195 stories from John Simon
The current issue of Harvard Magazine contains the following quotations: "In any battle between the literati and the p…
Why Bertrand Tavernier is not considered up there with the world's greatest filmmakers is a mystery to me. It must have something to do with the vagaries of distribution, the absence of hype…
This week's sermon is chiefly about false analogy, one of the major ills that plague (not plagues"the subject is plural, ills) our once reasonably healthy English.Is anything more parlous th…
Amazing 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 h…
In 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 …
French Without Tears is the title of the charming playwright Terence Rattigan's first comedic hit. But this post is not a tribute to Rattigan's centenary now being celebrated wherever Englis…
Herewith some reflections on this year's Academy Awards from a longtime film critic currently not reviewing movies. Of course I watched the Oscars as I always do; they provide the kind of en…
If you ride an elevator often enough"especially to and from a high floor"you can turn this experience into a psychological study of your neighbors, both the two- and four-legged kind. Such c…
We know, of course, that the dog is man's best friend. But how reciprocal is this friendship? Is man also the dog's best friend? When I see Yor…
School days, school days! Something just reminded me of good old Perkiomen School in Pennsburg, Pa., where I put in a couple of turbid semester…
Far be it from me to put classical concertgoing above theatergoing, or vice versa. Both afford pleasure and have their important place in civilized life. But I must concede that concerts, ev…
Often I have been asked to write my memoir. My negative answer was always based on never having kept a diary, and not being anywhere near memorious enough. Example: What's the good of having…
Because the charming secretary of my primary physician is called Althea, I read her the last stanza of Richard Lovelace's "To Althea, from Prison." I quoted from the old Everyman Library's M…
I logged on this morning to write about the Spiderman delay--one last time--but before doing so, thought I'd read up on what some of my colleagues posted on the topic this week. We hav…
The road to hell is, as we know, paved with good intentions. But there is a less well-known road that also leads to hell, or some lesser hells.…
Four rehearsals before the opening of the recent revival of the stage Dracula, director Paul Alexander fired leading actress Thora Birch. Four performances after opening, the revival of the …
http://artsbeat.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/01/06/theater-talkback-why-waiting-to-review-makes-sense/Above is a link to an Arts Beat blog post by Charles Isherwood which mentions the fact that I …
Under the title "List! List! O, List!" a quotation from Hamlet (as what isn't?), I checked in at New York magazine December 22, 1975, &nb…
It is New Year's Day 2011 and what thoughts does this generate in my 85- year-old head? Another tooth has broken and fallen out; it will have to be replaced, however expensively. …
A curious item in The New York Times of December 28 gave me pause--actually more than a pause: theatrically speaking, a whole intermission. It concerns the musical Spider-…
