Long Center

February 2017 / Vol. 1 Issue 3

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16 INSUFFERABLE KNOW-IT-ALL Author and satirist Fran Lebowitz is society's favorite malcontent Proud owner of 10,000 books, Lebowitz is e New Yorker incarnate and Vanity Fair in the flesh. She has earned a reputation for being the Big Apple's keenest observer and society's harshest critic. Indeed, Lebowitz's famous essays from the late 1970s and early '80s—Metropolitan Life and Social Studies—have been collected into the Fran Lebowitz Reader, a book whose very name suggests it serves some type of instruction beyond stating the blanket opinions of an individual who easily floats to the extreme statement. Only Martin Scorsese, the director famous for Goodfellas and chronicling a gritty, authentic vision of New York City in Taxi Driver, has been able to capture Lebowitz's acerbic charm with the flair of a gangster film in HBO's Public Speaking. It helps that she once drove a taxi cab, too. Lebowitz argues that nothing in popular culture is original anymore, an understandable statement from an individual who got her start in life writing short columns for Andy Warhol's Interview magazine. Her trademark tortoiseshell glasses and proclivities for men's fashion have themselves been appropriated by the younger generation as "vintage"—don't think she hasn't noticed. But Lebowitz remains steadfast in her sardonic criticism of culture. She believes that in this age of homogenous entertainment and derivative fashion, our ideas are what make us individuals, however peculiar. ere's a certain practicality in Lebowitz's statements, challenging the rest of the world to own their ideas and personal opinions because that's what makes us interesting. Lebowitz appears on late night talk shows mostly for sport, but there's something to be said for someone who continues to say what everyone else is thinking, who has resisted the tides of technology, and who in 2017 still delivers acute, satirical statements about society with a cigarette in her mouth. at's Lebowitz. S E E F R A N L E B OW I T Z O N M A R C H 8 I N D E L L H A L L. TALKING HEADS

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