204. Fran Lebowitz

On the effect of the smoking ban on New York's cultural life:

I said directly to Michael Bloomberg, “You know what sitting around in bars and restaurants, talking and smoking and drinking, is called, Mike?” He said, “What?” I said, “It’s called the history of art.”


On being a writer:

I never wanted to be anything else. Well, if there had been a job of being a reader, I would have taken that, because I love to read and I don’t love to write. That would be blissful. Sometimes you meet people who really enjoy their work. Those are the people I am most envious of, no matter what their work is.

On not writing:

When I started getting real work done, I realized how much easier it is to write than not to write. Not writing is probably the most exhausting profession I’ve ever encountered. It takes it out of you. It’s very psychically wearing not to write—I mean if you’re supposed to be writing.

On funny writing:

I learned tricks, but being funny is like being tall. That is surely a thing that can’t be taught or learned. Either you’re funny or you’re not funny. You either see things in a funny way or you don’t. It’s a reflex action with me or anyone I’ve ever known who’s funny—whether funny conversationalists, stand-up comics, or funny writers. It’s a reflex, the way things strike you. Being funny in writing, especially in the essay form, which is so distilled, I learned certain tricks. I don’t think they would be of real value to anyone else.

Several years ago, someone asked me to talk to a class at Yale—a humor-writing class. To me this was the joke. Really, why not have a class on how to have blue eyes? If I was a parent and I found out that my child, on whom I was spending eight billion dollars a year sending to Yale, was taking a humor-writing class, I would be furious. I can’t imagine a more fraudulent activity than teaching a humor-writing class. Certainly those people should be in jail. I would like to arrest them personally.


When I have dinner with Nora and Alan we're going to invite Fran.