Fran Lebowitz: caustic wit or boring complainer?

totally the same book i read. think reading so many jewish dirty jokes at a young age did some very strange things to my understanding of sexuality

Just saw the Austen clip and liked it a lot, for what it's worth. Her comments on irony, philistinism, etc, are nothing Gore Vidal hasn't said many times over the years more caustically.

This is an interesting show and she strikes me, as ever, as equal parts compelling and insufferable.

First time I've ever heard her.

equal parts compelling and insufferable

Which is why she is the epitome of Manhattan culture.

Metropolitan Life and Social Studies are my initiation into F.L. Love the stuff there is in there. It doesn't get predictable, but it does get samey after a while. Still funny.

I thought this was terrific, and I'm no fan of hers.

Best part may not be Liebowitz herself, but instead the archival footage of James Baldwin, Truman Capote, Noel Coward, and the rest. Reminds me of how I don't remember much of No Direction Home (also Scorcese) but vividly remember the John Jacob Niles clips.

But even Liebowitz herself: what I enjoyed here was not the one-line zingers that felt like urbane Erma Bombeck, but her fuller arguments and thoughts.

Don't forget William F. Buckley. Holy crap, that guy really existed! It's hard to fathom. (But also kind of important to fathom.)

Oh yes, yes. I'd never heard about this debate before the clip in the Lebowitz doc.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nbkObXxSUus

guns blazing

The second that Bloomberg appeared on the political scene, I objected to him. Most people didn't know who he was so they didn't object to him, but I did know who he was, and I did object to him.... Whenever people say, "Oh he earned his money himself," I always say the same thing: "No one earns a billion dollars. People earn $10 an hour, people steal a billion dollars."

If you were going to turn a city, which is a place where people live, into a tourist attraction, you're going to have to make it a place that people who don't live here, like. So I object to living in a place for people who don't live here.... I'm tired of hearing about how much money they bring to the city because the kind of jobs the tourists bring to the city are the worst jobs. They're hotel maid jobs, they're jobs that have no future to them.

http://www.papermag.com/2014/09/fran_lebowitz_guru_interview.php

otm on movie theater savagery obv

on fashion, and stuff!

I always wore 501 Levi's. They used to make them in San Francisco. Every size was the same size, which sounds obvious, but you would be surprised—and then, I don't know, at some point during globalization they started making them in Mexico, and like every other thing they branched out to places you'd never heard of. So now every single size of Levi's is a different size. They cost less, too, which doesn't make any sense. I wish that real estate were cheaper and clothes were more expensive. But that's what young people want: $2 T shirts that fall apart in the wash....

When we were young, we knew things. We knew basic history, even as it related to fashion. Now, when something reappears, an 18 year old has no clue that it's a revival. Despite the fact that they're almost always online they don't get references.

I think that's part of why visual things are becoming so derivative. Designers now, they all have these things called mood boards. I suppose they think a sense of discovery equals invention. It would be as if every writer had a board with paragraphs of other writers—'Oh, I'll take a little bit of this, and that, he was really good.' Yes, he was really good! And that is not a mood board, it is a stealing board....

To me, the main difference between young people now and the people I was young with isn't so much style, it's the relationships they have with their parents. Their parents like them much more than ours liked us. Our parents weren't our friends. They disapproved of us. All our parents cared about was how we behaved, not how we felt, not what we wanted. But now I see my friends on the phones with their, what, 30-year-old kids? And they're talking about feelings. You would think this kind of relationship would make this adult children more relaxed, but instead they're more concerned. Parent-child relationships have become so collegiate. And so when these grown children go into the world, they expect a certain amount of attention. And they're very disappointed.

http://www.elle.com/fashion/personal-style/interviews/a27447/fran-lebowitz-style-interview/

sub-andy rooney at best

what a shame to see her going down the "kids these days" tubes, she's still so much sharper than that

And that is not a mood board, it is a stealing board....

IRL lol at this.

most kids ARE ignorant, bcz they have been

i'm pretty sure she was part of a 'run away to the Village' teen clique, so an aberrant sample.

Our parents weren't our friends. They disapproved of us. All our parents cared about was how we behaved, not how we felt, not what we wanted.

this is true imo but the thing is I'm convinced the boomers are an outlier in this regard, this obsession with always being against the previous generation

i dunno, you can find a fair amount of contemporary damning of youthful decadence throughout the last century and a half or so.

that's a different dynamic, I'm talking about it going the other way, and I feel like it's evident in her kinda resentful description there - this dynamic where the kids explicitly reject/hate their forebears

to frame this in terms of music, nowadays you have (several) post-boomer generations that still revere classic rock, that don't automatically discount anything that wasn't produced in the last 10 years etc. I'm not saying "kids these days" are all well-informed about history (of course they aren't, ignorance is part of youth) but that they don't reject what came before out of hand the way, say, boomers would recoil at their "square" parents

I guess it depends which boomers, some of whom made Reagan, Clint Eastwood and The Greatest Generation into "legends"

xp

I don't get why this woman gets any more attention than any other crazy person sitting next to you on a bench in ny

people remember a book she wrote 30 years ago, most books by crazy people on ny benches are long forgotten

it's called wit.

crazy wd be C Paglia

Food is an important part of a balanced diet.

not generally a big fan, but I liked her advice about garment care, and I agree that clothing's concealing function is great, so I appreciate that interview.

I forwarded it to my gf, mostly for the good advice about immediately hanging coats

not sure why someone who dresses as ghastly as she does is given credit as an arbiter of fashion?

I don't get why this woman gets any more attention than any other crazy person sitting next to you on a bench in ny

― iatee, Wednesday, March 25, 2015 2:34 PM (38 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

otm

she has a "look"

i throw my coat on a chair when i get home and that's not gonna change.

I don't get why this woman gets any more attention than any other crazy person sitting next to you on a bench in ny

It's pretty simple; she is a better writer and talker than 99.9% of people who get paid to write and talk. It's like asking why does Louis CK get a lot of attention. (Though Lebowitz is, of course, much funnier and sharper than CK.)

real talk

I don't really see sharpness on display here

in fact everything she says in this interview makes her seem incredibly dull

you're dull

fair

give it 25 years, crut

the substance of what she says is very hit-and-miss, but that was the case with Oscar Wilde too.

also i think it helps to hear her voice as you read her

Well I thought it was pretty funny. And she sounds honest, at least.

"I am deeply superficial" <= Isn't this an Andy Warhol line? Maybe she got it from her stealing board.

It is!

Wilde said things v close:

It is only the superficial qualities that last. Man's deeper nature is soon found out.

It is only shallow people who do not judge by appearances. The true mystery of the world is the visible, not the invisible.

i don't get her. her clothes look bad.

her clothes look terrible!

famous ppl who have a "uniform" get tons of credit as if it's not its own form of vanity

i think she looks great but leslie feinberg is a personal style icon of mine so ymmv

leslie feinberg looks fucking amazing imo

also tbf to lebowitz there are a lot of photos in which i really dig her style and she has a cool unique thing going on but others are very bad, the oversize blazer with gold buttons and french cuffs that are too long paired with jeans is nagl imo

yea i may be too sympathetic to the bag lady look

expensive bag lady

she looks a bit like a viola swamp

"I feel very strongly that almost the entire city has copied my glasses."

this is the GOAT quote tho