When Neil Simon's plays become the dominant force on Broadway, I was an undergraduate in the theatre department at Brigham Young University. I wasn't very closely connected to the New York theatre scene even then, and when Simon's first Broadway play, Come Blow Your Horn, came and went, I was too young to know or care. Indeed, the first Neil Simon work I ever saw was the movie The Odd Couple; even though I remember that the movie Barefoot in the Park ran for ages in one of the moviehouses in Provo, I didn't see it until I was in my twenties. But I did read the Time Magazine article when Simon had four plays running on Broadway at once, and read about his move toward "dramedy" with The Gingerbread Lady, and so I was keenly aware of him.

More than that, I had read Plaza Suite. And when it came time for me to make a second stab at directing a one-act play, it was the third part of that triptych that I directed, the one about the parents whose daughter has locked herself in the bathroom of the hotel suite rather than come out and attend her own wedding. (I directed Kathy Blackham and Jerry Argetsinger in the parts, by the way, and both were wonderful farceurs. Jerry has gone on to be the director of the Hill Cumorah Pageant and a noted translator of Danish plays; I'd love to know what Kathy is doing.)

There you go — one memoir begets another. But it's impossible for me as a writer to read Simon's memoir without going off into my own reminiscences. For while Simon's legend is that he erupted from nowhere, first as a "play doctor" (hence the nickname "Doc"), and then as a fullblown writer of comedy who dominated New York theatre as no other writer ever has, the truth is that he had a hard struggle that took enormous courage and self- discipline (my evaluation, not his), unshakable support from his wife and family, and there was no guarantee anywhere along the way that he wouldn't end up going back to writing for television, which is where he served out his journeyman years (his apprenticeship having been a period writing jokes for stand-up comics and columnists). Even the story of his nickname is bogus. He really got the nickname "Doc" from his older brother Danny, who called him that when Neil, as a baby, got a plastic doctor kit and played with the stethoscope. Nobody calls him "Doc" now, Simon insists, except a few idiots (my word, not his) on the West Coast, which is where they're apparently kept.

Even if you're not a writer, and even if the legend and the overpoweringly successful work of Neil Simon have had no effect on your life, this would still be a lovely book, I think. Simon is a wonderful writer of unaffected prose, and unlike the raft of books we've had from stand-up comedians, who struggle to put jokes into every line at the expense of making any sense at all, Simon only occasionally reaches for humor, and then it is always wit rather than jokes. I was fascinated and sometimes moved by his story of the struggle to get plays and movies produced, to rewrite them until they work, and to maintain a personal life through it all. And it is fitting that the frame of this book comes, not from his career, but from his relationship with his first wife.

Simon is unsparing in his comments on himself, and offers balanced portrayals even of those who did not always treat him well. He even points out that there are good critics and bad ones, and not based entirely on whether they like or do not like his latest play. The structure of the book is interesting as well, with flashbacks as they become appropriate; it is a measure of his skill as a writer of narrative that one is never confused by his maneuvering through time. (Would that more fiction writers were as deft.)

Simon also has a nonmystical, nonself-serving view of writing that would make this a very helpful book for writers to read. First, of course, is his demonstration of how vital it is to be willing to rewrite that which isn't working. And I'm not talking about tinkering — I'm talking about throwing out whole scenes, whole acts, and starting over again at the story level rather than the language level. I do it all the time, too, and can't understand the writers who don't — and whose works are deeply marred because they cling to their story mistakes as if they had received them from God.

Most important, Simon is absolutely honest about the weaknesses of some of his own works — Come Blow Your Horn, for instance, and Little Me, and The Star-Spangled Girl.

Let me close with a few apt writer-oriented quotes from the book:

"Some people misinterpret what writer's block is. They assume you can't think of a single thing. Not true. You can think of hundreds of things. You just don't like any of them. And what you like, you don't trust" (p. 159). (I've been telling my students for years that writer's block isn't a psychological hurdle to be got over — it's your unconscious mind telling you that what you just wrote or are about to write is junk. I never figured out how to say it as simply and cleanly as this. And it's nice to know that someone as seemingly prolific and as wildly successful as Simon also struggles with some of his stories.)

"Joan and I spent every possible night at the theater, seeing everything, good, bad, or indifferent. One tends to learn infinitely more from the bad than the good, and one learns nothing from the brilliant. The brilliant is born out of a writer's pain, some divine inspiration, and a slight bit of madness. You can aspire to it but you can't plan on it, especially if you know your limitations" (p. 127).

And here's the clincher:

"Your horizons can expand, however, if you allow yourself the possibility of failure. You must, in fact, court failure. Let her be your temptress. There must be danger in the attempt and no net strung across the abyss to break your fall. And then there are the lucky few who have the innocent ignorance of not even realizing that danger exists" (p. 127).

The only really frustrating thing about this book is to read about all of the massive rewrites that Simon's plays went through — and then to learn that he kept none of the drafts! How much I and many another writer would give to be able to see and learn from Simon's mistakes! The unworkable versions of the third act of The Odd Couple, for instance, arguably the funniest comedy ever written — wouldn't you like to see what was rejected and then see how the re-use of the Pigeon Sisters in the third act made it click? It ought to be one of the requirements of the profession: Save your drafts! But ... too late now. And at least we have this wonderful memoir to teach us how a master craftsman does his work.