BOOKS IN BRIEF
John Simon on Music: Criticism 1979-2005 by John Simon (Applause Theatre & Cinema, 504 pp., $27.95*); John Simon on Film: Criticism 1982-2001 (Applause Theatre & Cinema, 700 pp., $29.95); John Simon on Theatre: Criticism 1974-2003 (Applause Theatre & Cinema, 840 pp., $32.95)* For more than thirty years, in the pages of what must be almost that many different magazines and newspapers, critic John Simon has been patrolling the American cultural landscape and delighting a devoted readership with his essays and reviews (see page 35). But it's only this month, at long last, that highlights from Simon's matchless career have finally been gathered up and made available in hardback form. There being so many such highlights, in fact, Applause Theatre & Cinema Books has not unreasonably decided to publish three separate volumes of Simon's characteristic wit and erudition, one each on music . . .
How relative things are! The composer Ned Rorem, who knew Francis Poulenc (1889-1963) well, told me not long ago that when he now performs Poulenc's works, he no longer calls the Frenchman a minor composer; he was clearly major. Some time earlier, the piano virtuoso Charles Rosen told me that he was once conned into playing the piano part in a recording of Poulenc's Sextet. It should have been billed, he thought, as "Charles Rosen Plays Sh--t."
movies . . .
We were teased by the advance reports: parts of Basic Instinct were so sexually explicit, they had to be cut. Of course, in Europe the film would be shown uncut, as presumably in the casette version to be eventually released in the U.S., but here and now puritanism would be served. In such a climate of illogic, it may be too much to expect the movie to make sense.
and live drama . . .
Whoever butchers Long Day's Journey Into Night isn't merely slaughtering hogs or cows; he is slaughtering the greatest play written by an American. This squarely places Jonathan Miller, the British director of the present revival, into the category of master butcher extraordinary. I have seen bad productions of this towering masterpiece, but none that so ingeniously and incontrovertibly totaled it. If the butchers' guild of Nuremberg competed for a prize, Miller could be their Walther von Stolzing.
--David Tell
Do As I Say (Not As I Do) by Peter Schweizer (Doubleday, 272 pp., $22.95) Peter Schweizer's Do As I Say (Not As I Do) is an entertaining exposure of the hypocrisy among some prominent liberals. In a series of 11 profiles on leftist icons from Noam Chomsky and Al Franken to Hillary Clinton and Ted Kennedy, Schweizer reveals that the most vocal liberals do not practice what they preach.
One may initially question the author's purpose. So Gloria Steinem got married, and Ralph Nader has a knack for real-estate investing. Who cares? Schweizer's answer provides the book's raison d'être: "Experience has taught these individuals that their ideas just don't work. When it comes to fundamentals . . . they suddenly forget about affirmative action, environmentalism, progressive taxation, and antiglobalist hostility."
For example, Michael Moore is, among other things, a race-baiter who chastises whites for excluding minorities from executive positions. Schweizer then contrasts Moore's public pronouncements with his own dismal record of hiring minorities in his media projects. Schweizer appropriately stresses that Moore's behavior does not stamp him a racist, merely a hypocrite.
A liberal apologist might attempt to deflect Schweizer's charge of hypocrisy by citing the "tragedy of the commons" (i.e. one may argue that individuals can legitimately favor liberal action by society acting in concert, yet reject an individual's obligation to initiate such action alone).
Hence, Nancy Pelosi's advocacy of worker unionization need not contradict her employment of only nonunion workers at the Napa hotel she co-owns.
This bit of sophistry, however, cannot survive these liberals' shrill denunciations against others engaged in such individual action. These discordant cries are the hallmark of Schweizer's subjects and mark their hypocrisy in demanding greater piety in others' behavior than in their own.
Schweizer concludes with a suggestion. When next confronted by a liberal pontificating on moral or political issues, "the first question you should ask is: Sure . . . but do you really live your life that way?" Sounds right.
-- Eric Wasserstrum