Their faith paid off, for within eighteen months of that initial news program, both the American public and commercial enterprise had turned radio into a national fad. Despite this humble beginning, the owners of station KDKA, Westinghouse Electric Company, held fast to their belief in the profitability of the medium. On this experimental broadcast, radio announcers relayed to listeners the results of the presidential election between Warren G. American radio came into being on November 2, 1920, in a small shack outside of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Events in History at the Time of the Short Story The birth of radio entertainmentīefore television had captured audiences, entertainment seekers turned to their radios for music, drama, and the news. Thurber left the staff in 1933, remaining a contributor to the magazine, the original publisher of his story “The Secret Life of Walter Mitty.” The story comments on the average man’s unattainable dreams of grandeur which, when coupled with common stress, can drive him into a world of egotistical fantasy. Following the sale, the New Yorker’s founder, Harold Ross, offered Thurber a position on the magazine staff. Like most young authors, he suffered the disappointment of multiple rejections, but eventually his work and tenacity ended with the sale of his short story “An American Romance” to the discriminating magazine in 1927. The unknown Thurber began sending his stories and humorous essays to a new and equally unknown magazine in the city, the New Yorker. Through his imagination, a man leaves behind his humdrum life for the road to high adventure.Įvents in History at the Time of the Short Storyīorn in Columbus, Ohio, James Thurber (1894-1961) moved to New York in 1926, where he worked as a reporter, writer, editor, and cartoonist. A short story set in a suburban Connecticut town during the mid- to late 1930s published in 1939.

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