Customer Reviews

Best Revenge: How Theater Saved My Life and Has Been Killing Me Ever Since

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I know that a book is good when I have to put everything else on hold until I finish it. This one grabbed me right from the beginning. On the very first page I felt as though I was the playwright, experiencing the highs and lows of being accepted, rejected and accepted again as an artist. This book was a lot of fun, full of dry wit and good humor. I especially enjoyed getting the inside track into the world of Broadway and film and finding out from a first-hand source what some of those Oscar-winning superstar actors are REALLY like.

OMG. Love, LOVE, love this book to pieces! So truthful it hurts. How can anyone this scathing be more funny than bitter? Stories are vivid, loaded with charm, and don't spare anyone, least of all the author. I am loving this book and will be sorry to finish it.

It may sound weird to compare a book about a Jewish playwright's memoir about his career and working with famous director Joe Chaikin to Erica Jong - however, that's what came to mind. I remember when I first read "Fear of Flying" I was so taken with the character, so intrigued by her life and her adventures, that I took the book everywhere with me. This book has Chinese food all over it because I would cross the street from my home to the local Chinese restaurant, sit at the table each night, and spill food on it while enjoying every single word. It is hysterical, very moving and gives one a great deal of insight into the world of a neurotic playwright who is struggling with personal demons - and having the ride of his life. I'm glad the author took us with him.

This is a terrific book. It's a great read, a marvelous look at the struggles of an artist trying to make a living in the theater, and a must buy for anyone who plans to make the theater his or her life.

This book may seem at first glance like something for a "niche" market -- people in the theater or the like -- but it's actually so entertaining, funny, skillfully written, moving and wonderfully offbeat that it speaks to any reader no matter what their interests. Fife has found a way to resonate with the universal experience of success/failure that we all share while still remaining excrutiatingly personal, honest and true to his own real story - and that's what memoir should do! All students of the theater should read this, but so should all students of life. And if you do, I guarentee it won't feel like "studying"...enjoy!