Whatever happened to the Odd Kid on your block? Everybody grew up with at least one; I’m talking about those kids who seem to be born outsiders, who say and do unpredictable things and never fit in well with the rest. The kids that even surprise the adults when they talk. You know the ones I mean. And if you don’t have one of these kids in your memory, you might have been the class misfit. God knows I was one. So what? I can verify that most of us card-carrying weirdos eventually discover friends of our own. We become reasonably functional adults. But time has stood still for Eleanor Oliphant. At thirty, she’s still the Odd Kid on The Block, although now she’s an Oddball at Work. She doesn’t have any friends (unless you count Vodka and Mummy). And, despite the title of Gayle Honeyman’s brilliant first novel, Eleanor Oliphant is NOT Completely Fine, Stuck in a Rut Eleanor is, if anything, stuck in a rut, one she’s carefully constructed. Every morning, she dons black pants, white shirt. She does (and eats) the same thing each day on her lunch break. Eleanor always takes the same bus. She talks to Mummy…
Everyone remembers people and events that shaped and changed their lives. Long after they leave the world’s stage, these individuals and events inform and direct us through memory. That’s how I feel about Neil Simon’s plays; they are touchstones from my childhood. That’s reasonable: when I was young he was the King of Broadway. His movies set some of my first standards for comedy. But, that was a long time ago and Mr. Simon hasn’t had a hit play in years. So, I’ve been reading plays by other authors. Still, when I heard of his death, I did something I haven’t done for a while: I read something Neil Simon wrote. Not his plays this time, but his memoirs. And I’m still thinking about what I read. Rewrites Rewrites is Simon’s memoir of the first half of his life, and to some extent, it’s like his early plays. This book covered his early, energetic years as a writer when hope was built on promise and potential. The book is a charmer, and it confirmed two things I guessed but didn’t know before. First, Simon’s stories all have strong autobiographical elements and that the art of plays is in the re-writing. [amazon_link asins=’0684835622′…