As a child Thurber lost his left eye in a game when his brother accidentally shot him with a toy arrow. He developed a rare condition called sympathetic opthalmia, in which trauma to one eye can affect sight in the other, and was troubled by vision problems for the rest of his life. By 1941 Thurber was legally blind and he eventually had to give up drawing cartoons, but was able to continue writing through dictation. Thurber's memory was so strong he could compose a 2,000-word story in his head, remember it overnight, and dictate it to his secretary the next day.
