Thursday, August 25, 2016
Clearly, justice must be the same for all, but is this not true also of morality? Yet for some people, under certain circumstances, this is hardly the case. There exist certain persons by wh…
SOURCE: John Simon at 08:46PMWednesday, July 27, 2016
Like first impressions in life, and rather more so, first impressions, i.e., beginnings in fiction matter. They may not be quite all important, but they do invite and influence readership.Ta…
SOURCE: John Simon at 01:09AMSaturday, June 25, 2016
Fetishes are called kinks or perversions and refer to any deviance from the accepted “normal” sexual practice. But is there not a certain flexibility allowed for them? Homosexuality, for…
SOURCE: John Simon at 09:08PMWednesday, June 1, 2016
Politics is a mug’s game, and by mug I don’t mean Donald Trump’s countenance that television would have me contemplate with scant respite. Mrs. Clinton looks more presentable, by which…
SOURCE: John Simon at 02:26PMMonday, May 16, 2016
This was a brief introductory comment to a prize-giving dinner for student essayists at Hunter College.I would imagine that all of you have heard of the Pen Club, the premier international o…
SOURCE: John Simon at 04:01PMTuesday, April 19, 2016
I have always been a Francophile, hugely fond of France. There has been only one thing that I didn’t like about it: the French. To be exact, not all the French, only the petit bourgeois va…
SOURCE: John Simon at 02:40PMWednesday, March 30, 2016
What does the expression “without rhyme or reason” tell us about rhyme? It seems to me to mean that, along with reason, it is one of two valid alternative modes of expression, at least i…
SOURCE: John Simon at 02:14PMTuesday, March 1, 2016
Let me start with a postscript to a previous blog entry about obesity. There is a plea on ABC television for locating missing children, which provides a picture and description of them, and,…
SOURCE: John Simon at 10:42AMSaturday, January 23, 2016
Any discussion of obesity comes down to the not particularly friendly contest between thick and thin, with the body as the chief battleground. Mostly the female nude, because that has been t…
SOURCE: John Simon at 06:58PMFriday, January 1, 2016
Memory is one of our most interesting possessions; its failure, our possibly most grievous loss. What enhances its importance is its mystery, its surprises, its ultimate inscrutability.Its c…
SOURCE: John Simon at 04:19PMSunday, December 6, 2015
Naomi Wallace’s “Night Is a Room” was recently playing at the Signature Center, the third part of a trilogy from their playwright in residence. Wallace has received every conceivable a…
SOURCE: John Simon at 03:57AMWednesday, November 25, 2015
A letter in the November 23rd New York Times from Bonnie Berry, the author of “Discrimination and Social Power,” expresses her approval of Julia Baird’s November 9th Op-Ed essay “Bei…
SOURCE: John Simon at 12:00AMFriday, October 9, 2015
This one really works only in German, but I’ll render it into English. “What’s the dog’s name?” the new maid asks. “Herkules,” says the mistress. “Herr Kules?” responds the…
SOURCE: John Simon at 06:28PMTuesday, September 15, 2015
A time when puny Roberta Vinci—bless her!—derails the elephantine Serena on her route to the Grand Slam, the moment is rife for a discussion of the Absurd, which I deliberately capitaliz…
SOURCE: John Simon at 04:56AMMonday, August 17, 2015
Her name was Ljiljana, Serbian for Lilian, and she was my first love. To be sure, in kindergarten I was smitten with Milica, who did not reciprocate, but that doesn’t count anyway. One had…
SOURCE: John Simon at 03:34PMThursday, July 23, 2015
What is being a sports fan really about? Is it just like an addiction to chess or light beer or mashed potatoes? Well, no; it’s more than that. It makes you a citizen of a parallel world.A…
SOURCE: John Simon at 05:02PMMonday, June 22, 2015
Saturday, June 20, 2015. I read in the Times that the writer James Salter has died at age 90. He was a month younger than I, and a schoolmate in my senior year at the Horace Mann School (in …
SOURCE: John Simon at 10:21AMMonday, May 25, 2015
Milan Kundera's essays illuminate music, painting and writing in the context of what he calls a "post-art" era.
SOURCE: The New York Times Subscription at 05:58PMHeroic efforts from the remarkable singing actresses Laura Benanti, Patti LuPone and Sherie Rene Scott and the equally accomplished Brian Stokes Mitchell can’t disguise the fact that &…
SOURCE: noir.bloomberg.com at 05:58PM 
