For over five decades, Fran Lebowitz has lived every New Yorker’s dream: getting paid to complain. But where others gripe into the void, Fran transmutes the city’s chaos into acerbic observations that cut through like a cab driver on a mission. Her essay collections Metropolitan Life and Social Studies cemented her reputation as the sharpest-tongued chronicler of the city’s contradictions. She signed a deal for a third book shortly after, but in true Fran fashion, never got around to writing it, and hasn’t published anything since. Not that it matters, the material holds up: landlords are still scheming, tourists are still ruining the sidewalks, the MTA still can’t be trusted, the pizza keeps getting worse, the bagels keep getting better, and New York is still, by Fran’s assessment, both the best and worst place to live on earth.
Last month, Performance Space New York—founded in the 1980s as a haven for queer, radical, and underrepresented voices in the arts—honored the 74-year-old alongside curator Adrienne Edwards and artist Yoko Ono. Martin Scorcese presented her award with a borrowed line from Raymond Chandler that summarizes the famed curmudgeon: “Down these mean streets, a woman must go who is not herself mean, who is neither tarnished nor afraid.” I caught up with Fran to talk about what it means to be honored for turning a lifelong love-hate relationship with New York into a legacy, the city’s ever-growing unlivability, and why, despite it all, she still wouldn’t live anywhere else.
Sahir Ahmed: Do you like being celebrated?
Fran Lebowitz: It’s delightful. Better than being vilified. I can tell you that firsthand. [Points to my notepad] I thought that was your passport. Someone said to me recently, “‘Do you think we should carry our passports around?” I’m not doing it, but we probably should.
What are you wearing?
Blue jeans, cowboy boots, a jacket, a shirt, cufflinks, trench coat, scarf.
The classics. Performance Space has changed since the ‘80s. Did you spend much time here back then?
Well, first of all, it wasn’t this in the ‘80s, it was PS 122. I knew that closed, but I didn’t realize this took its place. I’ve been there a few times, but this is my first time here.
You once said that art should be useless. Do you still believe that? Should it be political?
Well, it’s not going to be art that changes Trump. Nothing’s going to, alright? But when I said useless, I didn’t mean it shouldn’t have a point of view. I meant that it shouldn’t be something that you use, as in how an architect isn’t really an artist because you use a building, or how fashion designers aren’t really artists because you use clothes. Some political art is great. It just rarely works.
Have you crossed paths with Adrienne Edwards or Yoko Ono before?
Adrienne, no, but I did meet Yoko at a party. I was just sitting there, which I have a tendency to do at big cocktail parties like that because I don’t want to mingle, I don’t drink, and I don’t care. She came over and said, “You look exactly like I feel.” Then she sat down next to me. I’ve adored her ever since. But I haven’t seen her in many years.
New York has a way of putting the right people in the same room. What advice would you give to someone, say around the age you were when you first moved here, thinking about making the jump?
Come. And don’t tell me you can’t afford it because I’ll tell you this—no one can. Alright? No one can afford to live in New York, and yet nine million people do. We figure it out. I mean, where else would you live?
If New York hadn’t worked out, where do you think you would’ve ended up?
If there was no New York? To be honest, I don’t think about that. I have enough actual problems to spend time making one up.
People used to say this was the city where you could do whatever you wanted. Do you think that’s still true?
No. Now people want to control everything. You can’t smoke, you can’t say certain things, you can’t walk too fast, you can’t walk too slow. I mean, it’s ridiculous. When I first moved here, the whole appeal was that nobody cared what you did. Now, everyone cares too much, but only about the wrong things.
Who taught you the most about how to live?
Toni Morrison. And then there are other people who taught me how to do actual things, like how to make coffee. Very important.
What did Toni teach you?
Toni won the Nobel Prize, you may have heard. When she did, she took a bunch of friends to Stockholm. One night, Harold [T. Shapiro], the president of Princeton [University] where she taught, threw a dinner for her. Toni was at one end of the table, I was at the other, sitting with Cornel West and Skip Gates. I don’t remember what we were talking about, but I said, ‘Well, if I were Black…’ and my end of the table collapsed laughing. Toni, from the other end, asked, ‘What’s so funny?’ Someone told her. She fell on the floor too. I kept asking, ‘What’s so funny?’ Finally, Erroll McDonald said, ‘If you were Black and talked the way you talk, you’d have been in jail since you were 15.’ That’s when I learned, first of all, never say, ‘If I were.’ Because there’s no such thing. You wouldn’t be you, and you have no idea what that other experience is like.
You’ve always been known for your routines. Do you have any superstitions, like flipping a cigarette for luck when starting a new pack?
No. Why would I do that?
Some people call it a “lucky” cigarette.
What’s a lucky cigarette?
You’re meant to save it for the very end.
Nope. Never heard of that. Not for me.
What’s the last thing you wrote down?
Probably a phone number. But I also lose things, which is why I have no idea where that phone number is now.
You’ve spent decades talking about this city. Do you think you’ll have the final word on it?
I don’t know, but I hope they’re not my last.