07 December 2019

"Moron! Vermin! Curate! Cretin! Crritic!!": John Simon (1925-2019) – Part 4


[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 written by 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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