SOURCE: "On Food and Life and Herself," The New York Times Book Review, June 6, 1982, pp. 9, 44-6.

Sokolov is an American critic, cookbook author, novelist, and translator. In the following review of As They Were, he presents an overview of Fisher's career and considers her to be a major American writer.

In a properly run culture, Mary Frances Kennedy Fisher would be recognized as one of the great writers this country has produced in this century. A few acute readers have understood this. Nearly 20 years ago, W. H. Auden said: "I do not know of anyone in the United States today who writes better prose." Perhaps As They Were, her new anthology, consisting of well-chosen work spanning the past five decades, will take the gastronomic curse off Mrs. Fisher and convince a world quite ready to acclaim her as the doyenne of food writers that she deserves much higher...