc.gov/n2008047968
HEADING: Hunter, Bob, 1951-
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670 __ |a Hunter, Bob. Chic, c2008: |b eCIP t.p. (Bob Hunter) data view (b. Aug. 21, 1951; Bob E. Hunter)
670 __ |a Email from pub., July 17, 2008 |b (also author of Buckeye basketball, Ohio State University)
670 __ |a Historical guidebook to old Columbus, 2012: |b CIP t.p. (Bob Hunter) data view (author of Saint Woody)
667 __ |a Heading formerly on undifferentiated name record: n 81122017
953 __ |a sf10 |b rc15
PERSONAL
Born 1951.
ADDRESS
CAREER
Columbus Dispatch, sports columnist, 1975-2017.
WRITINGS
SIDELIGHTS
Bob Hunter joined the staff of the Columbus Dispatch in 1975, and he worked there as a sports columnist before retiring in 2017. Hunter has authored several books on Ohio and Ohio-affiliated sports teams along the way. For his first volume, Hunter released Buckeye Basketball, Ohio State University, with Strode publishing house in Huntsville, Alabama, in 1981. Next following a nearly thirty-year break in his publication schedule, Hunter teamed with Marc Katz to write Chic: The Extraordinary Rise of Ohio State Football and the Tragic Schoolboy Athlete Who Made It Happen (the book was published by Orange Frazer Press in Wilmington, Ohio.
Next, in 2012, Hunter completed two books on Ohio sports and Ohio history. The first, Saint Woody: The History and Fanaticism of Ohio State Football, was printed by Potomac Books in Washington, DC, and the second, A Historical Guidebook to Old Columbus: Finding the Past in the Present in Ohio’s Capital City, was released by Ohio University Press in Athens, Ohio. Discussing the latter title in an interview posted on the Columbus Monthly Online, Hunter explained that the book was inspired by the research and writing that went into composing Chic. Indeed, the author explained that “all the principal people in this book were dead, so I had to kind of research around it. A lot of people told me they liked the local history part of that book as much as they did the football part of it.”
Released in 2017 by Trillium press in Columbus, Ohio, Hunter’s book, Thurberville, also draws on the research Hunter initially undertook while writing Chic. In fact, he told Columbus Parent Online correspondent Peter Tonguette: “I’d be in the 1912 city directory, and I’d be looking up Harley . . . While I was in there, I’d look up Thurber … not knowing I was going to do a book on him, but out of curiosity.” Thurber—i.e. humorist and author James Thurber (1894-1961)—lived in Columbus for years before moving to New York City, and much of his work was influenced by the people and places of Columbus. It is this influence that serves as the focus of Thurberville.
Hunter begins the book with an overview of Thurber’s life in Columbus: Thurber was born in a house on Parsons Avenue; he graduated from East High School; attended Ohio State University; and worked as a reporter for the Columbus Dispatch before moving to New York in 1925. From there, Hunter quotes from Thurber’s writing to trace the people and places that appear there, beginning with Thurber’s family and friends. Hunter finds that, while Thurber’s depictions are exaggerated and fanciful, they are very much rooted in fact. Over the course of forty-eight chapters, Hunter re-visits Thurber’s boyhood haunts. The field where Thurber played baseball is now a parking lot, and his grandfather’s produce-stand has long since been turned into a park. Other sites Hunter points out include the church where Thurber was married, the hotel where Thurber stayed when visiting from New York, and the offices where the Columbus Dispatch were located when Thurber worked there. Addresses are provided throughout, which means interested readers may visit the sites Hunter describes. Furthermore, Hunter connects some of the events described in Thurber’s stories with historical events in Columbus, and he also writes about the restoration of one of Thurber’s homes into the Thurber House, a museum open to the public.
Praising the book in her Xpress Reviews assessment, Janet Clapp stated: “For Columbus and Thurber aficionados, this book offers the background behind the Ohioan scenes of his life and writings.” A Publishers Weekly critic was also impressed, asserting that “the physical traces of Thurber’s Columbus are mostly gone, but they remain immortalized in Thurber’s prose, and, now, in Hunter’s meticulous account.” Offering further applause in the Columbus Dispatch Online, a reviewer noted that “Hunter tackles the relationship between Thurber and his hometown with the enthusiasm and prowess of an Ohio State linebacker on the scent of a Purdue quarterback. Along the way, Hunter, a crackerjack writer and a terrific amateur historian, blends vivid imagery and scholarly insight in a book that also reads as a kind of tour guide to early-20th-century Columbus.” The reviewer additionally advised that “some of the details will interest only the most hard-core Thurberphiles or local history buffs. But anyone with an affinity for the author or the city will appreciate Hunter’s efforts to sniff out the reality behind Thurber’s fantasies.” In conclusion, the reviewer observed that “Thurber sold the idea of Columbus as Thurberville, not just to the world, but more important, to Columbus itself. Columbus—at least some small, lovably goofy part of it—has tried to live up to that slightly zany image ever since.”
BIOCRIT
PERIODICALS
Publishers Weekly, March 20, 2017, review of Thurberville.
Xpress Reviews, March 24, 2017, Janet Clapp, review of Thurberville.
ONLINE
Columbus Dispatch Online, http://newscycle.dispatch.com/ (May 15, 2017), review of Thurberville.
Columbus Monthly Online, http://www.columbusmonthly.com/ (November 20, 2017), author interview.
Columbus Parent Online, http://www.columbusparent.com/ (November 20, 2017), Peter Tonguette, author profile and interview.
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Home | Books | Thuberville
Book Cover
Thurberville
BOB HUNTER
WITH A PREFACE BY JOE BLUNDO
344 pp. 6 x 9
5 b&w photographs
Pub Date: April 7, 2017
Paperback due April, 2018
Subjects: Ohio, Regional Interest, American Literary Studies
Imprint: Trillium
PREORDER PAPERBACK $19.95 ISBN 978-0-8142-5403-5
PURCHASE HARDCOVER $29.95 ISBN 978-0-8142-1337-7
PURCHASE PDF EBOOK $19.95 ISBN 978-0-8142-7499-6
BOOK DESCRIPTION
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Bob Hunter is a sports columnist at The Columbus Dispatch and author of Saint Woody: The History and Fanaticism of Ohio State Football and A Historical Guidebook to Old Columbus.Author Photo
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info@osupress.org 180 PRESSEY HALL 1070 CARMACK ROAD COLUMBUS, OH 43210-1002
11/13/2017 General OneFile - Saved Articles
http://go.galegroup.com/ps/marklist.do?actionCmd=GET_MARK_LIST&userGroupName=schlager&inPS=true&prodId=ITOF&ts=1510628620312 1/1
Print Marked Items
Thurberville
Publishers Weekly.
264.12 (Mar. 20, 2017): p67.
COPYRIGHT 2017 PWxyz, LLC
http://www.publishersweekly.com/
Full Text:
Thurberville
Bob Hunter. Trillium, $19.95 trade paper
(384p) ISBN 978-0-8142-1337-7
After rising to fame as a writer and cartoonist for the New Yorker, James Thurber (1894-1961) was still indelibly linked
to his hometown of Columbus, Ohio. Hunter, a sports columnist for the Columbus Dispatch, where Thurber started his
career, maps the city of Thurber's childhood and young adulthood while also registering how it has changed over time.
His lively, if sometimes scattered, volume is a tribute to the personalities and places that make up a community. Hunter
provides addresses throughout so that the avid Thurberphile can visit the homes and haunts that influenced young
Thurber, even though most are gone or transformed beyond recognition. Hunter creates biographical sketches of
Thurber in different places, including Trinity Episcopal Church, where Thurber married; the Deshler Hotel, where he
stayed on returns home; and the old Dispatch offices. And he resurrects the numerous folk who all contributed to
Thurber's unique take on the world, including Thurber's eccentric (and sometimes tragic) family; his cadre of friends,
including fellow Columbus native Donald Ogden Stewart, a famous playwright and screenwriter; and the
newspapermen and college professors who populated his formative years. The physical traces of Thurber's Columbus
are mostly gone, but they remain immortalized in Thurber's prose, and, now, in Hunter's meticulous account. (May)
Source Citation (MLA 8th
Edition)
"Thurberville." Publishers Weekly, 20 Mar. 2017, p. 67. General OneFile, go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do?
p=ITOF&sw=w&u=schlager&v=2.1&id=GALE%7CA487601806&it=r&asid=b5628f4ee615435d2da317004d0ba17e.
Accessed 13 Nov. 2017.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A487601806
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"Thurberville" (Trillium, 344 pages, $29.95) by Bob Hunter
By Steve Stephens
The Columbus Dispatch
Posted May 15, 2017 at 2:01 AM
Updated May 15, 2017 at 6:43 AM
James Thurber might not have needed Columbus, but Columbus needed Thurber — and still does.
In his new book “Thurberville,” retired Dispatch sportswriter Bob Hunter tackles the relationship between Thurber and his hometown with the enthusiasm and prowess of an Ohio State linebacker on the scent of a Purdue quarterback. Along the way, Hunter, a crackerjack writer and a terrific amateur historian, blends vivid imagery and scholarly insight in a book that also reads as a kind of tour guide to early-20th-century Columbus.
Thurber — an author, a humorist and a cartoonist who became famous while working for the New Yorker magazine — was born in Columbus in 1894 “on a night of wild portent and high wind,” as he once wrote. He spent his formative years here, including several working as a Dispatch reporter. He died in 1961.
Even Columbus residents can be forgiven for supposing that Thurber’s tales all take place in the gardens of his off-kilter imagination, where befuddled husbands and unicorns of dodgy provenance jockey for space and edible lilies.
But Thurber used his hometown and its denizens as foils in several of his most popular stories, many collected in the books “My Life and Hard Times” and “The Thurber Album.”
“Thurberville” visits the flesh-and-blood people and solid-as-brick places populating Thurber’s Columbus tales. Hunter provides even the street addresses of Thurber’s old haunts — some still standing, some long gone.
Some of the details will interest only the most hard-core Thurberphiles or local history buffs. But anyone with an affinity for the author or the city will appreciate Hunter’s efforts to sniff out the reality behind Thurber’s fantasies.
One example: Thurber was waxing poetic when he wrote, “The clocks that strike in my dreams are often the clocks of Columbus.” But Hunter says Thurber was probably thinking of a real clock, and, delightfully, he provides evidence that the real clock is likely the one in the tower of Holy Cross Catholic Church, still standing at 205 S. 5th St.
At a glance
Bob Hunter will speak and sign copies of "Thurberville" at 7 p.m. Tuesday at the Bexley Public Library, 2411 E. Main St., Bexley.
Hunter also tracks down people who had greatly influenced Thurber, including legendary Ohio State football star Chic Harley and acclaimed Dispatch cartoonist Billy Ireland. The players also include lesser-known figures, such as Ohio State Journal Editor Robert O. Ryder, who should probably be more celebrated here.
Thurber had a fraught relationship with his hometown, but he credited it for inspiration.
“Columbus is a town in which almost anything is likely to happen, and in which almost everything has,” he wrote.
Thurber’s talent, though, probably can be credited more to his vivid imagination and uniquely skewed way of looking at the world than to his hometown.
“Thurber likely would have found plenty of good material even had he grown up in Dubuque, Iowa; or Casper, Wyoming; or even, Detroit, Chicago or Los Angeles,” Hunter notes in the very first paragraph of his introduction.
But Thurber helped spread, far and wide, the notion of an intriguingly wacky city.
“The world came to know Thurber’s Columbus and love it like an eccentric family member,” Hunter writes.
And Thurber sold the idea of Columbus as Thurberville, not just to the world, but more important, to Columbus itself. Columbus — at least some small, lovably goofy part of it — has tried to live up to that slightly zany image ever since.
sstephens@dispatch.com
@SteveStephens
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