When I received this book, staring at its orange sunset cover and the mysterious, green face looking back at me, I felt a sense of worry. I had ordered this book about a week before, and by that time I had finished Gore Vidal’s brilliant memoir Palimpsest, the first of two. The worry? To read another memoir after having read such a fantastic memoir from such a witty writer felt a tad like going to a Gordon Ramsay restaurant and then eating your mom’s favorite recipe. I thought it would ruin what I was about to read. I stood in front of my mail box for a second, sighed, put it under my arm and marched inside. If it was going to be ruined…

I am happy to say to my customers that the heights of Vidal’s memoirs, with its actors, literati, and salacious gossip, did not cast a shadow over John DeVore’s memoir ‘Theatre Kids’. In fact, by the time I had made it to page 20, I had forgotten all about Vidal, enraptured by DeVore and his failed actors, magazine editors, and gossip just as salacious. As I sat down and read this book, I found myself caught between remembering and forgetting, chuckling and sighing with worry, underlying names I knew and circling names I did not know. Much like Vidal’s Palimpsest, I could not stop the marginalia that now encircles the text of this book, with different witticisms, quotes, and stories dazzling before these mica glazed eyes that stare with suspicion at everything. And another thing…

But we are getting ahead of ourselves. John DeVore is described in the back flap of the cover as ‘a two-time James Beard Award–winning writer and editor whose essays have been published in Esquire, Vanity Fair and Food & Wine, to name a few.’ I chuckled at this a bit. I knew of Mr. DeVore before I ever read this book. Where did I know him from? From a publication beyond the few that were named here: specifically, his 150 Word Reviews on Substack. These reviews are something I quite enjoy reading–between incompetently short Letterboxd comments and long and windy know nothing ‘theorists’ taking apart Barbie in search of Karl Marx, it was nice to get reviews that are consciously impressionistic but to the point. A testament to how fairly oblivious I can be, I read these for the last 2 years (I think? that obliviousness again…) and never wonder if DeVore was an internet typist or a member of that increasingly small group we once called ‘writers’. I so enjoyed these reviews that I had no other question other than: when will the next one come in, Mr. DeVore?

So you can only imagine my surprise when Mr. DeVore came out with a book. I did not doubt his skills, but it surely, I hoped, would be longer than 150 words. A life in 150 words…a reverie for another day. At 210 pages, his memoir is certainly longer than his movie reviews, but it is also just as sharp. Having read the back flap, and having rightly been put in my place, I turned to its beginning. Theatre Kids? I chuckled. This would be something new to me.

I was, after all, a debate kid.

I

When I began reading this book, I did not look up, check a clock, or respond to a notification until page 23. I inhaled those pages. Only the fear of being more than 10 minutes late leaving my lunch break motivated me to put a book mark in the book and close it. To this critic, many thoughts went through my mind which can be split between literary associations and personal memories. To the first, reading DeVore’s book (even past those first 23 pages) made me think of Daniel Handler’s 1999 debut novel The Basic Eight in the way the prose is full of witty regression meshed between earnest descriptions of the life of the author. John DeVore is Handler’s Flannery Culp–of course, without the murders or the random literary references. We get an author who does not have to ask us to imagine his life with him; he tells a story so good we want to imagine it. And with a wink, a chuckle, and a story, there we are.

This all begins, for DeVore, with his affirmation to the audience (and denying it to a colleague–like all good unreliable narrators) that yes, he is a theatre kid. His denial could not stop the tears in his eyes as he sang ‘On My Own’. After explaining the difference between ‘theater’ and ‘theatre’, the latter word which I read in the voice of George Sanders’ Addison DeWitt, as well as an offhanded sociological descriptor of what a theatre kid is, the reader is shoved into the life of a high school theatre kid. We learn of wisdom passed down from senior to sophomore, sophomore to freshman, and (if I might add) from freshman to the unfortunate sibling or parent who asks that question: ‘how was your day at school?’ These lessons were told ‘over cups of creamy, sugary coffee and plates of baklava at the local twenty-four-hour diner where all the theatre kids at my high school would go to celebrate after a successful production…’ (p.5) He documents for us all the wonder of the high school kid with a recreational activities, first kisses, girls with power tools and DeVore, a senior for a moment, passing on a lie we all have heard:

“Look around at this table. These are the friends you’ll have for the rest of your life.” (p.7)

If only that was true, I thought, but as DeVore so wonderfully put it, ‘…in the moment, it felt true, and that’s good enough.

This had me hooked. I was awash in memories. Perhaps I am a sucker, but as I read this (and the pages beyond) I could only think of my time in high school and all the spiraling energy of hormones, idiocy, and confidence that makes up one’s adolescence. I had been a debate kid (you can call us master debaters, if you must discharge that need) and we had similar situations, experiences, and rules. We were told these over pizza and energy drinks, not coffee–foods we ordered in, instead of going to a diner. Our rules were many, some practical and some superstitious. Everyone not in this debate room, my ‘mentor’, a witty teen girl, told me, was an enemy. Do not share your debate evidence with them, don’t tell them your arguments. On the bus ride to a tournament, many of the debaters would have specific songs that they would listen to because it brought them good luck. We all wore our suits in class the day before the tournament.

Many people had their superstitions–you were not told which to embrace, but that you had to respect each and every one of them. I don’t remember all the rules–I have been, then and now, a nightmare to teach anything to. But somewhere between rules about how much you owed for pizzas and not wearing mismatched socks, there was a rule I am now breaking: never talk to theatre kids.

From here, DeVore tells us about the life of a theatre kid. From high school to Off-Off Broadway to an internship at Disney to standing in front of The Brick with a COVID mask instead of an actor’s, one is told the story of someone whose story is not one of showing off, but rather a heartfelt journey. Like any Daniel Handler character, DeVore faces a sometimes changing, sometimes cruel, fairly unfortunate world that gives no quarter to anyone. DeVore’s prose and stories are mixed with thoughtful recollection and honest asides that reminds us that these are memories: precious, evocative, and sometimes a little blurry. DeVore’s book is a study in how the love for creation that sits in the heart of youth struggles to keep itself alive in the face of an adult world–as well as an adult self. As I read this, I remembered a quote, which I had to go search for. In ‘The Penultimate Peril’, the twelfth of the thirteen books of that children’s series, there is a quote that goes like this:

“In a world too often governed by corruption and arrogance, it can be difficult to stay true to one’s philosophical and literary principles.” (the page number currently escapes me…oblivious)

When I read this, fresh from DeVore’s memoir, I added: ‘it can be difficult to stay a theatre kid too, huh?’ With great skill and simple prose, DeVore shows us this struggle. Under copious amounts of alcohol, drugs, and depressed economies, DeVore the theatre kid struggles with DeVore the adult and all of his roles. Being a drunk, raving, inaccurate Edgar Allan Poe seems to exhilarate the inner theatre kid…but being a glorified gopher for a casting director? How does one act out roles one hates to play but must? For DeVore, there are no mix of good and bad ways he came to cope with this: the aforementioned consumption of sin, stalking Rick Moranis, or reading ‘As I Lay Dying’.

As DeVore struggled, so did I. I read his prose, holding in my mind that movie reviewer who I so enjoyed and watching the shadows cast off of him, revealing a person–funny, a bit down on himself sometimes, and very observant.

I was glad I broke that rule.

II

If you want to know more about the book, I suggest reading it (gasp). Long reviews are for terrible books–after all, in a nation as deregulated as the United States, it is the role of the reviewer to warn his (or hers, or theirs, or…) customers about bad books. As for good books, the reviewer must be like a drug dealer: you give the customer a taste, knowing a taste is all they will need to become hooked. DeVore’s book is one such book. Now, hold this under your nose…

I cannot praise, nearly enough, his prose. I can, I have found, open his book to any random page and find a well written, interesting passage.

For example, (closing my eyes, opening the book at random, knocking over a drink), page 174:

‘I was drawn to alcoholics, and it was funny that I was unable to see why. All I knew was that Kerouac was in pain and able to transform that pain into words, like some kind of alchemist tramp, and he was celebrated for it.’

Or, this one, on page 52 to 53:

‘I don’t think David wanted to mentor anyone, but I gave him very little choice in the matter. Eventually, he warmed to my hyperactive charms, once he was certain I wasn’t planning on murdering him and assuming his identity.’

Okay, one more, for funsies. Page 101:

‘This was Williamsburg, the new capital of broke-ass cool. This is where everyone ended up after The Great Hipster Exodus of the Early Aughts. Picture throngs of theatre kids marching from the Lower East Side across the Williamsburg Bridge to find refuge and cheap rents.’

One enjoys reading DeVore. He does not write to communicate, the goal of the Philistine, but rather to express. He expresses sorrow, triumphant, banality, uncertainty, happiness, and he is never shy about reproaching himself. He notes how his high school years were tinged by popular homophobia and repression, some of which he took part in. He gives himself no excuse, but shows the reader that he has done what amounts to a good person in life: he learned and he adapted.

Another joy for a literary curmudgeon like me is that two things: a solecism-free book and a book that reveals to non-theatre kids (like this master debater great) the masters of DeVore’s field. To the first, not a word, punctuation, pronoun, adverb, adjective or any other members of the grammatical gaggle were out of place–to a critic like me, who has seen a slew of the ‘self published’ book or the hastily created theory book (does anyone remember Daniel Tutt’s How to Read like Parasite? I wish I couldn’t…), this was like that first, refreshing breath you take when you come up for air after almost drowning. As to the second thing, it is from this book that I learned about (to name only a few things) who Shakespeare’s rival was (Kit Marlowe) and about the playwright Joe Orton and, by extension, the movie Prick Up Your Ears (1987). Books that reveal in this way are books that teach, and books that teach are rare. Most don’t–no, can’t–even explain themselves.

III

To bring this to an end with some grandstanding seems a shame. I mostly want to buy several copies of this book, hand it to my friends, and say ‘Read this.’ If they ask questions? Shush them. If they get on their phone, toss it in the microwave. Take up Wittgenstein’s favorite pose, a snarl with a ruler, and make sure they read it closely. In lieu of this power, I must merely repeat myself: read this book.

In the grandstanding department, let me say this: Theatre Kids is what a memoir is supposed to be: a story, a lesson, a little bit true, a little bit funny. I am of the opinion that the true sage of any society is not the philosopher or the religiosi or the witch doctors of Freudian mind control–to me, it is the actor. In this memoir, one becomes fabulously wise between pages 1 to 210 as an actor–sorry, a theatre kid–tells you with his hyperactive charm about all the roles he has played and how he prepared for them…except, of course, when he didn’t. One learns the wisdom of adapting to the role, rather than pining for something else. One learns about the prudence needed to play all these roles, and about how these roles change without consulting you first. Life is, almost, an eccentric, chaotic stage director, changing the script before, during, and after the performance, and you take what he gives and you act it up as best you can. 

I often offer an author advice about their book; I have nothing to offer John DeVore. All I can do is write this, with a pizza and energy drink next to me, and offer him encouragement to keep writing.

Break a leg!