Criticism > Contemporary Literary Criticism > Simon, (Marvin) Neil (Vol. 11) - John Simon

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JOHN SIMON

Chapter Two is being heralded as a deepening of Neil Simon's art. It is certainly every bit as much deepening as it is art. The play is admittedly based on Neil Simon's and Marsha Mason's courtship and marriage. George Schneider, a novelist, has lost his beloved wife from cancer; Jennie Malone is an actress who has lost a rather less beloved husband by divorce. Pimping for George is his younger brother, Leo, a theatrical agent; pimping for Jennie is her chum Faye, a queen of the soaps. Against all sorts of likelihood, George and Jennie meet, love, and marry, and start having difficulties, because George is afraid that happiness with the absolutely perfect Jennie means unfaithfulness to the memory of the absolutely perfect Barbara. Finally, though, things settle down blissfully, while Leo and Faye, both unhappily married, try their hand at some unsuccessful and ludicrous adultery. They, clearly, are intended as some sort of comic relief from the...

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1. Introduction
2. Brendan Gill
3. John Simon
4. John Simon
5. Catharine Hughes
6. Harold Clurman
7. Julius Novick
8. John Simon
9. Copyright

1. Neil Simon