fran lebowitz: i cover the waterfrontfran lebowitz: i cover the waterfront

Jamaica Kincaid is a generous host. One day they would show you how to plant tomatoes, the next day theyd show how to raise chickens, the day after that how to can peas. I finish things now, and I think, Who was the last person who typed for me? I like lots of writers, but now I cant think of them. And then I would go to the Factory and turn it in. Did Lucy come out of a feeling that you needed to put your arrival to America in its place somehowto examine it, or to leave it behind? Especially because I was the only girl. But this was the 60s, and there were all of these Harvard medical students there learning to be doctors, so all the doctors in the hospital had hair down to their shoulders and granny glasses. Fran Lebowitz is 69 years old October 27. I wanted to see Robert Young. Metropolitan Life, published by E.P. Lebowitz: I was a behavior problem as far as talking. In my grammar school we got extra credit for extra book reports. I have a number of bookcases, big wooden bookcases with glass doors; most of them are 19th century. The novel is reputedly about rich people who want to be artists, and artists who want to be rich people. Would you say, You just cant afford to house four children. But, third of all, I used to say, I just cant go into a deli and order a roast beef sandwich and give them this.. And a piano player is sitting there as well. I have two animal theories. I mean, it is pretty shocking. It was charity really. I published it under the name of the headmaster who threw me out of school. I still have the clothes I bought at Bonwit Teller. I like that Oscar Wilde. . I met one who used to go to Kennedy Airport, to the terminals where people were coming from Florida, and there were a lot of Puerto Ricans who had never been to New York; he used to have a bathroom scale in the taxi, and he would tell these Puerto Ricans that in this country taxi rates were by weight and that it was a quarter a pound or something like that. No effect? They had one guy who was like an Elvis imitator, only he imitated Oscar Wilde. Fran Lebowitz contains multitudes: author (with a decades-old writer's block), journalist (Vanity Fair and Interview, et al. I would wake up and be so excited because I could smoke. I played cello in the school orchestra, but I was so horrible that I soon got over the notion of being a cellist. LEBOWITZ: I would talk to them, but luckily when you drive a cab there are two things: You dont have a boss in the cab with you, and you are not facing the people that you are making money from. To me, it would be even a slower way to write. If I know its the last day, I always do it. But, of course, Ive always been old at heart. Over some twenty years, Kincaid has made what my partner, the poet James Fenton, calls a plantsmans garden, full of rare species. High Times: Did you ever worry about not graduating from high school? LEBOWITZ: But what about the caffeine? I just talked it while a speed freak typed it. Fran Lebowitz: I Cover the Waterfront. And I always start writing very late at night. CLEMENTE: [laughs] Lets talk about your twenty thousand books. Steve paid me excessive amounts of money to answer his telephone. Because its everyones dream: Someday Im going to go to New York and go to Queens. Every place theres a hotel, theres one less apartment building. Fran Lebowitz was born on 27 October 1950 in Morristown, New Jersey, USA. Im happy none of it was ever published. She said, You know what its like being with you? This conversation began at a public event at the 92nd Street Y in 2013, and was picked up again in her Vermont kitchen eight years later, in the summer of 2021, when the social restrictions of the pandemic had, for a time, eased. "And then we did it the Saturday . By Kate Mossman Enough time has passed, Fran Lebowitz thinks, to admit she went to a birthday party on 9/11. . There are a lot of funny people around, and a lot of writers too, but somehow the combination of great humor and great writing has become an exceedingly rare commodity in the modern world. CLEMENTE: Is there any aspect of New Jersey that you miss? I styled myself to look like no one else. Your email address will not be published. I believe that at birth everyone gets the capacity for a certain amount of drugs and alcohol, everyone the same, you can do it all between 15 and 19 like I did, or you can stretch it out over 70 years. I always liked people who are older. As a child I kept the opposite hours. See, then, if you had no money, you had a horrible apartment. Bankers. Lebowitz: Sepia is my all-time favorite. Plus they are paid by the minute. CLEMENTE: You were not good at math in school? Lebowitz: I wrote a book when I was about eight called The Secret Castle that owed a lot to Carolyn Keene, who wrote the Nancy Drew books. I dont remember who published it. I would have gotten a scholarship. Book 7. 2. You published Metropolitan Life in installments in Interview. The knowing audience also died and no longer exists in a real way. This is why I have problems with books, because you cannot do that the night before. I like Rock Scene, Jet, Bronze Thrills, Interview, Italian Baby Vogue, Used Planes. Donald Trump is not my fault. And he would weigh them. Fran describes Ralph Lauren's copying, and eventual embodiment, of Brooks Brothers WASP style. 1. The writer and raconteur embodied the hip, downtown Manhattan of the 70s. Nearby are a vegetable garden caged against wildlife and a cottage in which lives Trevor, her bearded young assistant. People say, Oh, did you like New York better when it was filthy and dangerous? No. We think his version of the navy pinstripe would fit right in Fran's rotation. When I started writing Talk pieces at The New Yorker, I tried to get away from the anonymous we they used. I didnt lead a riot or set fire to the gym or do anything James Deanish. Lebowitz spent the pandemic alone, at her own insistence, having turned down offers to lock down with wealthy friends at their Hamptons homes . "One of the reasons people our age came to New York, if you were gay, was because you . Meet Fran Lebowitz and join her on her rambles as she muses about deadly distractions, Times Square terror, subway stoppers and total building fails. 5. But John Springer banned me from his screenings. Not only dont they not understand people different from them, they hardly understand themselves. I mean, I could wake up one afternoon with zero moneyI dont just mean in the house, I mean to my nameand know that by the end of the day, I would have money. Everyone thought that to actually suspend you for smoking the matron had to catch you either holding a cigarette or with the smoke coming out of your mouth. I picked up two famous people: one was Dr. Joyce Brothers, who undertipped me, and one was Rod Steiger. High Times: What was your best subject in school? A Bic pen. High Times: Do you watch anything else on TV besides Family Feud? They had very good writers, but they were these old, stout white men. Then I switched to Vantage. There was a sink in the bathroom. LEBOWITZ: The first thing I would do is say, I dont care if New York avoided bankruptcy by substituting tourism for the garment business, which is what happened. I think my most enormous smoking punishment was being grounded for a month. A pen. In those days you smoked whatever pot you had that day, so rather than share with others I smoked as much as I could humanly smoke. But, I mean, years ago I had a girlfriend who summed me up perfectly. I like New York. I dont know why it played in Morristown, New Jersey. Why dont you just put two of them in storage? She was a hot little number in 1978 . There were just tons of these and I never waited tables. She has plants that move her because of how they look or how they behave, or because of their histories. Fran Lebowitz, the writer, cultural critic, and professional raconteur, spoke with me over the phone via landline, as she famously doesn't own a cell phone or computer. I remember walking in the hot sun to one of the American bases in Antiguapast the crazy house, as we called the lunatic asylum, and the dead house, where the bodies of people who died in the hospital were put until they were collected by the undertakerto be interviewed by an American soldiers wife. The essays were published inMetropolitan Life(1978) andSocial Studies(1981). Once I got the contract for Metropolitan Life, I started writing longer things, because the editor said, You cant write these little, tiny things. I have the exact opposite problem of every writer Ive ever met: Every writer Ive ever met writes things that are too long, and they have to edit them down. Its very disconcerting to be in the basement of a night club at ten oclock in the morning reading poetry on a stage with a spotlight on you and no one there. So every time I move, they have to be moved around, and I always fight with this guy when we do this, because he is a private librarian, which means, generally, he works for very rich people who never read their books. Truckstop Women was one of my favorites. You have an idea for an app? Photograph by Christopher Macsurak. And you would have cash at the end of the day. The first time we went to dinner and a movie togetherthis was shortly after we metwe got out of the movie, and she said, "Let's get a cab.". Lebowitz: Because I was 19 years old. I dont need anything so snappy. You can get this book in the Derby Library in Derby, Connecticut, where my grandmother lives.. He said, Id like you to come and sit there while Im doing it. Fran is a renowned humorist and essayist. Wielding a sharp pen in one hand and cigarette in another, Fran Lebowitz wrote for Andy Warhol's Interview magazine beginning in 1968; published two classic collections of tart, humorous essays Metropolitan Life (1978) and Social Studies (1981) and has ever since remained a fixture of the Manhattan social scene as a sort of critic without portfolio. I use them frequently. 15 Times Fran Lebowitz Was The Most Interesting Woman In The Room. Maybe 20 people had read it, and he acted like it was in the Daily News. I drove a taxi. I didnt know how to type, Marc knew how to type. But . At that point one of the boys I was with realized I was feeling better and got really mad at me for insisting on going to the hospital, and he screamed at me, which made me perfectly crazy by the time I got to see the psychiatrist. I hate money. Well, perhaps, but I never really felt I belonged even in Antigua, even when I was little. FRANCESCO CLEMENTE: After a certain age, in the early hours of the morning, the pressure drops, which is the reason why. After I moved to New York, I modeled for people like Steven Meisel. And then they would get it, and I would get these polite little letters back rejecting it. when asked about his sexuality replied "I cover the waterfront." Andy said it went over like a lead balloon. Youre so judgmental I would find it helpful. - 48-page book (text in German) covering the Exploding Plastic Inevitable, Andy Warhol, the Velvet Underground in film and a discography, with many b&w and colour photos. To celebrate, were republishing Glenn OBriens interview with the living legend from the August, 1978 print edition of High Times. I answered Steve Pauls telephone and was a general schlepper and errand girl for him, and I drove for him. Im very vilified for this, I have to say. But a lot of people didnt like that piece and were angry at me. Stay home! And even when America is not working that well, it still works better than other places. But I never liked pot much. But I know a lot about them because its impossible not to. CLEMENTE: One of my favorite things that you ever published was something that came out at the height of the AIDS epidemic, when the amount of nonsensical, prejudiced, ridiculous things being said was really extraordinary, and you came up with a few paragraphs that really nailed the situation. I was very bitter about it because I had before me what seemed to be a successful future. The title refers to her frustration with people so absorbed in their devices that they bump into you on the street. The one I wrote myself was called House of Leather. And now I eat a steak before I write, like a prizefighter. All-around cultural oracle Fran Lebowitz really began her ascent to that pulpit here at Interview, in 1972, writing a wonderful column about terrible movies, and then covering the waterfront, as she called it: opining on sundry topics, giving advice, ranting, reflecting, and hooking the reading world (such as it is) on that voicethat saucy, salty, intrepid, enchanting, and hilarious voice. Thanks for offering this from your Archive. Im always sorry when I see that someone has tried out 11 new comedians and I wasnt there. I didnt want to have my consciousness expanded, I wanted to have it restricted. In placing them in magazines she was merely pursuing her policy of selling a piece of writing as many times as possible. The effect of AIDS was like a war in a minute country. Initially, she covered "Best of the Worst Movies," but later changed the name of her column to "I Cover the . Since we are on the pages of Interview magazine, should we go back to your beginnings at Interview? Meeting James Joyce would be more on the order of sightseeing, like seeing the Washington Monument or the Jefferson Memorial. You might say that was the influence of my mother. I dont think I was still writing for Interview, but once you go outside your natural audience, there are tons of people that dont like you. And soon she had a book offer from a fan in publishing. Lebowitz earned a GED and worked several odd jobs before Andy Warhol hired her as a columnist for Interview Magazine in 1972. I just dont want to hear someone else walking around. I once read that deer are in the rodent family, and I still believe this. There were times when my mother and I would go swimming and she would disappear for a second, and I would imagine the depths just rolling over her, that shed go deeper and deeper and Id never see her again . It was 87. I write so slowly that I could write in my own blood without hurting myself. He packs them, and then every time you move, they have to be put in different ways. Until then homesickness was something I only knew from books. And people sent in money. Which, in my opinion, was: What is culture without gay people? I have to take the TV off the chair. You have to say fuck, you have to have these kinds of sex. It went on at five-thirty or six in the morning. Thats not writing. I know Ive said this before, but the audience for the artswhether it was for writing or films . Woman in the Room was a general schlepper and errand girl for him someone else walking around New Jersey never! Not good at math in school the Jefferson Memorial never waited tables the off! 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