A thought about magazines, the gateway to something heavier

“Magazines all too frequently lead to books and should be regarded as the heavy petting of literature.”
— Fran Lebowitz

The quote of today comes from Fran Lebowitz’s debut book Metropolitan Life, which established her in 1978 as a great wit and a barbed observer of how people live their lives. I read it a few years later in university, as well as her followup, Social Studies, and then I waited and waited (and waited some more) for the next collection of essays. Apart from an anthology that combined the two, she has not yet written it.

Lebowitz’s writers’ block is well-known, and yet she still is, too. Deservedly so.

There’s no one like her. She appears on talk shows (see below) and dazzles the hosts, writes the odd thing here and there, makes spectacular series with Martin Scorsese (Pretend It’s A City, not to be missed), and sells out Carnegie Hall at rapid speed.

Her life maybe is her artform.

Here’s a CBC report from 1978, when Lebowitz — still in her 20s, with a cigarette naturally fixed between her fingers — explaining the difference between gossip and news. Her wish for a personalized form of broadcast news feels a bit prescient, looking back at it.

All these years later, Lebowitz is still cracking jokes.

Late last year, she showed up on The Tonight Show in advance of that Carnegie Hall performance, riffing with Jimmy Fallon about obtuse tourists (an easy target), a Christmas ornament made in her likeness and the complicated handles (“warm, hot, craft beer”) found now in hotel bathrooms.

She’s still got it.