“Lost in Yonkers” by Neil Simon (post 3): Author, whose quotes in past posts suggested he had multiple personality, identifies most with Aunt Bella

After winning the Pulitzer Prize in 1991, Lost in Yonkers was published with a cover picture of two adolescent boys on an empty street (1). But it turns out that neither of those boys is the main character. It is their Aunt Bella.

“As the story began to reveal itself,” Neil Simon said, “I found myself identifying most with Aunt Bella. She is the one I loved, the heroine of what became Lost in Yonkers” (2, p. 568).

In fact, all the play’s other characters are two-dimensional. Once you learn their main trait, you know what to expect. Only Aunt Bella is puzzling and complex.

Is she retarded? No. Crazy? No. Forgetful and disoriented? Sometimes, but at other times she knows things that others don’t. Is she, as is often said, childish? In her plans to get married and open a restaurant, she is thought to be childish and unrealistic, but as the play ends, it is implied that she might know what she is doing.

Two things suggest that she has multiple personality: 1. her puzzling inconsistency (search “puzzling inconsistency” in this blog for past posts on this clue to diagnosis) and 2. the fact that Neil Simon identified with her.

1. Neil Simon. Lost in Yonkers. New York, Random House, 1991.

2. Neil Simon. Neil Simon’s Memoirs: Rewrites [1996] and The Play Goes On [1999]. New York, Simon & Schuster, 2016.