October 27, 1950– Fran Lebowitz:
“All God’s children are not beautiful. Most of God’s children are, in fact, barely presentable.”
She is one of my idols. If you don’t know her, you really should, & you can start with the terrific HBO documentary film Public Speaking (2010) directed by Martin Scorsese, a 90-minute talkfest with essayist & humorist Lebowitz explaining almost everything.
The Scorsese flick is a sophisticated affair, a series of interviews, seamlessly cut, with Lebowitz at the clubby Waverly Inn in NYC’s Greenwich Village. The film is the world view of this very witty & very cynical New Yorker. She is not all that happy with most of the changes she’s seen in her adopted city since she arrived 45 years ago.
Conversation provided at Lebowitz’s skill level used to be celebrated in another era. Scorsese provides the proof with vintage clips that show figures like James Baldwin, Gore Vidal, & William F. Buckley on talk shows from the 1960s. Lebowitz talks about how she was thrilled & inspired when she was a young person by one of Baldwin’s appearances on the David Susskind Show, pointing out how today’s talk show are no comparison, with guests that are pre-interviewed & plug their product for 5 minutes.
“The opposite of talking isn’t listening. The opposite of talking is waiting.”
In Public Speaking, Lebowitz sort of comes out of the closet, to the shock of no one. She seems perplexed that gay people are fighting for Marriage Equality & the repeal of Don’t Ask Don’t Tell. She says that these issues are the antithesis of freedom & that those are not rights she wants for herself, but she’d vote for them because other gays want them so badly.
Lebowitz is famously paralyzed with what she calls “writer’s blockade” but she has few peers as a public pontificator. Her particular gift has made it possible for her to afford to continue to live in NYC & to hang out with her famous friends.
“Polite conversation is rarely either.”
Born in NJ, her parents owned a furniture store while she was growing up. She was expelled from high school for “non-specific surliness”. Her trademark remains her specialized sneer. Lebowitz decided against college & instead moved to Manhattan. She took jobs driving a taxi & cleaning apartments (“with a small specialty in Venetian blinds”).
When she was just 21 years old she began her column I Cover The Waterfront for Andy Warhol’s Interview Magazine, hired by Warhol himself, before moving over to Mademoiselle a few years later.
“Andy Warhol made fame more famous.”
Lebowitz has long promised a novel, Exterior Signs Of Wealth, named for the French conspicuous-consumption tax figured on the basis of displays of wealth. The novel is supposedly about rich people who want to be artists, & artists who want to be rich people. When asked why the long delay for her first major work of fiction, Lebowitz offers the excuse that she only works on it on the side because “full-time I’m watching daytime TV.”
“Very few people possess true artistic ability. It is therefore both unseemly & unproductive to irritate the situation by making an effort. If you have a burning, restless urge to write or paint, simply eat something sweet & the feeling will pass”
Leibowitz disapproves of pretty much everything except sleep, cigarettes, & fine furniture. Her essays about the difficulty of finding an acceptable apartment to the art of freeloading are classics of social observation. I still re-read her first books Social Studies & Metropolitan Life, both published more than 35 years ago.
Cranky, sardonic, witty, & dry; her essays make me think & make me laugh. She was named one most stylish women in Vanity Fair Magazine’s International Best-Dressed List, & is known to wear bespoke suits from Savile Row’s Anderson & Sheppard. On Hillary Rodham Clinton’s sartorial style, Lebowitz states:
“I don’t think she cares. I don’t think she is interested in how her house looks, where her furniture is from, I don’t think she has any visual interests. & there’s nothing wrong in not caring. A man who doesn’t care about what he looks like, he’s applauded. We say, ‘Oh, he’s not superficial!’ I, myself, am deeply superficial.”
Lebowitz had a reoccurring role on the long-running TV series Law & Order (1990-2010) as a judge & a cameo in Scorsese’s The Wolf Of Wall Street (2013). She had the best ever Proust Questionaire on the back page of Vanity Fair.
I am mad jealous of the idea of having a Manhattan career out of a slim pair of volumes of essays & then chatting away for the next 4 decades. Progress, her first new book in more than 20 years, is scheduled to be published before the end of the year. We will see about that. I think her quips are on a par with Dorothy Parker:
“Ask your child what he wants for dinner only if he’s buying.”
“If you are a dog & your owner suggests that you wear a sweater suggest that he wear a tail.”
“If you are of the opinion that the contemplation of suicide is sufficient evidence of a poetic nature, do not forget that actions speak louder than words.”
“In real life, I assure you, there is no such thing as algebra.”
“Romantic love is mental illness. But it’s a pleasurable one. It’s a drug. It distorts reality, & that’s the point of it. It would be impossible to fall in love with someone that you really saw.”
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