Review: 'I Was Better Last Night,' by Harvey Fierstein

The only reason I read David Niven's memoir, "The Moon's a Balloon," when I was 11 was that it was lying around my grandma's house but I was dazzled by the dishy, glamorous stories about the actor and his showbiz buds.

Cut to me, several decades later, inhaling Harvey Fierstein's "I Was Better Last Night" (it's what he says when friends compliment him after seeing him in a play), which has a similar mix of gossip, kindness and nonstop name-dropping.

We get a few details about Fierstein's personal life, including the devastating anecdote about his mom that ends the book, but "Better" mostly sticks to his career, beginning as a teenager who happened into Andy Warhol's way-off Broadway experimental theater scene, through four Tony Awards as he became the go-to guy for writing musicals.

His latest gig is revising the book for a soon-to-open "Funny Girl" and, whether or not it's any good, the experience should provide plenty of funny, self-deprecating stories to kick off the second chatty memoir that I hope Fierstein will write.

Chris Hewitt is a Star Tribune critic.

I Was Better Last Night

By: Harvey Fierstein.

Publisher: Alfred A. Knopf, 400 pages, $30.