Barefoot in the Park, The Odd Few, The Sunshine Males — Neil Simon’s plays and films have kept many millions of people laughing for almost four decades. Today he is recognized not merely as the most effective American playwright of all time, but also as one of the greatest.

A lot more than the humor, however, it is the mankind of Neil Simon’s eyesight which has made him America’s most beloved playwright and earned him such enduring success. Today, in Rewrites, he has written a funny, deeply touching about Rewrites A Memoir memoir, filled up with information and anecdotes from the writing life and wealthy with the personal experiences that underlie his work. The actual listener of this warm, nostalgic memoir discovers, however, would be that the has, although grounded in Neil Simon’s personal experience, provide just a glimpse into the brain and soul of the very private man.

Since Come Blow Your Horn first opened on Broadway in 1960, couple of months have passed without the appearance of another of his laughter-filled plays, and even on numerous events two or more of his functions have been working concurrently. But his achievement was something Neil Simon never got for granted, nor was the talent to generate laughter something that he ever treated carelessly: it got too much time for him to attain the kind of approval — both popular and important — that he craved, and the road he followed often was pitted with hard decisions.

A number of the supporting players in the memoir include Sid Caesar, Jerry Lewis, Walter Matthau, Robert Redford, Gwen Verdon, Bob Fosse, George C. Scott, and Mike Nichols. But always at center stage is normally his first love, his wife Joan, whose loss of life in the first seventies devastated him, and whose like and inspiration illuminate this amazing and uncovering self-portrait.

Rewrites is abundant with laughter and feeling, and filled up with the recollections of a sometimes special, sometimes bittersweet existence.