Yesterday I casually picked up a book that fell off a bookshelf. It turned out to be How I Lost 10 Pounds in 53 Years, and is the wonderful memoir of Kaye Ballard, which I acquired in 2006 w…
SOURCE: John Simon at 10:16PMThere should be a difference between a good performance and a great one. Sensibly, one applauds at the end of the former and rises to one’s feet for the latter. About which is which, one k…
SOURCE: John Simon at 08:06PMI read the other day, evoking many memories, that the great publisher Barney Rosset had died aged 89, and reflected on what adventures and enterprises those years had yielded. With his admir…
SOURCE: John Simon at 10:22PMThe premature death at 69—though it would have been premature at any age—of Howard Kissel is a severe loss to everyone involved in the theater, interested in theater, and relative or fri…
SOURCE: John Simon at 01:13PMAmericans are too prone to nostalgia, a phenomenon comparable to gushing about babies, movie stars, and pets. That it was considered unhealthy is evident from its name, based on two Greek wo…
SOURCE: John Simon at 05:21PMMemory plays strange tricks on us. There are not only (A) the losses of things we want to remember, but also (B) the things it annoyingly won’t let us forget. And further (C), things we pu…
SOURCE: John Simon at 07:28PMI just finished a highly important and enjoyable book, two virtues that do not all that often appear in tandem. It is The Language Wars by Henry Hitchings (Farrar, Straus and Giroux). Subtit…
SOURCE: John Simon at 10:28AMThere is a great deal about critics that Americans do not understand. First of all, the difference between what a critic writes for public consumption and what he is in private life. The two…
SOURCE: John Simon at 08:49PMLovers of poetry may wonder what happened to meter and rhyme. If one looks at modern poetry, one finds little meter and even less rhyme. Which raises the troubling question “What is poetry…
SOURCE: John Simon at 10:03AMI sometimes wonder about the phrase “too good to be true.” Latterly because in a review of Bruce Jay Friedman’s memoir, “Lucky Bruce,” the reviewer cites a Long Island lunch group …
SOURCE: John Simon at 08:24PMIn The New York Times Book Review of September 25, Maureen Dowd reviewed Roger Ebert’s autobiographical “Life Itself.” The highly favorable notice contained the following: “Ebert tri…
SOURCE: John Simon at 05:53AMAll schemes for improving humankind appear to be hopeless. The masses are definitely not kind and, I fear, barely human. Where even quite ordinary individuals manage to rise above ordinary c…
SOURCE: John Simon at 10:54AMObituaries should be read by everyone. We already know that life can be stranger than fiction—although contemporary fiction goes a long way toward strangeness—but what we should also kno…
SOURCE: John Simon at 09:40PMOne of the major monstrosities is rewriting a classic. That is what Suzan-Lori Parks (playwright), Diane Paulus (director) and Audra McDonald (star) are perpetrating with their forthcoming B…
SOURCE: John Simon at 04:18PMThis is an obituary for the art of letter writing. Of course, there are people who do not believe that e-mail and its electronic relatives have killed epistolary beauties, but they seem to m…
SOURCE: John Simon at 08:51AMThe other day I read about the Williamstown Theater Festival presenting Ibsen’s A Doll’s House, which title is used again and again even though it is wrong. I have waged a campaign, to n…
SOURCE: John Simon at 01:10PMAlthough I am an atheist, I do not dismiss religion; in fact. I envy a bit those who have it. But I don’t understand it; perhaps someone can provide me with a credible explanation.I can se…
SOURCE: John Simon at 07:42PMI have now caught the Diana Paulus production of the musical Hair for the third time, having seen it in Central Park and again on Broadway before now. This is the National Company, which has…
SOURCE: John Simon at 11:40PMAn earlier work by the playwright-librettist Terrence McNally, “The Lisbon Traviata,“ revolved around a famous recording by Maria Callas. Later came “Master Class,” with Callas herse…
SOURCE: Yonkers Tribune at 11:17PMIs there any doubt left that Leos Janacek (1854-1928), though born into the middle of the 19th century, was arguably the first truly modern composer, and a great one to boot. He composed sup…
SOURCE: John Simon at 12:13AMAmazing how many stories of interest center on food. Some of my and my wife Pat’s liveliest adventures involve eating. Take our holiday weekend in Beach Haven on the Jersey shore, where we…
SOURCE: John Simon at 11:04AMIn the Arts and Leisure section of the March 13 New York Times, I find an article about Tom Stoppard and his active involvement in the forthcoming New York revival of his Arcadia. That is a …
SOURCE: John Simon at 12:55AM
