Abstract
It is easy, and not entirely unjust, to dismiss Neil Simon (b. 1927) as a purveyor of bourgeois triviality. His characters, like his audiences, have been for the most part unmistakably bourgeois—a fact that clearly does not bother him as much as some people think it ought to. Most of his work is devoted to the comic exaggeration of familiar foibles—not a matter of much interest to serious critics, except when provided by writers long since dead. When Simon himself tries to be overtly serious, his work is often vitiated by glibness, sentimentality, and unearned optimism. But along with the wisecracks and the happy endings is some authentic reality: personal, Jewish, American, even universal.
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Notes
Neil Simon, Come Blow Your Horn, in The Comedy of Neil Simon (New York: Equinox Books, Avon Books, 1973): manner of speaking
Robert K. Johnson, Neil Simon ( Boston: Twayne Publishers, 1983 ), 7.
Neil Simon, Broadway Bound (New York: Samuel French, 1987):
I wanted some depth: Neil Simon, The Play Goes On: A Memoir ( New York: Simon and Schuster, 1999 ), 192–93.
Experience (New York: Doubleday, Bantam Doubleday Dell, 1990), 216. Arnold is: Ellen Schiff, “Funny, He Does Look Jewish,” in Gary Konas, ed., Neil Simon: A Casebook (New York and London: Garland Publishing, 1997), 55.
Irving Howe’s description: Irving Howe, A Margin of Hope: An Intellectual Autobiography (San Diego, New York, London: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1982 ), 7.
the brutal bargain: Norman Podhoretz, Making It (New York: Random House, 1967), 3–27.
Neil Simon, Lost in Yonkers, in The Collected Plays of Neil Simon, v. 4 ( New York: Simon and Schuster, 1998 ).
Neil Simon, The Sunshine Boys, in The Collected Plays of Neil Simon, v. 2 (New York: Avon Books, 1980): The Doctor: 353–65.
Neil Simon, Laughter on the Twenty-Third Floor, in The Collected Plays of Neil Simon, v. 4 (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1998):
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© 2008 Julius Novick
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Novick, J. (2008). Neil Simon: Brighton Beach to Broadway. In: Beyond the Golden Door. Palgrave Studies in Theatre and Performance History. Palgrave Macmillan, New York. https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230611832_7
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230611832_7
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