What I Saw at the Fair

"Fans of Birstein's work in the New Yorker and the New York Times will not be disappointed by this memoir... Particularly entertaining are Birstein's anecdotes of her family, school days and experiences during the 1940s, full of her trademark sardonic observations... Birstein's heartfelt recounting of the writer's life, her turbulent marriage, her divorce from [Alfred Kazin] and later emergence as

"Unsparing in her condemnation of the prevailing sexist attitudes of the times and Kazin's selfishness and brutality, she is also laceratingly funny in her vehement characterizations of family, friends, and foes. This vinegary portrait of a tumultuous childhood and troubled marriage and scathing critique of an enormously influential but cutthroat literary milieu is entertainingly illuminating and