[This is the last installment of my
John Simon series. As always, if you are
just starting this extended post, I recommend returning to Parts 1 through 3
(posted on 28 November and 1 and 4 December) to catch up with what has gone
before and to read the various comments, especially the general introduction to
Part 1, to familiarize yourselves with the basic situation that unfolded in
April and May 1989.
[I start this segment with the letters
to the editor of New York magazine, published in three editions after Simon’s review of The
Winter’s Tale. Those begin with Colleen Dewhurst’s letter to
Edward Kosner about which several writers in this series have already remarked;
that’s followed by Kosner’s response, also already much commented on. You’ll see that among the correspondents, Simon
had many supporters in this debate.
[Following the New
York letters is the last entry in this
collection, a column from W magazine,
which provides something of an overview of Simon’s effect on the reading
public. Then I close the circle, as it
were, with what turned out for me to be my final words on the matter—words which
I didn’t actually compose myself.]
“LETTERS”
New York
[Below is a collection of letters to
the editor of New York
magazine from three different issues, 24 April, 1 May, and 8 May 1989. As you’ll read, some were in opposition to
Simon’s writing while others were in support of his ideas. The first letter is the one Colleen Dewhurst (1924-91),
the well-known actress who served as president of the stage actors’ union, the
Actors’ Equity Association, from 1985 to 1991; that letter has been cited and
quoted from several times in this post.
Following Dewhurst’s letter is the response from New York editor and publisher Edward Kosner (b. 1937),
also often cited in this collection.]
24
April 1989
Role
Models
I am appalled—at the very least,
dismayed—by not only the insensitivity but the sheer stupidity of John Simon’s
review of A Winter’s Tale [“Theater:
Lapining Away,” April 3]. With this
bigoted bit of writing, Simon has managed to surpass a standard he himself set
for cruelty, unnecessary attacks upon the physical appearance of the performing
artist. [The review referenced is posted
in Part 1 of this series, 28 November.
The play’s title cited above is as New
York printed it.]
We in the profession have long been
aware of Simon’s narrow, compassionless, and condescending view of the
actor. But what could not be denied was
his education, intelligence, and wit, even if that wit came at the artist’s
expense. What must be addressed now is
not only his gratuitous and devastating attacks on actors but the impact these
remarks have on society.
For the past eight years, dangerous
anti-Semitism, racism, and bigotry have been allowed to grow unchallenged in
this country. The arts, at their best,
assume the responsibility of presenting a view of ourselves that is free of
such sentiments. In his review, Simon
has written on a level that unwittingly condones bigotry and racism by
condemning the artists who would not allow their talents to be bound by such
narrow constraints. Worse, Simon has
played to the narrow-mindedness of others across the nation, confirming for
them that their own bigotry is acceptable.
The concept of nontraditional casting,
defined as the casting of ethnic-minority, female, and disabled actors in roles
where race, ethnicity, or sex is not germane to the character or the play’s
development, is most important to Actors’ Equity. As president of Equity, I have stated this as
a No. 1 priority.
More than fifteen years ago, I played
Gertrude in a production of Hamlet produced
by Joe Papp at the Delacorte in which James Earl Jones played King Claudius; it
is the only time to my knowledge that Claudius took the reviews. Jones’s talent was such that both critics and
audiences recognized only that he was the king and that I, as the queen, was
obviously mad for him.
As a critic, Simon has a social
responsibility to the public and to the theater to review the entire concept of
a play. Unfortunately, he has more and
more abrogated this larger responsibility to the superficiality of the caustic
“killer” comment.
On the basis of race and nationality,
John Simon has defamed the theater, a producer, and a cast committed to
presenting onstage the face of our nation.
This is completely unwarranted and unacceptable. Therefore, I call upon you to remove him from
his present position and to give us back a responsible theater critic, please.
Colleen Dewhurst
President
Actors’
Equity Association
Manhattan
[I identified the Hamlet
production in which Dewhurst appeared with Jones in Part 3 (4 December). Dewhurst’s expression “took the reviews” is theatrical
slang that means, as Simi Horwitz put in his article in the previous segment, “walked
off with the critics’ plaudits.”]
Editor’s
note: I can appreciate the strong feelings that
you, Joseph Papp, and some other members of the theater community have about
John Simon. Still, I do not think that
your call for his firing is merited—or appropriate to your position as head of
Actors’ Equity.
As you know, Simon has long held that
physical appearance and what we can call the ethnicity of an actor or actress
should be relevant in casting and in judging performances in certain plays. Others, including Joseph Papp, have a
different view and operate on their own aesthetic.
Simon has put forth his views in
scholarly essays and in other forums.
You and Actor’s Equity are free to attack Simon in this regard, to urge
others to criticize him, or to suggest that he be shunned in the marketplace of
ideas. That’s the American way. But it is quite another thing to call for his
dismissal over an aesthetic issue on which thoughtful people may legitimately
disagree. Simon’s view may be unpopular,
but he does have the right to express it in appropriate terms.
Were his critical observations in the
magazine about the performances of Mandy Patinkin and Alfre Woodard in The Winter’s Tale at the Public Theater
anti-Semitic and racist? Reading hurriedly,
one might wonder. But I feel strongly
that an attentive reading of these passages yields quite another
interpretation. To my eye, at least. Simon was identifying stereotypes—indeed, he
described the Nazi periodical as “notorious.”
There is no place for anti-Semitism,
racism, or anti-homosexual attitudes in New
York Magazine, and you won’t find any here.
Edward Kosner
Editor
and Publisher
[I have to take exception to many of
Kosner’s arguments as he lays them out above.
They are largely specious and fallacious. For instance, he backed Simon’s opinions
about race, ethnicity, and appearance in casting choices because Simon’s held
them for a long time. That doesn’t make them
either valid or righteous. People have
insisted for centuries that the Earth is flat, but just because the view is
long-held isn’t proof that the belief is true.
The same is so of Holocaust-deniers, who’ve been operating for decades.
[The same argument against Kosner’s
support of Simon holds for his contention that the reviewer had published his
views on non-traditional, multi-ethnic casting in scholarly periodicals. Publication of an idea isn’t proof, once
again, that the idea is valid. How many
theories and even experimental results have been published in juried academic
journals and subsequently fallen because they were wrong and disproved?
[Finally, Kosner asserted that had
Simon’s opinions been bigoted, they wouldn’t have been printed in New
York.
That only seems true if you carefully define “bigoted,” “racist,”
“anti-Semitic,” and “homophobic” (that is “inappropriate terms,” as he
intimated in Robert Massa’s column above) so that they don’t encompass Simon’s
statements (”appropriate terms”)—which Kosner could only do if he was willfully
blind to what Simon wrote. That’s how
Holocaust-deniers operate: they say they’ll accept the truth of the Holocaust
if someone presents “valid evidence” that it happened—then they simply reject
the validity of any evidence offered.
That’s what Kosner did above, blaming the incorrect interpretation of
Simon’s statements on “hurried reading.”
I’ve read all those remarks now over a period of 30 years. Is that hurried? I come to the same conclusions every time:
Simon’s remarks were anti-Semitic and racist.
[I wonder if Kosner continues to hold
to the same interpretations—now that it’s no longer his job to defend Simon on
Rupert Murdoch’s behalf. (Kosner left New
York magazine in 1993, two years after
Murdoch sold it. Simon was eventually
fired from New York in 2005.)]
I was shocked to read that Colleen
Dewhurst is involved in an attempt to get rid of John Simon as a theater
critic. Whatever happened to freedom of
speech in this country? This attempt to
silence Simon smacks of McCarthyism and worse—it smacks of the attacks on
Salman Rushdie and Martin Scorsese. I
find these efforts much more threatening to me as a Jew than anything Simon has
written.
Joseph Papp’s butchery of
Shakespeare’s plays is well documented.
Simon is well within his rights to criticize Papp’s choice of cast
members when reviewing his plays. I have
sat through many affirmative-action productions squirming in my seat, watching
black actors portraying parts written for whites. I am tired, frankly, of being force-fed
social ideology when paying good money to be entertained. To attempt to silence Simon for daring to
have integrity and standards in an age of mediocrity does a disservice to the
theater Dewhurst purports to represent.
I do not like a lynch-mob mentality and abhor this affront to our
freedoms.
Marian Golub
Manhattan
[The reference to novelist Salman
Rushdie was explained in Part 2 (1 December).
Filmmaker Martin Scorcese (b, 1942) was assailed by Christian activist
groups protesting his 1988 film The Last Temptation
of Christ. Because of the movie’s departures from the
standard gospels, these organizations found it blasphemous. The protests succeeded in convincing some
U.S. theater chains not to screen the film and several countries banned or
censored the film for several years; the
film is still forbidden in a few countries today.]
So John Simon is reminded of grotesque
Nazi anti-Semitic caricatures when he looks at Mandy Patinkin’s hair and head
size! Perhaps it pains Simon that not
all working actors are closer to some Aryan ideal of blond hair, blue eyes, and
pale skin.
It is entirely appropriate to praise
or savage an actor’s performance or, if in makeup, his physical
appearance. It is Simon who is a Julius
Streicher (editor of the Nazi publication Der
Stürmer, to which Simon refers) caricature for committing to print his
repugnant observation.
Seth M. Siegel
Manhattan
As a subscriber to your magazine, a
high-school English teacher, and a theater teacher, I am writing to tell you
how appalled I am that John Simon continues to review theater for you.
It is offensive to have a man with
Simon’s pettiness, meanness, and prejudices acting as a theater critic. My high-school students were dismayed when I
brought this to their attention. My
adult students were dumbfounded. How
could such a thing be tolerated in a country where justice for all is an ideal?
I hope you will give careful
consideration to the request to fire John Simon. He’s becoming a despot, more interested in
chopping off heads than in informing and enlightening your readers. As such, I believe him to be a truly
destructive influence.
Helen Freedman
Lawrence, N.Y.
1
May 1989
‘Winter’
of Discontent
We’re sure you have been bombarded
with mail regarding John Simon’s review of The
Winter’s Tale [“Theater: Lapining Away,” April 3]. And we’re also sure that this is not the
first time he has been the center of controversy.
There can be no doubt that this
review, where he singles out Alfre Woodard and Mandy Patinkin and compares them
to Butterfly McQueen, Topsy, or a cartoon character in Der Stürmer, represents racism masquerading as dramatic criticism.
Your magazine, which bears the proud
name of New York, also bears the
responsibility of aiming for racial harmony.
It is no longer the case of a
precocious brat with a permissive parent.
You are paying Simon to write about the theater—not to ignite the fires
of racism in a city so vulnerable.
Eli Wallach
Anne Jackson
Manhattan
[Wallach (1915-2014) and Jackson (1925-2016)
were highly regarded actors of stage and screen. Husband and wife, Wallach was Jewish and
Jackson was Christian (her mother was Catholic).]
I wish to express my wholehearted
support of John Simon. He is the most
erudite of all New York critics, and what sets him apart from others is his
definite standards. There is a lot of
trash that passes for theater in the current scene.
Actually, the No. 1 reason I keep up
my subscription to New York is so I
can imbibe the brilliant critical essays of John Simon.
Robert Paolucci
Manhattan
John Simon’s review of The Winter’s Tale is a mass of
distortion and vitriol.
New
York is responsible
for a theater critic who is anti-black, anti-homosexual, and anti-Semitic. And God help you if you’re a female with a
blemished face of figure.
When does opinion become prejudice,
and when does prejudice become destructive?
David Brooks
Manhattan
John Simon’s voice is unique and
should be protected. All voices should
be protected—those that criticize and comment on the theater as well as those
that address all other aspects of American life. To do otherwise would be to homogenize our
culture and make it bland. John Simon’s
voice may be perceived as abrasive and abusive by many, but that is the price
of a free society. If you capitulate to
the forces of censorship, you destroy your magazine.
I hope you will stand firm and
continue to give the John Simons of the world an outlet in the pages of New York.
Al Goldstein
Publisher
Screw
Manhattan
[Goldstein (1936-2013) was a hardcore pornographer. Screw magazine
published the lowest forms of sexually explicit pictures and articles from 1968
to 2003 and, along with Goldstein’s other enterprises (including other
publications with titles such as Bitch
and Smut), frequently brought the
pornographer to court as a defendant in obscenity cases—which he often won on
the basis of First Amendment protection.
He was seen as something of a buffoon, provocateur, and trickster who amused
as often as he offended.]
I have read
of the tempest over John Simon’s review, and I find it amazing and slightly
amusing. I am a Jew and theater lover,
and my youngest son is a struggling actor in Spanish Theater of New York.
For Joe Papp
to whine is hypocritical. When he put on
a performance of The Merchant of Venice
some years ago in New York, I was appalled and offended. That
presented a biased and nasty view of Jews.
Papp’s
pretense of being upset about Simon’s review is silly and out of line with
anyone who would produce The Merchant of
Venice.
Arnold
Krochmal, Ph.D.
Asheville, N.C.
[Krochmal (1919-93) was a botanist in North
Carolina. The son he mentions is
probably Walter Krochmal, a bi-lingual actor and voice-over artist who also
translates scripts. Among other companies,
he worked at New York City’s Traveling Puerto Rican Theatre and the Repertorio
Español (Ironically, or perhaps not, he
played Shylock in a production of The Merchant of Venice for the New York-based Lafayette Workshop.)
[I can’t be certain, but I think the production of The Merchant of Venice to which Krochmal referred above was the 1962 inaugural production at
Central Park’s Delacorte Theater, which starred George C. Scott as Shylock
under Papp’s own direction. That’s the
only New York Shakespeare Festival mounting of Merchant I can identify as having taken place before
1989, and it was somewhat controversial not because of anything specific Papp,
who was himself Jewish, did in his staging concept, but because the play is
considered by many to be innately (and irredeemably) anti-Semitic.
[When Papp announced that the production would be
televised, the New York Board of Rabbis demanded that the airing be cancelled
because it’s “a distortion and defamity of our people and our faith.” (Papp
persisted and Merchant
aired before an audience of two million
viewers, the largest U.S. audience to see a Shakespeare play at that time.)]
8 May 1989
The
Long, Hot ‘Winter’
Colleen Dewhurst was “appalled” by the
“insensitivity and stupidity” of John
Simon’s review of The Winter’s Tale
[“Theater: Lapining Away,” April 3]. I
am equally appalled that an artist of Dewhurst’s stature is unable to
understand Simon’s cogent and penetrating review.
There is not one iota of bigotry in
the review, simply statements of fact.
However, because Simon refuses to cater to the “principles” of Actor’s
Equity [sic] regarding casting, he is
branded as bigoted and dangerous.
The dangerous ones are people like
Dewhurst, who want everyone to think as they do—those who read but are unable to
understand what they read. John Simon is
the only fearless, truly gifted, and literate critic we have.
I vehemently disagree with Dewhurst,
but I should feel desolate if this greatest of American actresses were forced
to give up acting because the ignorant did not care for her performances.
Gerald Hamm
Glenside, Pa.
John Simon is right to ridicule
“nontraditional” casting.
The name of the game in drama, as in
all narrative, is the suspension of disbelief.
The idea is to make your audience think that the actions being
represented are, at the moment, actually happening. Anything that disrupts the sense of reality
by reminding the audience that ”it’s only a play” defeats the purpose of drama.
It is incredible that John
Simon—notorious for his cutting remarks about the appearance of actresses and
his obscure pa[n]egyrics to Albanian poets—should find himself in the hottest
water of his career for breaking the taboo of solemnity about racial
preference.
Michael Levin
Professor of
philosophy
City University
of New York
Manhattan
[Two comments regarding Levin’s statements about
suspending disbelief. First, with regard
to “it’s only a play”: remove the “only” from the phrase and you have the
guiding principle of Bertold Brecht’s Epic Theater—always be aware that you are
watching a performance, not an actuality.
(It’s patently untrue that the aim of all drama is to make viewers believe
that what’s happening on stage is real—especially in contemporary theater.) So, Levin’s admonition isn’t either universal
or sacrosanct. (And, by the way, James
Lapine’s Winter’s
Tale at the Public Theater was, in this
regard, Brechtian: we were watching the enactment of a story as it was told by
Mamillius. Even Simon recognized this
conceit—though he didn’t like it.)
[Point two: the phrase is often cited as “the willing suspension of disbelief.” That means, we walk into the theater ready
and predisposed to enter the world of the play, not fight against it and make
the director and actors drag us in. It’s
a symbiosis, not a contest.]
I’d sooner
miss Sunday brunch than one of John Simon’s weekly reviews. Do I agree so routinely with Simon’s
opinions? No, indeed. But nowhere else since the death of Dwight
Macdonald has an American reviewer deployed prose of such bite and
brio—qualities that make him a viable candidate for the title of most quotable
living American essayist.
Simon’s pans
make painful but lively reading. Yet I’m
even more taken with his favorable
reviews. I just reread his appreciation
of a new production of Peer Gynt [“The
Way We Don’t Live Now,” April 24]. Which was so delightful I’ve shared it with
my drama students here at the University of South Carolina.
Or look back
at his review of Simon Gray’s The Common
Pursuit [“Sunset and Evening Star,” November 3, 1986]. Having just concluded a survey of some
two-score reviews of that play in American and British periodicals, I can
report that none equals John Simon’s in probity or eloquence.
R. .H. Fischer
University
of South Carolina
Columbia,
S.C.
[Dwight Macdonald
(1906-82) was a writer, editor, film critic, social critic, philosopher, and
political radical, a member of the New York Intellectuals, a group of American
writers and literary critics in New York City in the mid-20th century who advocated
left-wing politics. Macdonald was the editor
of their left-leaning magazine, Partisan Review, and also contributed to other New York-based publications including Time, Esquire, The New Yorker, The New
York Review of Books, and politics [sic],
a journal which he founded in 1944. For
many, Macdonald’s critical writing was a model of depth and intellectual acuity.
[The Peer Gynt, the verse play by Henrik Ibsen (1828-1906),
that Fischer mentioned was Mark Lamos’s two-part, five-hour production,
starring Richard Thomas. The monumental staging was produced at the
Hartford Stage in Hartford, Connecticut, in March through May 1989.
[The production of
Simon Gray’s (1936-2008) The Common Pursuit to
which Fischer referred was the one that ran at the Promenade Theatre on upper
Broadway from October 1986 to August 1987, directed by Gray and Michael
McGuire. The production , the play’s New
York première, starred Dylan Baker, Michael Countryman, Judy Geeson, Nathan
Lane, and Kristoffer Tabori, and won the 1987 Lucille Lortel Award for
Outstanding Play (Gray) and 1987 Outer Critics Circle Award for Outstanding New
Off-Broadway Play.]
* *
* *
“THE NASTY MR.
SIMON”
by Lorna Koski
“The Lively Arts”
W
1-8 May 1989
[W is a spin-off of Women’s
Wear Daily, which used to be a major
critical voice in New York theater.
Founded in 1972, it’s primarily a fashion magazine, but it covers
theater and the arts as an outlet of style, W’s main focus.]
NEW YORK—Newspapers
from the New York Post to The Washington Post went for him. Joseph Papp demanded his resignation. Colleen Dewhurst, head of Actors Equity, and
Hazel Dukes of the NAACP joined the attack.
Professional peers greeted him at the theater with notable
coolness. John Simon, New York
Magazine’s brilliant, splenetic drama critic, had done it again.
This time it
was Alfre Woodard and Mandy Patinkin who had been Simonized. “The Winter’s Tale” at the Public Theater,
Simon wrote, proved Patinkin should “have retired on his “Evita” laurels to be
fondly remembered ever since,” Woodard,
for her part, recalled Topsy, the Medusa and Butterfly McQueen—if Miss Woodard
weren’t black, one might suspect her of racism.” This, of course, was exactly what Simon
himself was accused of. At the same
time, the New York Native was calling him homophobic—for the nth time—in a
piece objecting to the fact that he’s written the program notes to the opera “Salome.”
But for
Simon, it was all in a week’s work.
“Tempest in a teapot,” he calls it all.
“A sad comment about the times we live in. It’s been my habit to write what I think and
say what I think.” He opposes
non-traditional casting of Shakespeare.
These days, he says, “You cannot make any kind of statement without
being attacked for it by some kind of special-interest group . . . But true democracy allows the giving of
offense.”
And it does
seem to be one of his particular skills.
He’s laced into a long list of actresses—from Maureen Stapleton to
Maggie Smith, Glenda Jackson and Liza Minnelli—for their physical
shortcomings. Individuals and groups as
diverse as Ralph Lauren and the League of New York Theater and Producers have
called for his dismissal.
In the days
since the Fifties—when Hollywood required romantic leads to fit belle and beau
ideals—Simon has become one of the last supporters of what might be called the
“Beauty like hers is genius” school of criticism.
The standard
young leading lady must be the kind of thing the man in the audience falls in
love with, at least for two hours—attractive, winning and able to sway the
audience, he says—and he doesn’t see many examples of her around.
Witness the film
version of “Les Liaisons Dangereuse.”
“In Laclos
everything is supremely beautiful. I
think you can’t have something about two gorgeous people with a Malkovich dog
which isn’t even a breed. Close looked
one half like Glenn Close and one half like George Washington, in her peruked
mode. And the fact that my colleagues
didn’t even notice it . . .”
Actually,
some of his colleagues did. But they
were hardly as blunt about it as he is.
Some say that Simon could have become one of the leading cultural
figures of his time—with the stature, say, of Edmund Wilson, Dwight Macdonald
or Lionel Trilling in theirs—if it were not for his penchant for personal
attacks. It has brought him notoriety,
but also makes him seem like a critical one-trick pony.
That is,
however, the last thing Simon actually is—as is perfectly illustrated by his
latest book, “The Sheep from the Goats—Selected Literary Essays of John Simon”
(Weidenfeld & Nicolson, $24.95). Its
contents range from a funny analysis of the linguistic vagaries of Norman
Mailer’s 1973 potboiler “Marilyn” to a sensitive appreciation of the prewar
Austrian writer Robert Musil. There is
also a skeptical piece on Lillian Hellman written in the early Seventies, when
few would have imagined that she might not be as fabulous—or as frank—as she
herself felt she was.
Then, too,
there are amusing auxiliary pieces of information. Who would have thought, for example, that
Franz Kafka, in his job at the Workers’ Accident Insurance Institute, helped
come up with industrial safety measures and “traveled across the country and familiarized
himself with lowly existences, which elicited the sympathy for the underdog
that informs much of his writing?” Or
that Bertolt Brecht, who fled to America during the Second World War with a
full complement of females—his wife and two of his many mistresses—also
frequently stank because he simply hated to bathe?
In person,
Simon, who’s been called everything from “The Count Dracula of critics” to an
“Illyrian gangster,” comes across as courtly, a gentleman of the old school,
scrupulously polite and impeccably dressed, with dandyish touches. There is, however, a slightly sinister air
about hum, which, with his slicked-back hair and Germanic accent, puts you
fleetingly in mind of Claus Von Bulow.
His East Side apartment is filled—of all things—with books—and a few
curious mementos, including several renderings of pigs, his favorite animal,
and a blond blow-up doll he describes as “somebody’s idea of Daryl Hannah in
rubber.”
And he’s just
as articulate in person as he is in print.
“I write extremely fast and read extremely slowly. If by some miracle I have time for something new
it’s very rarely American,” he says, explaining why he hasn’t read Jay
McInerney’s books: “That makes me sound like a terrible old croaker doesn’t
it? I haven’t even read Raymond Carver
and he went and died on me.
He is,
however, familiar with Harold Brodkey—and in more ways than one. During his Harvard days, Simon served as a
“section man” in a course taught by Archibald MacLeish—and tried to flunk
Brodkey. MacLeish wouldn’t allow it.
“When people
stopped flunking out—that, I think, was the end of education,” Simon says. “In Brodkey’s case, maybe if he had flunked,
he would be doing a better kind of writing.
There is something there, but it’s buried in some kind of egomaniacal
woolgathering, a desperate need to be a genius or something.”
Simon,
however, sees universities as a bit of a “backwater,” unlike the world of the
arts. But he does think critics should
“teach the readers something. So a
critic wants to think about the world—if you’re reviewing a play or a book, to
speak about life in conjunction with the play or novel or poetry that you’re
reviewing.
“Really
first-class minds,” he adds, “almost always move out of criticism into
something else. A really impatient,
intellectual mind can’t live very long in it.
I think what helps me is spite—a desire to get even.”
To be a good
critic, “You need a strong stomach and a tough hide.”
Simon, after
all, went into training early. Born in
Yugoslavia in 1925, he came to this country at 15. His father, seeing the Nazi handwriting on
the wall, had traveled to the U.S. on business, then sent for his family. Simon’s trip was a circuitous one—by way of
Geneva, Rome, Lisbon and Havana—that he still remembers as a great adventure.
He then attended
the Horace Mann School and Harvard, where he took his B.A. and Ph.D. in
comparative literature. He taught at
Harvard, MIT, Bard College and the University of Washington. In 1960, he began his career as drama critic
for The Hudson Review. In 1969, he went
to New York Magazine. He is currently
also film critic for the National Review and culture critic for The New
Leader. “The Sheep from the Goats is his
13th book,
Along the way
he learned five languages well and how to “stagger along” in two more. A hallmark of his criticism is the minute
dissection of translations.
And strong
views. “People quite often come to me
and say, “You seem to have gotten mellower—and I say, well maybe I may seem mellower, and along comes something
that gets my goat.”
While he has
kind words for, say, Lanford Wilson (“I think he will still surprise us all”),
the “worthy” Wendy Wasserstein, Marsha Norman, whom he calls “intelligent[,]”
and Tina Howe (“I think if she keeps going as she doubtless will, some very
nice things could come from that”), don’t ask him about Stephen Frears or Pedro
Almodovar.
“I had no use
for ‘My Beautiful Launderette [sic].’ That Pakistani bull—that particular
subculture just doesn’t do anything for me—the mixture of grossness, cheap
sexual grossness and pseudo-political statements about Thatcher.
“[‘]Women on
the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown’ was one of the stupidest, campy home movies,”
he says. “It’s the Ridiculous Theater
Company with a Spanish accent. Frank
(Rich) at The Times is crazy to take him seriously—it’s the sort of movie shown
in gay bars. But when they start giving
it awards . . . !”
And there’s
no doubt he can be equally tough on authors.
On Norman Mailer, he says, “He’s an amusing fellow. There’s something about him that’s fun—if
he’s not stabbing you. I’ve never been
able to take him entirely seriously.
It’s an act, an interesting performance piece, and, like all comedians,
he has his off nights.:
It was Gore Vidal
who once called Simon an “Illyrian gangster,” and one of the pieces in “Sheep”
is on Vidal’s 1973 novel “Burr.”
“It’s like a
very good circus act for the fairly highbrow—on the other hand, I do not delude
myself into thinking that’s a kind of major literary talent. If he’s doing something like reviewing the
bestsellers, he can be quite good. If he
tries to deal with something that’s beyond him, he can be quite bad.”
[Koski named a lot of figures in the arts and culture in
her article above, but many of them are sufficiently identified for readers to
look them up if they want more information.
I’ll briefly ID some of the remaining names that may have become obscure
with the passage of time.
[Les Liaisons Dangereuses was a 1985 play by British playwright Christopher Hampton (b. 1946)
adapted from the 1782 French epistolary novel by Pierre Choderlos de Laclos. It played Broadway in 1987 and was made into
a 1988 film (called Dangerous Liaisons)
directed by Stephen Frears and starring Glenn Close, John Malkovich, Michelle
Pfeiffer, and Uma Thurman.
[Claus von Bülow (1926-2019), the subject of another
film, 1990’s Reversal
of Fortune, was convicted of the
attempted murder of his wife, Sunny von Bülow (née Martha Sharp Crawford,
1932–2008). with an insulin overdose in 1979.
The assault left her in a temporary coma, as well in a persistent
vegetative state for the rest of her life. On appeal, von Bulow’s conviction was
overturned and he was acquitted in a second trial.
[Daryl Hannah (b. 1960) is a film actress known for her roles as Pris Stratton in Ridley Scott’s
science fiction thriller Blade Runner (1982).
Cathy Featherstone in Randal Kleiser’s romantic comedy Summer Lovers (1982), the mermaid Madison in Ron Howard’s
fantasy rom-com Splash (1984),
Roxanne Kowalski in the rom-com Roxanne
(1987; based on Edmond Rostand’s Cyrano de Bergerac), Darien Taylor in Oliver Stone’s drama Wall Street (1987), and Annelle Dupuy Desoto in the
comedy-drama Steel Magnolias (1989;
adapted from the 1987 stage play by Robert Harling). Her film prominence seems to have faded
somewhat since she’s become more seriously involved with environmental
activism. I’m not sure what the
reference to Hannah “in rubber” means, other than to the rubber doll itself,
unless Simon is talking about her mermaid costume in Splash, which was built of rubber.
[My Beautiful Laundrette (correct spelling) is a 1985 film by Frears (who also directed Dangerous
Liaisons). Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown is Almodóvar’s 1988 movie. The “Thatcher” to whom Simon refers is
Margaret Thatcher (1925-2013), Conservative Prime Minister of Great Britain
from 1975 to 1990.
[The Ridiculous Theatrical Company was founded by actor-playwright
Charles Ludlam (1943-87) in 1967. It was
an outgrowth of Play-House of the Ridiculous, founded by John Vaccaro
(1929-2016) in 1966. (The Ridiculous
Theatrical Company is still nominally in operation under the direction of
Everett Quinton, b. 1952, Ludlam’s partner, but the Play-House of the
Ridiculous is defunct.)]
* *
* *
[The circle of my little encounter with John Simon closed
with the next New York Shakespeare Festival production in its Shakespeare
Marathon, Cymbeline.
Directed by JoAnne Akalaitis, the founder of the experimental theater
company Mabou Mines who would become Papp’s immediate successor upon his death
in 1991, the production ran at the Public’s Newman Theater from 9 May to 25
June 1989.
[I’d been assigned by my editor at the Native, Terry Helbing, to cover the show and I saw it in May and turned in my copy around 9
June. On 19 June, my review of
Akalaitis’s controversial production came out.
Simon’s pan had been published in the 12 June issue of New York. Simon
had written:
Joseph Papp’s production of Cymbeline . . . is
staggeringly, unremittingly, unconscionably absurd. Hard to say whether it is the product of an
utterly humorless imagination trying to be funny or of an inveterate practical
joker unsuccessfully striving to go serious.
Either way, it is a house crashingly divided against itself that cannot
stand . . . .
[Unbeknownst to me, the editors of the Native had put a banner headline at the bottom of
the front page of the edition reading: “hey,
john simon: we loved cymbeline.” Remembering
that the Native had printed my letter about Simon’s Winter’s
Tale review on 22 May (posted in Part 2
of this collection, 1 December), the banner was clearly directed at my
difference of opinion with Simon over his earlier rhetoric. Needless to say, I not only hadn’t read
Simon’s Cymbeline notice before
writing mine, I had no foreknowledge of the Simon-baiting banner the paper
decided to run. (My 1989 review of Cymbeline is posted on ROT in Life
Among the Ruins, 7 September 2016.)
[That ended my contretemps with John Simon; I never heard
from him—not that I expected to—or from the editor of New York and there were no repercussions from the Native’s headline concerning Cymbeline.
Simon didn’t lose his job at New York over his review of The Winter’s Tale or the brouhaha he generated with it.
He continued to write reviews at the magazine, just as harshly and just
as nastily, for 16 more years.
[Rupert Murdoch sold his magazine holdings including New York in 1991 and Edward Kosner left the magazine
for Esquire in 1993, to be replaces
at New York by Kurt Andersen. After several changes in ownership and
editorship, Adam Moss became editor-in-chief of New York in February 2004. He let Simon go in May 2005 because, as he
put it to the Los Angeles Times, “It
was time to do something new.”
[Simon was hired by
Bloomberg News, from which he was also fired in 2010—though the news service
put out that the reviewer was retiring, a statement Simon vociferously
denied. He launched a blog, Uncensored John Simon, that same year, but the last post on it is
dated 27 October. (I presume that the
blog will remain on line for some time yet, possibly even forever—giving new
meaning to Shakespeare’s warning (from Julius Caesar): “The evil that men do lives after them; / The good is oft interred
with their bones.”]
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