Susie Bright reads Thurber's version of a "The Night Before Christmas," in the Hemingway Manner

Talk about a mash-up.

The legendary  James Thurber wrote the parody,  "A Visit from Saint Nicholas in the Ernest Hemingway Manner" for the Christmas Eve edition of The New Yorker magazine in 1927. The poem's inventor,  Clement C. Moore, will never be the same.

It is my great pleasure to read it aloud:

(Susie Bright is a guest blogger)

• [swell]

  I think there is no link to Susie reading?

• [Takuan]

  click right after “aloud”

• [quesie]

  The expletive was mine; it just popped out in my “dramatic passion.”

  The “Hell!” part was in the original, though.

  The clickety-thing seems to be working now, thank goodness.

  And to all… a good night!

• [Church]

  @Swell, Looks like a flash(?) widget right after “…pleasure to read aloud:”

  Would have been nice to have an MP3.

• [Anonymous]

  @church, Well, whining should help.

  http://susiebright.blogs.com/Thurber_Night_Before%20_Xmas.mp3

• [gollux]

  Thanks for the Thurber! One of my favorite authors.

  “The Night Before Christmas” meets “The Old Man and the Sea” as can only be imagined by one of James Thurber’s ordinary people.

• [Anonymous]

  Didnt the Jack Officers do a version of this?

• [heydemann3]

  The clcikety thing is broken. It only plays a bit of the story, then you have to click it again to get more, but it starts from the beginning. I had to hear the beginning five times to get to the end.

• [Anonymous]

  Thank you.I so enjoyed that.It made my day..

• [cherry shiva]

  there is well researched doubt as to whether Moore actually wrote the original poem, but there is no doubt that Santa Claus as we know him is an amalgam of corporate shill, consumer candyman, and psychedelic shaman. coke is it !

• [Church]

  @Anonymous, Squeaky wheel…

  Thanks!

• [ndollak]

  I listened to it. Twice I listened to it. I like it, I thought. Especially the narrator’s laconic and non-explanatory “Yep” response to his wife’s sarcastic query.

  Funny, though… I don’t recall Thurber being in the habit of dropping F-bombs, and I doubt that a widely-read magazine such as “The New Yorker” would have printed an expletive like that in 1927. Is there a copy of the original online somewhere? Are you sure he didn’t use an ersatz swear, like “flipping,” or something?

• [pinch]

  You know what’s cool? If you go down to the “Holiday/Christmas Music: An Open Thread” and get that going; it underscores the Susie Bright reading very nicely.

• [Antinous]

  I don’t recall Thurber being in the habit of dropping F-bombs, and I doubt that a widely-read magazine such as “The New Yorker” would have printed an expletive like that in 1927.

  Thus “in the Hemingway Manner”.

• [Shelby Davis]

  @ Ndollak: There are no f-bombs in the original:
  http://thenostalgialeague.com/olmag/st_nicholas.html

  Thurber is one of my all-time favourite writers. Thanks for sharing.

• [Felton]

  Thank you for this! I love Thurber.

• [buddy66]

  Hemingway battled editor Maxwell Perkins for the F-word for years. He finally got it in To Have And Have Not Not, although I don’t know which edition.

• [dccarles]

  Again with the Thanks for Thurber.

  “That`s your eye!“ he shouted. “You`ve fixed the lens so that it reflects! You`ve drawn your own eye!“

  –University Days, `My Life and Hard Times`.

• [johnofjack]

  Far too many dialogue attributions to be a Hemingway … I remember in more than one work having to pencil in character initials in long exchanges; one of them had over 20 without any “he said” “she said” after the first two.

• [Shelby Davis]

  Yeah, and if Hemingway had really given the story a treatment, the narrator would have sat down with a bottle of vermouth at some point. :)