Simon was born in Subotica, Ba?ka, County of Ba?ka, the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats, and Slovenes, from 1929 known as Yugoslavia (now North Ba?ka District, Autonomous Province of Vojvodina, Republic of Serbia). He is of Hungarian descent. The son of Joseph and Margaret (née Reves) Simmon, he grew up in Belgrade before immigrating to the United States in 1941 on a tourist visa to join his father. By 1944 he was in United States Army Air Force basic training camp in Wichita Falls, Texas.

He attended Harvard University and earned a B.A., an M.A., and a Ph.D. there. Simon has written theater, film, music, and book reviews for publications such as New York, Esquire, The Hudson Review, National Review, Opera News, The New Leader, Commonweal, The New Criterion and The New York Times Book Review. He also contributes a monthly essay to The Weekly Standard.

Simon was theater and film critic at New York magazine for 36 years from October 1968 until May 2005, when he was fired. Since June 2005 Simon has reviewed theater for Bloomberg News.

Simon lives in New York City.

Celebrated for his erudition and longevity as a critic, Simon is equally well-known for his aggressive style.

Reporting for Playbill, Robert Simonson wrote that his "stinging reviews - particularly his sometimes vicious appraisals of performers' physical appearances - have periodically raised calls in the theatre community for his removal." On Simon's dismissal from New York magazine, critic Richard Hornby wrote in the The Hudson Review:

His removal seems to have been political, with a new editor-in-chief acceding to the usual pressure from theatrical producers to replace him with someone more positive. ...In fact, Simon was no more negative than most critics, but his lively writing style meant that his gibes were more memorable than those of the others. His enthusiasms were expressed with the same vigor-after heaping praise on the writing, acting, directing, and even the set designs of Doubt, for example, he described it as "a theatrical experience it would be sinful to miss." But positive reviews tend to be taken for granted, while negative ones are seen as personal insults. (I regularly get angry letters and e- mails of complaint from actors and theatre companies, but no one has ever thanked me for a favorable notice.) Theatrical producers in particular become enraged when reviews do not sound like one of their press releases. They finally seemed to have prevailed.

While some people loved Simon's reviews in New York magazine and others hated them, many were quick to change positions, depending on what he thought of their latest work. Interviewed for The Paris Review, Simon described a photo taken with producer Joseph Papp who had "his arm around me after I've given him a good review, and [asked] for the picture back the next month because of a bad review". Lynn Redgrave and John Clark were particularly happy with his review of Shakespeare for My Father, about to begin a struggling debut on Broadway, and said so. Others have suggested, however, that his negative criticism is mean-spirited rather than constructive. For example, he is known for dwelling on the unattractiveness of actors he does not like: Wallace Shawn is "unsightly" and Barbra Streisand's nose "cleaves the giant screen from east to west, bisects it from north to south. It zigzags across our horizon like a bolt of fleshy lightning". In The Language Instinct, Steven Pinker criticised Simon for reviews that obsessively focus on an actor's physical appearance to the detriment of critical acumen. Carol Burnett wrote a letter to Time Magazine responding to an attack on Liza Minnelli; she closed with "Could Mr. Simon be suffering from a simple case of heart envy?"

Although not a native English speaker, he also is known for his criticism of the (mis)use of language in American writing, notably in his book Paradigms Lost: Reflections on Literacy and Its Decline, and was one of the guests on the PBS special Do You Speak American? In addition, Bryan Garner referred to Simon as a language "maven" and credited him with improving the quality of American criticism. In contrast, psycholinguist Steven Pinker disparaged Simon's commentary on language and wrote: "there is no point in refuting this malicious know-nothing [Simon], for he is not participating in sincere discussion."

Simon's review compilations include Uneasy Stages, John Simon on Theater, John Simon on Music, and John Simon on Film. He has also written several books on film and poetry including Private Screenings (1967), Movies Into Film: Film Criticism, 1967-1970 (1971), Reverse Angle: A Decade of American Films (1982), "Something To Declare: Twelve Years of Films from Abroad" (1983), and Dreamers of Dreams: Essays on Poets and Poetry (2001). His essays can be found at Broadway.com.

Print

• Garner, Bryan. Garner's Modern American Usage. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998.
• Gilman, Sandra. Making the Body Beautiful. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2000.
• Pinker, Steven. The Language Instinct. London: Penguin, 1994.
• Stefanova-Peteva, Kalina. Who Calls the Shots on the New York Stages? London: Routledge, 1993. ISBN 9783718654383

On-line

• The Art of Criticism No. 4: John Simon The Paris Review interview by Davi Napoleon
• Simonson, Robert. "John Simon to Leave Long-Held Post" Playbill