172 stories by "JOHN SIMON"
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, among …
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…
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…
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…
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 memo…
"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. Eve…
I have sometimes been called (wrongly) a homophobe. But let's start with the word "homosexual." The "homo," per se, has nothing to do with homosexuality. It comes from the Greek "homos," the…
Names are more significant than one might offhand assume. I am thinking of first (or given, or Christian names) names, whose bearers may or may not be concerned with, or even aware of,…
There is a salient aspect of language that I haven't handled hitherto--not alliteration, as in these consecutive h-words, but onomatopoeia, Greek for name-making. What it really means is wha…
Be prepared for vehement disagreement with what follows, but mind that I am not proposing it as a binding universal truth, only as my own certainly arguable private views. What I am assertin…
Some stories are, or ought to be, mythic. I may have already adduced them before and will try not to repeat myself, though these days my memory Is far from reliable. Now does it much matter …
A very smart ex-girlfriend of mine always began reading the Times with the obituaries. The obits, to give them their nickname, are the important epilogue to a life, a summing-up that may sli…
Sooner or later the question of God raises its troubling head for most of us. Does he exist or doesn't he? Or has he died, as Nietzsche postulated? And if he exists, where exactly does he? I…
A popular miscalculation in my view is the notion of a first and last in literature. Presumably to enhance their subject's importance, scholars and critics have made out a writer to be the f…
I write as an occasional verse writer and constant poetry lover. Also one-time teacher of poetry in a writing course. Further, poetry reciter of great distinction according to my wife, thoug…
In Brecht's "Galileo" we read, "Unhappy the land that has no heroes . . . No. Unhappy the land that is in need of heroes." An amusing paradox, but coming from Brecht, a coward and oppo…
One of the glories of language is the witty rejoinder, riposte or retort. It is the answer in a quick, witty or caustic response (The Heritage Dictionary) to someone's comment or verbal assa…
It is perhaps unsurprising that there should be fashions in first names, perhaps influenced by movie stars or more arcane sources. What is certain is that the fashion for Ryan is besieging u…
Some Tonys are sound and meritorious, such as the 2017 ones for Kevin Kline Rachel Bay Jones, "Jitney," Nigel Hook (set designer for "The Play That Goes Wrong"), Santo Loquasto, Gavin Creel,…
Is there anything more elusive than what constitutes sexual attraction? It comes in a great variety of types, sometimes simple, sometimes complex, and not infrequently indeterminable, undefi…
I have nothing against Canadians save that their export in shows is always questionable, whether it is "To Grandmother's House We Go," "The Drowsy Chaperone," or now "Come From Away."The fir…
Marriage, what a glorious and godawful, tremendous and terrible thing it is! Of all inventions one of the few rightfully enduring ones, but surely an invention. Not something born into one a…
In his "Books for Living," Will Schwalbe refers to a friend as having an enjoyable style in his writing. He does not elaborate on what made it enjoyable. But whatever it was, it had to be ba…
Her name was Barbara Hugo, and she was beautiful, and perhaps a touch otherworldly in her delicate loveliness. But let me make clear, she was no fragile, pretty-pretty China doll. Perhaps mo…
One morning, Lord Byron woke up and found himself famous. One more recent morning, we awoke and found ourselves infamous: Donald J. Trump had been elected President. Only an atom bomb would …
