"How the hell did you get the idea you could draw?" - Michael Maslin Remembers James Thurber

Above copyright The New Yorker.

From Michael Maslin's Posted Notes series, titled "Thurber's Unbaked Cookies:"

New Yorker historians remember that Harold Ross, the magazine's founder and first editor, initially didn't care for Thurber's drawings. When Thurber first submitted them to The New Yorker, Ross said to him, "How the hell did you get the idea you could draw?" It wasn't until Thurber and his friend and colleague E.B. White had a hit on their hands with their 1929 publication, Is Sex Necessary? that Ross caved, demanding to see a previously rejected Thurber cartoon: "Where's that goddamn seal drawing, Thurber?"

Read it all here.