From the Fair

As Curt Leviant in his excellent introduction makes clear Sholom Aleichem thought this to be his most important book. He called it a 'novelized memoir' and wrote of himself in the third- person because he was concerned not to engage in a kind of self- justification he felt he might if he used the first person. The work is constructed as a series of scenes in which he tells of his life from childhood through early manhood. He also attempts to in telling his own story to reconstruct the Jewish world of his childhood, the world of the Eastern European shtetl society which was to be destroyed in the Holocaust. In the opening chapter he explains his title . ' From the fair' implies a return tip, or the results of a great fair. A man heading for a fair is full of hope.He has no idea what bargains he will find and what he will accomplish. He flies toward the fair swift as an arrow, at full speed. Don't bother him.He has no time. But on the way back he knows what deals he has made and what he has accomplished. He's no longer in a hurry. He's got plenty of time. No need to rush. He can assess the results of his venture. He can tell everyone about the tripat his leisure-whom he has met and what he has seen and heard at the fair. " So the book is Sholom Aleichem returning from the fair and looking at his life in retrospect. It is a shame that he did not have time to complete the whole story. But what he gives us is a a very restrained and humorous account of his childhood world. It is perhaps not what he hoped and believed it to be, his greatest work, and it is certainly not his most popular work but it does give much insight into his own life, and does contain many good Sholom Aleichem stories.