Art Garfunkel has a complicated relationship with 'jerk' Paul Simon

Art Garfunkel has a complicated relationship with Paul Simon — (Image credit: Kevin Winter/Getty Images for AFI)

If you are wondering how Art Garfunkel feels about erstwhile musical partner Paul Simon, Nigel Farndale at Britain's The Telegraph has a pretty candid interview with the singer-poet. "He's a hard man to get the measure of, Art Garfunkel," Farndale writes. "On the one hand he still seems eaten up by bitterness about his divorce from Paul Simon, yet he also talks about his old friend (they were at school together) with deep affection."

"I want to open up about this," Garfunkel told Farndale when he asked about Simon breaking up Simon & Garfunkel in 1970, at the height of their popularity.

I don't want to say any anti–Paul Simon things, but it seems very perverse to not enjoy the glory and walk away from it instead. Crazy. What I would have done is take a rest from Paul, because he was getting on my nerves. The jokes had run dry. But a rest of a year was all I needed. [Garfunkel]

Later in the interview, Garfunkel said that he is absolutely willing to tour with Simon again, as he has been since 1971. Then he seemed to rhetorically address Simon: "How can you walk away from this lucky place on top of the world, Paul? What's going on with you, you idiot? How could you let that go, jerk?"

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Read the entire interview for Garfunkel's jaundiced views of Paul McCartney, his 1970s math-teaching career, and his fail-safe pickup line, among other revelations. But Garfunkel ended with a bang, suggesting that Simon has a Napoleon complex, that he befriended him in grade school because he felt sorry for his short stature, and that "that compensation gesture has created a monster."

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Peter has worked as a news and culture writer and editor at The Week since the site's launch in 2008. He covers politics, world affairs, religion and cultural currents. His journalism career began as a copy editor at a financial newswire and has included editorial positions at The New York Times Magazine, Facts on File, and Oregon State University.