Neil Simon is the Norman Rockwell of playwrights.

Now that's the kind of glib comparison a Neil Simon character

would use as a snappy audience appeasing put-down directed at a Neil Simon-esque playwright in one of Neil Simon's plays,

if that character was trying to be sophisticated in knowing.

But just as that kind of glib insult reveals itself to not really be an insult

once one re-evaluates the cultural importance of Norman Rockwell, so does the Neil Simon-like

play-right within the Neil Simon playSimon-like playwright within the Neil-Simon play resolve into the actual

Norman Rockwell like Neil-Simon, who is truly an American icon, revealing the glib

character to be more sophisticated than we knew at first in such a way that we can

congratulate ourselves for having known it all along.

We learn to love that Gribb character who insulted both Norman Rockwell and Neil Simon because we imagine we are smart enough

to get the joke behind the joke and still make it home to be yelled at by our mothers to wash up

before dinner.

Neil Simon belongs in the all-time American Hall of Fame for the following reasons.

Barefoot in the park, the odd couple, Brighton Beach Memoirs, and the Goodbye Girl.

He did other amazing things as well, but these are enough.

The humor in these pieces is gentle, smart and self-aware, never brittle.

Woody Allen's humor was more incisive, sure, but immature.

A lot of Neil Simon's contemporaries were trying to show. was more incisive, sure, but immature.

A lot of Neil Simon's contemporaries were trying to shock or injure,

but Neil painted us like Norman Rockwell did

in revealing caricatures that became part and parcel of how we saw ourselves.

...