The Fran Lebowitz Reader: The Sunday Times Bestseller (Virago Modern Classics)

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When Scorsese was making The Wolf of Wall Street, he cast the famously judgmental Lebowitz as the judge who sends Leonardo DiCaprio to prison – an in-joke between pals.

Fran Lebowitz - Bio Fran Lebowitz - Bio

I enjoy the idea of lying around all day reading magazines, though I doubt I could get anyone to pay me for that. One of the leitmotifs in Martin Scosese’s second and most recent documentary about her, Pretend It’s a City, are the shots of a solitary Lebowitz strolling around New York in her distinctive uniform of a long overcoat, Levi’s 501s and loafers, observing everything and detached from it all. If there are places on your body where this is a possibility, you are not attractive – you are leaking. Es tomēr vienu zvaigzni noņēmu, jo teksti tomēr nav mūžīgi, ir novecojušas detaļas, kuras mani diezgan garlaikoja.By which I mean that the hilarity of people like Fran Lebowitz and Larry David isn’t that they don’t know they’re being assholes. In “elegant, finely honed prose” (The Washington Post Book World), Lebowitz limns the vicissitudes of contemporary urban life—its fads, trends, crazes, morals, and fashions.

Fran Lebowitz

The show’s only through line is Lebowitz herself, whose slapdash history of New York City is mostly just an occasion to riff.Scorsese loves characters, and his style is to let them reveal themselves through gesture and, especially, through speech. But I heard that a lot of people were talking about [the article] online and I’ll tell you what surprises me is how people, who are totally unrelated to whatever’s being written about, will take these huge sides over things,” she says.

Fran Lebowitz: ‘If people disagree with me, so what?’ Fran Lebowitz: ‘If people disagree with me, so what?’

This is excellent work if you can get it, and, as far as I can tell, hardly anyone but Lebowitz has. Nothing remarkably funny or insightful, Metropolitan Life struggles to find that sweet spot between comedy and commentary. Acerbic, wisecracking and hilarious, this is the definitive essay collection from New York legend and satirist, Fran Lebowitz, star of Martin Scorsese’s hit Netflix series, Pretend It’s a City. He once told her that she had an “excessive reverence for the printed word”, which she thinks hit the nail on the head. When I interviewed her for a public event by Zoom during lockdown, she had to go to David Sedaris’s apartment to use his computer.These essays have been written back in the late 70s – early 80s and we can think of them as the mistakes of youth. This has some extremely dated references, including jokes about est, but it's a window into a specific place and time. Ten years ago, Scorsese made “Public Speaking,” his first documentary about Lebowitz, which was an ode to a vanishing breed of New York celebrity, as well as a portrait of the city itself. This material is best consumed in short doses over a moderate period of time, but Fran's a damn clever author. People don’t know how fun Toni was because she had such an intimidating presence, but she was really fun,” says Lebowitz a little wistfully.

The Fran Lebowitz Reader: The Sunday Times Bestseller (Virago

It is interesting to watch “Pretend It’s a City” alongside the recent documentary series “How To with John Wilson,” on HBO. I must take issue with the term “a mere child,” for it has been my invariable experience that the company of a mere child is infinitely preferable to that of a mere adult.

One essay, Disco Hints, (I told you they were old) gives a glimpse of the proper way to dance at a disco, and how and who should take clothes off when getting hot dancing! After reading this, I'm surprised that she has had writing block for the past forty years since her writing is essentially a grocery list of opinions dressed up in pretentious flair.