Sunday, October 27, 2019
One person’s critic is another person’s crackpot. That they are not united in their opinions is ascribable to the Latin saying: quot homines, tot sententiae. I myself prefer being consid…
SOURCE: John Simon at 12:48PMMonday, September 16, 2019
We have here Robert, a publisher; his best friend, Jerry, a literary agent; Emma, Robert’s sassy wife, a gallerist, for seven years Jerry’s clandestine mistress, but no longer so for two…
SOURCE: John Simon at 03:42AMThursday, August 29, 2019
MUSICALS ENDANGEREDWhat Is happening to America's greatest contribution to the theater, musical comedy? Why so many jukebox musicals? Why so many paltry shows? Why haven't you even tried…
SOURCE: John Simon at 10:24AMMUSICALS ENDANGEREDWhat Is happening to America's greatest contribution to the theater, musical comedy? Why so many jukebox musicals? Why so many paltry shows? Why haven't you even tried…
SOURCE: John Simon at 03:48AMMonday, August 12, 2019
If you like splash, “Moulin Rouge!” is the show for you. Even more than the Baz Luhrmann movie, on which the musical is loosely based, it can hold your wonderment without abate from star…
SOURCE: John Simon at 09:48AMIt was clever of Encores! to revive Stephen Sondheim and John Weidman’s musical “Road Show,” a musical with some gorgeous music both for individuals and choral. The orchestra under Jam…
SOURCE: John Simon at 09:48AMSunday, July 28, 2019
Americans are almost always in a hurry, though rush is all too often rash. Even cars are often sold on speed disallowed by law, and so essentially useless. Emblematic is horse racing, , with…
SOURCE: John Simon at 09:36PMEvery year we get a “Broadway’s Rising Stars” show produced by Scott Siegel at Town Hall, a revue of songs performed by recent college graduates aspiring to careers in musical theater …
SOURCE: John Simon at 09:36PMSunday, July 7, 2019
There are two ways to be an actor—either to disappear into the role, or to let the role come to you. In other words, to be a modest interpreter or an overwhelming personality. In still oth…
SOURCE: John Simon at 01:36AMMonday, June 17, 2019
I’ve always been fond of tiny triumphs that seem to come out of nowhere to score surprise effects. Let me evoke three such incidents.
One long ago day some of us were cruising the labyrin…
SOURCE: John Simon at 12:48PMMonday, May 20, 2019
I can’t help it but I am an entrenched traditionalist—or, if you prefer, conventional soul—about names. I have no serious quarrel with those who invent names for themselves, but if you…
SOURCE: John Simon at 01:36PMTuesday, April 16, 2019
The British novelist L. P. Hartley is remembered chiefly for the novel and movie version of “The Go-Between,” beginning with “The past is a foreign country: they do things differently …
SOURCE: John Simon at 05:14PMSaturday, March 2, 2019
Fashion matters. Consider haute couture designer Karl Lagerfeld’s recent obituaries, extensive enough to be worthy of a prince or president. To be sure, Lagerfeld was, in uniqueness and in…
SOURCE: John Simon at 03:40PMSunday, February 17, 2019
What exactly is a great performance by an actor or actress on stage or screen? Or if not exactly, because it involves something words seem unable to express fully, at least approximately.It …
SOURCE: John Simon at 11:12PMTuesday, February 5, 2019
Persons of extreme sensitivity or puritanical leanings might as well stop reading right here; others might find, as I do, each language ‘s choice of curse words and purported profani…
SOURCE: John Simon at 11:48AMThursday, January 24, 2019
“Through more than thirty years of writing and behavior, Simon has shown us how easy it is to be a snake.” So ends an attack on me of a good many years ago on Salon by Charles Taylor, sh…
SOURCE: John Simon at 12:48AMFriday, January 4, 2019
In a recent blog post I enumerated poems or parts of poems that have been amiably haunting me all my life. Yet there is one of tem that, though frequently recurrent, I did not mention. It ru…
SOURCE: John Simon at 04:36PMTuesday, December 11, 2018
Herewith a number of lyric verse quotations about death or dying from books in my collection. Where the source is formal, rhyming verse, I tend to include the original; where it is prose or …
SOURCE: John Simon at 12:04PMSaturday, November 10, 2018
Some of what follows may be repetition, but a good thing bears repeating, especially in an age when so much bad stuff is prevailing. So what I am discussing and explicating are touchstones a…
SOURCE: John Simon at 11:42PMMonday, October 29, 2018
A fetish is, according to one definition, an object or body part, that elicits adoration or sexual arousal, and may in extreme cases be needed for complete sexual gratification. It is usuall…
SOURCE: John Simon at 12:36AMTuesday, October 2, 2018
The text today is irony, from the Greek for dissimulation, as I learn from J. R. Cuddon’s marvelous book (more about that anon), from which I quote the following, enough for an initial def…
SOURCE: John Simon at 02:06AMSaturday, September 1, 2018
Some questions may be hard to answer, yet they must be asked. And answering is not enough: they must , when answered, also be acted upon. They are like potholes on the roads, so numerous tha…
SOURCE: John Simon at 08:36PMMonday, August 20, 2018
Under the rubric “Lapses, let me start with two flagrantly poor specimens of usage, which I find particularly painful. Both are exemplars of redundancy, excess verbiage that can and should…
SOURCE: John Simon at 03:42PMMonday, July 16, 2018
This is about what qualifies an individual as a cultured person. It is perforce so from my particular point of view; from someone else’s, it may well differ. According to Bryan Garner’s&…
SOURCE: John Simon at 06:54PMMonday, June 25, 2018
This little essay was composed before the wonderful news from Roman Catholic Ireland: a thunderous yes to legitimizing abortion. Now if only other Catholic countries would share the pluck of…
SOURCE: John Simon at 01:06AMFriday, May 25, 2018
Titles do matter, at the very least in garnering desirable tables in restaurants, and don’t let anybody tell you otherwise. By this I mean titles both of people and of literary works, amon…
SOURCE: John Simon at 05:33PMSaturday, April 21, 2018
My time as a graduate student in Comparative Literature was as good as can be, and a pleasure to recall. Who would have thought that it would be this enjoyable?Since I could no longer stay i…
SOURCE: John Simon at 04:36PMThursday, April 5, 2018
Here I am again with a blog post on names, names that I find variously interesting. Take, for example, Dove. It is the name of a very good chocolate and a very good soap, and a worthy but no…
SOURCE: John Simon at 10:12PMTuesday, March 13, 2018
Eeminism etc.The American Heritage Dictionary defines feminism as "Belief in or advocacy of women's social political, and economic rights, especially with regard to equality of t…
SOURCE: John Simon at 03:25PMTuesday, February 13, 2018
Jokes are our friends that accompany us through life—at least he good ones are. They made us laugh when we first heard or read them, and they make us smile as we summon them up from our me…
SOURCE: John Simon at 06:44AMMonday, January 22, 2018
“Are critics necessary?” a good many people ask, not a few of them the butts of some kind of criticism. Certainly if dray horses, victims of he whip, could speak, the answer would be No.…
SOURCE: John Simon at 09:18PM 
