My Life and Hard Times is the 1933 autobiography of James Thurber. It is considered his greatest work as he relates in bewildered deadpan prose the eccentric goings on of his family and the town beyond (Columbus, Ohio).
Characters include the maid who lives in constant fear of being hypnotised; a grandfather who believes that the American Civil War is still going on; a mother who fears electricity is leaking all over the house and Muggs, an Airedale Terrier that had a liking for biting people.
The book was a best seller and also achieved high critical praise. Russell Baker writing in the New York Times said it was "possibly the shortest and most elegant autobiography ever". Ogden Nash said it was "just about the best thing I ever read"', and Dorothy Parker said "Mad, I don't say. Genius I grant you."
Famous quotes containing the words life, hard and/or times:
“Pale hands, pink-tipped, like Lotus buds that float
On those cool waters where we used to dwell,
I would have rather felt you round my throat
Crushing out life than waving me farewell!”
—Laurence Hope (1865–1904)
“A long time ago people often said, “Why did you become a teacher?” Well, that was about the only decent thing when I was growing up for a girl to be. If you became a secretary ... you got a hard name.”
—Knowles Witcher Teel (b. c. 1906)
“The times are so peculiar now, so mediaeval so unreasonable that for the first time in a hundred years truth is really stranger than fiction. Any truth.”
—Gertrude Stein (1874–1946)