What I Saw at the Fair

by Ann Birstein

Overview

Ann Birstein’s account of her adventures in the New York male literary scene as a woman and as a female writer.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781504008464
Publisher:	Open Road Integrated Media LLC
Publication date:	07/28/2015
Pages:	214
Product dimensions:	5.50(w) x 8.50(h) x 0.49(d)

About the Author

Ann Birstein is the author of 10 books, both fiction and non-fiction, which include American Children, Summer Situations, an autobiography, What I Saw at the Fair, and a biography of her father, The Rabbi on Forty-Seventh Street. Her stories, essays and reviews have appeared in the New Yorker, the New York Times, Vogue, and many other publications. Her grants and honors include a Fulbright Fellowship and a National Endowment for the Arts grant. She has taught and lectured throughout the United States, Europe, and Israel. At Barnard College, where she was a professor for many years, she founded and directed Writers on Writing.

Editorial Reviews

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 an influential scribe in her own right will elicit readers’ admiration.” —Publishers Weekly
 
“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 understandably vindictive.” —Booklist

From the Publisher

Fans of Birstein's work in the New Yorker and the New York Times will not be disappointed by this memoir, which expands on much of the colorful narrative found in her superb biography of her father, The Rabbi on Forty-Seventh Street, and delves deeper into her Hell's Kitchen childhood, college life and experiences among cliquish New York City intellectuals. Her father, Rabbi Bernard Birstein, headed the noted "Actors Temple," a synagogue that counted Milton Berle, Eddie Cantor, Jack Benny and Sophie Tucker among its members. After beginning with a wryly humorous segment on her visit to a German town bearing her last name, Birstein chronicles her struggles to be accepted by gentiles while retaining her Jewishness. Particularly entertaining are Birstein's anecdotes of her family, school days and experiences during the 1940s, full of her trademark sardonic observations. Birstein was convinced she'd never be married and is acerbic in her assessments of her young beaux, including one lover who seduced her and then announced his homosexuality, and another who was "a Southern gent scared of Jewish girls but thrilled with them." But singledom ended when Birstein met the highly respected writer and critic Alfred Kazin, an older divorc who transformed her future by winning her heart and thrusting her into the heady world of New York letters, involving parties with Clark Gable, Saul Bellow, James Baldwin, Hannah Arendt, Ralph Ellison and others. Birstein's heartfelt recounting of the writer's life, her turbulent marriage, her divorce from Kazin and later emergence as an influential scribe in her own right will elicit readers' admiration. (Feb.) Copyright 2003 Cahners Business Information.

Publishers Weekly