A critic’s choices

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On Film

Criticism 1982-2001

John Simon

Applause Books: 662 pp., $29.95

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On Theater

Criticism 1974-2003

John Simon

Applause Books: 838 pp., $32.95

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On Music

Criticism 1979-2005

John Simon

Applause Books: 504 pp., $27.95

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IT is now 32 years since actress Sylvia Miles permanently entered the lore of the literati by dumping a plate of pasta on the head of John Simon, who happened to be dining near her in a New York restaurant. What stirred Miles to such direct and gloppy action was, of course, a bad notice the critic had given one of her performances, possibly one that took this or that aspect of her physical appearance or mimetic ineptitude and singled it out for savage criticism, an activity Simon has never shied from.

At the time, there was widespread approval of Miles’ theater-of-action moment. Just deserts -- or, in this case, just main courses -- people thought. But the years wind on, and Simon is now 80 years old: He no longer has a regular gig for his movie and theater criticism and has now bravely published three volumes of his collected reviews, going back to the 1970s. I use the word “bravely” advisedly.

For reviews are not essays, those lengthy and leisurely reflections on careers or themes aimed at an audience that has some knowledge of the subject at hand. Reviews, however gracefully written, whatever grander fantasies their authors may entertain, are a form of consumer guidance, written in haste, against deadlines and to space. Worse, the reviewer is always the prisoner of what’s on offer at the moment in his field. I would say, based on bitter experience, that well over half the time, he’s obliged to conjure up an opinion about stuff on which he would not normally care to spare an idle thought, let alone a thousand or more words. Confronting these three volumes, which total about 2,000 pages, at least half of which are devoted to (gratefully) forgotten ephemera, the reader can perhaps be forgiven for occasionally nodding, skimming or skipping.

This temptation toward inattention is enhanced by the structural sameness of the pieces: a cultural generalization in the lead, followed by an often excessive plot summary, followed by some specifics about writing, direction or performance (more kindly than Simon’s killer reputation might suggest) and ending with some sort of kicker that often discharges the consumer-guidance obligation. Encountered on an occasional basis, this repetitiveness is not a problem. But when the pieces follow one another closely in a book, they do become a bit numbing.

Simon’s style has a similar effect. It is somewhat stiff, enlivened here and there by professorial puns and jokes (some good, some bad), foreign tags and 50-dollar words (“edulcorates,” anyone?). And for a man who is relentlessly fastidious about other people’s grammar and usage, he sometimes falls into cliches; his teeth, for example, are “set on edge” rather more frequently than they should be. I suppose one must also address those plot summaries in more detail. He often uses them to point out failures of strict plausibility in a narrative’s development. Sometimes that’s fine, but it is also true, especially at the movies, that logic is not always our first consideration; emotional and visual coherence are sometimes more important in commanding our attention and, ultimately, our affection.

But, all of that having been said, I think this too should be said: John Simon is a critic who improves with age. Or, perhaps what I want to say is that he improves in our age, during which there has been a noticeable decline in the amount of space and attention that general-interest journalism cares to devote to discerning and knowledgeable criticism. Everywhere, reviewers who at least aspire to making sober, thoughtful judgments are being marginalized, with the moronic burble of television critics and Internet bloggers becoming the dominant force in the field. These creatures bring neither historical knowledge nor subtlety of taste to their task, and they have created the imbecile context in which it becomes increasingly pleasurable to read Simon.

His judgments may sometimes be arguable, but that’s true of any first-rate critic, especially when his overall aesthetic position -- he’s essentially a conservative, humanistic modernist, with a taste for the realistic as opposed to absurdist or abstract presentations of material -- is always implicitly clear. He likes a certain formal verbal felicity, which makes him possibly a sterner critic of Mamet’s and Pinter’s stylizations than I would be. He is also a powerful moralist, with an acute distaste for the flash and trash of a Tarantino, the heedless and misanthropic illiteracy of an Altman. He also has enthusiasms that are, I think, dubious. (Filmmaker Bruce Beresford, who writes the introduction to Simon’s movie collection, may be one of these, although I agree with Simon that Beresford’s “Black Robe” is masterly.) But he has a stronger liking for pure entertainments than you might think -- “Tootsie,” “Big,” even “Erin Brockovich” -- so long as they are well crafted and intelligently presented. Putting the point simply, he is a trustworthy witness to the culture of his times -- more so than, for example, his great critical enemy, Pauline Kael, whose practice very largely consisted of rewarding her friends and punishing her enemies with relentless and unforgiving fervor.

Simon is not like that; his grudges always remain conditional. For example, he has few kind words to say about Steven Spielberg’s work until he comes to “Schindler’s List,” at which point he rises to that film’s greatness with a generosity and passion that is exemplary. The same is true of Neil Simon. After all his well-judged sniping at the playwright’s previous efforts, he responds to “Biloxi Blues” with persuasively nuanced enthusiasm. By the same token, despite his enormous regard for Ingmar Bergman, he’s perfectly willing to chastise him for work he regards as inferior (“Fanny and Alexander,” for example, which he compares devastatingly to the intense contemplations of male-female relationships and insoluble existential issues of the director’s other films).

The same flexibility is true of Simon’s constantly revised opinions about actors. The “overstuffed” Elizabeth Taylor, pretending to be younger than she was, was never going to get a good notice from Simon, who held that because of her “physical girth” and “technical dearth,” she did not belong on any stage. This is cruel, but it is truthful and even useful information for a playgoer, since Taylor’s size and age required changes in the text of “Private Lives” when she and Richard Burton made their 1983 celebrity run in the play in New York. But Simon is rarely that implacable in his dislikes. I imagine that he might even find some kind words for Sylvia Miles if the occasion warranted them.

I’m not saying that Simon does not relish his reputation as our culture’s black-clad gunman. Years ago, when I lived in New York, we were acquaintances -- we even once co-edited an anthology, which was an altogether civilized experience -- and he was always recounting his latest controversies with joyful combativeness. As I said, he’s a brave man. But there is more to him than that. He is also someone who has devoted a long life to making fine and passionate distinctions about art, querulously leading that discussion of aesthetic values that he (and I) regards as central to sustaining a good society. In the course of reviewing a particularly ghastly postmodernist “opera,” he writes: “Our great problem is that we do not sufficiently understand and appreciate the shortness of our time, that we do not (and apparently will not) comprehend how much great art of all kinds there is in the world in which our time is so short that we can explore only a fraction of its wonders. Hence it is stupid and vicious to entice people into wasting hours of their brief span on

Doubtless his has been a foredoomed struggle. Our descent into cultural slovenliness proceeds apace. But it is better to stand with Simon than with the slobs. And these books are a good place to make that commitment. *