You might want this, but I will do that. The day my grounding was up and I was going to be allowed to go out on Saturday I got the flu and was sick for two weeks. Lucy stops sending her salary home, and I did stop sending mine. And sometimes I went on at ten oclock in the morning and read to the guy sweeping up from the night before. I remember I got $500 for it. I didnt know how to type, Marc knew how to type. Im a great relative. Scorsese ventures that it was at a literary party on New York City . I didnt know that there was anything about me that had a name, that could be diagnosed. I didnt lead a riot or set fire to the gym or do anything James Deanish. Couldnt it be clean, or cleaner. And I was once ejected from the Whitney Museum for making comments during a film about baking. But a lot of people didnt like that piece and were angry at me. Then I read it to someone who writes it onto the computer. I dont want them to come. Tolerance is really a better thing than understanding. Who hasnt typed for me in a long time? I could probably get a secretary for what I spend getting my friends to type for me. And thats why Frans first book, Metropolitan Life, has become a smash hit. All rights reserved, In an essay specially commissioned for the podcast, Aisha Sabatini Sloan describes rambling around Paris with her father, Lester Sloan, a longtime staff photographer for. It was like watching children at a birthday party. Like, this is the smart one, this is the pretty one. She cooks with flair. CLEMENTE: Is there any aspect of New Jersey that you miss? LEBOWITZ: It really depended. Speaking to celebrated New Yorker Fran Lebowitz over the phone is an experience as hilarious and eye-opening as one would imagine it to be. It was The Modern Farmer. It used to be a tradition in agricultural families that youd sacrifice the eldest child. I wanted to be a beatnik. Lebowitz: Id like to have a talk show with no guests. I wrote a musical comedy for my grandparents 35th wedding anniversary. Lebowitz: I have to say I have only written back to important people, people in the publishing business. LEBOWITZ: No. I often think of the time before my brothers were bornand this might sound very childish, but I dont careas this paradise of my mother and me always being together. People say, Well, what would you do with Times Square? And I always think, Gee, I dont know. My first school punishment was sitting in the corner in kindergarten wearing a Band-Aid over my mouth and holding up a sign that said I am a chatterbox. That was my first run-in with authority. I love Richard Pryor. One of my resolutions is that I am going to start answering my mail. A childrens book, Annie, Gwen, Lilly, Pam and Tulip, came out in 1986. The idea that New York is over makes some people angry, but it makes me laugh. LEBOWITZ: Im following it, but in a way, I also feel the way I feel about the Kardashians: I feel like its following me. Then I went to a prep school that had a paper called the Wilson Wyndowe. Fabulous. I like Dorothy Parker. I dont remember who published it. Fran Lebowitz. Lebowitz: I see no reason to get up before one oclock except to watch Family Feud. Maybe Ill donate them to one of those film schools in Los Angeles for a tax write-off. But I know a lot about them because its impossible not to. . Since 1974, High Times Magazine has been the #1 resource for cannabis news, culture, brands and marijuana legalization laws. Your friends who dont write will not stay on the phone with you, because they have other real things they want to do. 2011. I think Brigid Polk did that once. Because I could not possibly be in a relationship now for more than six days. Lebowitz: I only wrote one by myself. When I was really young I wanted to be a toll taker because I thought they kept the money. A prominent liberal Democrat with a keen political eye, Lebowitz has. Bloomberg was always bragging how many hotels were being builtI remember seeing him on the news, saying, And this is the nine millionth hotel in Queens. Queens! I just knew an eight-year-old wrote it and it was published. CLEMENTE: If you were going to run for office in New York, what would be your program, and what kind of qualifications would you declare you have? What could they be thinking? Interview, at the time, six people read it, believe me. No effect? Truckstop Women was one of my favorites. Shes really not our type. I was home sick when I was expelled. In person, that voice pours out in great glittering riffs (on politics and personal space, on AIDS, the 80s, New York, and everything in between) that set Lebowitz atop our list of dream dinner-party guests and probably put her in the running for greatest talkers ever. During that period I had stripes cut on my hands. Donald Trump is not my fault. Thanks for offering this from your Archive. At the age of 21, Lebowitz was hired by Andy Warhol as a columnist for Interview magazine and began a column, "I Cover the Waterfront." Following that, she worked for Mademoiselle magazine.. Then to Merits. She was a hot little number in 1978 . I would rather have a typist. I saw an ad in the Village Voice that said WantedPoets. This really weird guy named Jack Scully, who was an ex-monk, had somehow convinced Max Gordon, who owned the Village Vanguard, that the fact that the Vanguard was empty during the day was losing him a great fortune. It was incredibly boring writing that stuff. So they would talk to me. People were pretty angry in general then. Theres a connection. There are certain relationships I think Im great at: Im the worlds greatest daughter. CLEMENTE: But if you drink a little bit of coffee before you go to sleep, this doesnt happen. And even when America is not working that well, it still works better than other places. Like there is an American family where someones supposed to be president. Lebowitz: Ive had a number of interesting, colorful jobs. Theres a huge gap in what people know, and theres no context for it anymore. And its also not a modern idea; dictators are an old-fashioned idea. But I just cant smile at people for money. When she started realizing cigarettes were missing it never occurred to her to accuse me, so she went to the supermarket where she bought her cigarettes and told the manager that the boys who worked there were stealing packs out of the cartons. SHOP NOW. My favorite thing to do is to call another writer who has a deadline, because they will stay on the phone with you. But her crankiness betrayed a heart of gold. They like machines because it makes them seem more masculine. Like everyone else, I never imagined Donald Trump would get this far. Her voice is as musical as ever, high-pitched, the Anglo-Caribbean lilt beguiling. There are some great writers who are great talkers, but there are more great writers who are not great talkers. If someone else has to write, then you know you have a willing companion to talk to on the phone for hours and hours while they put off their writing. Fran Lebowitz contains multitudes: author (with a decades-old writer's block), journalist (Vanity Fair and Interview, et al. She was an outsider in Antigua, and she looked different. That was actually a job. Not at all, because I was going as a servant. But I never liked pot much. He said theyd fix it. Glenn OBriens interview with the iconic Fran Lebowitz from the August, 1978 issue of High Times magazine. High Times: What writers have inspired you? Fran Lebowitz is a world treasure. And I reviewed those. Now, even if you have money, you can have a horrible apartment. The other day I read that last year 58 million tourists came to New York where a puny eight million people are trying to live. Nowadays if I were to be homesick it would be for Vermont, which is strange. Jamaica Kincaid was born Elaine Potter Richardson on Antigua in 1949. Im not afraid to be on TV. During the time that I read poetry, because I was such a wonderful reader of it, people who actually had a legitimate interest in poetry would hear me and ask me to send it to them because they thought it was good. The years have gone by, but she is still tall. But all the girls I knew when I was young who had to workthere were rich girlsbut the ones who had to work were waitresses. I wrote an editorial about the matron and got kicked off the paper. And the matron walked in, and the girl actually swallowed it. There are musings about Times. Wasnt London still a capital of empire in the mid-60s, the cultural center of the Commonwealth? The writer and raconteur embodied the hip, downtown Manhattan of the 70s. But he was very nice, and in the letter that banned me he told me how much he liked me. Male writers like them because they have this sneaking suspicion that writing is not the most masculine profession. CLEMENTE: I think in your life youve said no more than yes. They made me wait three hours to see the psychiatrist, and by that time I was starting to come down. And it allowed people who would be fifth-rate artists to come to the front of the line. When I got to the hospital they did not believe that I had smoked marijuana, I was so smashed. Her early fiction, much of which also appeared in that magazine, was collected in At the Bottom of the River (1983), a book that, like her Talk stories, announced her themes, her style, the uncanny purity of her prose. It actually works here. I saw a group-therapy movieand the whole thing took place in redwood hot tubs with people screaming their problems at each other. I also used to write a zillion songs. I like Rock Scene, Jet, Bronze Thrills, Interview, Italian Baby Vogue, Used Planes. No one else remembers things from this whole period, but I wasnt high. More information And you would have cash at the end of the day. And its not my desire to make New York more suburban. High Times: What jobs have you had besides writing? Metropolitan Life is a 1978 bestselling collection of comedic essays and the debut book by writer Fran Lebowitz. And people sent in money. She was part Carib Indian, and they used to call her the Red Woman. Her first published work, movie and book reviews, appeared in that magazine when she was twenty years old. The last one took me 11 hours to type. But why do these things have to be either/or? And I said, Well, I dont really care. Once a girl was sitting on the window ledge smoking a cigarette and the matron walked in and the girl jumped out the window. I mean, knowing James Joyce . When I first came here, meeting writers wasnt available to me; but now that I have met tons of those people, I wish I hadnt. But, I mean, no one talked about money. 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