Is Sex Necessary?

collaborated with James Thurber on Is Sex Necessary? (1929), a spoof of contemporary sex manuals. In a monthly column (1938–43) for Harper’s magazine, he wrote essays about rural life.

…illustrations for their jointly written Is Sex Necessary? (1929), a spoof on the then-popular earnest, pseudoscientific approach to sex. Thurber’s stock characters—the snarling wife, her timid, hapless husband, and a roster of serene, silently observing animals—have become classics of urban mythology.