Whenever a writer gets around to presenting us with his own portrait of the artist as a young man, he invariably does two things. He makes his young man sensitive, very sensitive. A blossom on the vine that will wither and die unless it is promptly given succor. And he makes his young man a victim, a stranger in the household who is not going to be properly nurtured because he is so blatantly misunderstood; he must escape the obtuseness about him at all costs. You know how it goes.

Now,… we have Neil Simon's portrait of the artist as a young man, and Mr. Simon, as generous a man as ever was, has done three things. In "Brighton Beach Memoirs" he has made his 14-year-old hero, whose stage name is Eugene but who is plainly the playwright's remembered alter ego, sensitive enough, I'd say….

He is also...