PEOPLE HAVE MORE FUN THAN ANYBODY

Thurber seems to have had more fun than most, and this is a thoroughly enjoyable menagerie of some of his congenially barbed cartoons and comic essays. The beauty of Thurber's writing lies in the way he applies a perfect parody of elevated, didactic prose in the service of decidedly unelevated subjects. Consider ``The Story of the Bicycle,'' which begins: ``Although the bicycle has not multiplied anywhere near as rapidly as the rabbit, it must be borne in mind that in the beginning there was only one bicycle whereas there were two rabbits.'' And expressing anxiety over all the ice the nation had come to possess after Admiral Byrd's Antarctic expedition, Thurber demands: ``Are we landowners or ice dealers? Are we men or penguins? Let us face these questions soberly.''