Learned, sharp, perceptive, offensive and droll with sarcastic, caustic wit: literary, theater and film critic John Simon was all these. I first became aware of him in 1978, when Fantagraphics Books publisher Gary Groth reprinted Simon's negative review of the first Star Wars film in one of the first issues of The Comics Journal I read. I then followed Simon's film and theater reviews in various magazines for decades.
For a sample, here's Simon critiquing/desecrating the writing of fellow film critic Rex Reed:
Bette Midler's eyes are "glittering green venetian blinds from which stars are shooting like emeralds," and one is forced to wonder whether green venetian blinds are in fact shutters, and whether one has ever seen an emerald shoot - and shoot in a cowardly fashion, from behind venetian blinds, painted green, no doubt, as camouflage for an emerald. Tennessee Williams is "shy, pursued by visions of hell, and blind in one eye." Curious collocation: Is it the hellish visions or the shyness that blinds you in one eye? And does one get the visions of hell in the blind or the seeing eye?
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