172 stories by "JOHN SIMON"
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 considered…
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 yea…
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 tri…
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 tri…
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 start to…
It 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 James Moo…
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…
Every 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 other …
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 other…
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 labyrinth…
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 want …
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 there.…
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 infl…
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 …
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 profaniti…
"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, showin…
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…
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 …
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…
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…
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 defin…
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…
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 b…
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 …
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…
