Fran Lebowitz

Frances Ann Lebowitz (born October 27, 1950) is an American author, public speaker, and occasional actor.

She stayed for six months, and then in 1969 moved to New York City.

Her father agreed to pay for her first two months in the city on the condition that she live at the women's-only Martha Washington Hotel.

She then stayed with friends in New York apartments and Boston college dormitories, surviving by writing papers for students.

At age 20, she rented a West Village apartment.

To support herself, she worked as a cleaner, chauffeur, taxi driver and pornography writer.

Lebowitz refused to wait tables because she claimed that sexual intercourse with the manager was a prerequisite for hiring at many restaurants.

At age 21, Lebowitz worked for Changes, a small magazine "about radical-chic politics and culture" founded by Susan Graham Ungaro, the fourth wife of Charles Mingus.

She sold advertising space, and then wrote book and movie reviews.

Andy Warhol then hired Lebowitz as a columnist for Interview, where she wrote a column called "I Cover the Waterfront".

Then came a stint at Mademoiselle.

She is known for her sardonic social commentary on American life as filtered through her New York City sensibilities and her association with many prominent figures of the 1970s and 1980s New York art scene, including Andy Warhol, Martin Scorsese, Jerome Robbins, Robert Mapplethorpe, David Wojnarowicz, Candy Darling, and the New York Dolls.

The New York Times has called her a modern-day Dorothy Parker.

During these years, she made friends with many artists, including Peter Hujar, whom she met in 1971, and Robert Mapplethorpe, who often gave her photos, many of which she threw away in the 1970s.

Lebowitz gained fame for her books Metropolitan Life (1978) and Social Studies (1981), which were combined into The Fran Lebowitz Reader in 1994.

In 1978, her first book, Metropolitan Life, was published.

The book was a set of comedic essays mostly from Mademoiselle and Interview, with titles such as "Success Without College" and "A Few Words on a Few Words".

She often detailed things that she found irksome or frustrating in a dry, sardonic tone.

After its publication, Lebowitz became a local celebrity, frequenting Studio 54 and appearing on television.

This was followed by Social Studies (1981), another collection of comedic essays mostly from Mademoiselle and Interview, in which she explored topics such as teenagers, films, and room service.

Since the mid-1990s, Lebowitz has been known for her decades-long writer's block.

Years later, The Fran Lebowitz Reader (1994) was published, which included both books.

Her last published book was Mr. Chas and Lisa Sue Meet the Pandas (1994), a children's book about giant pandas living in New York City who long to move to Paris.

She has been the subject of two projects directed by Martin Scorsese, the HBO documentary film Public Speaking (2010), and the Netflix docu-series Pretend It's a City (2021).

Lebowitz was born and raised in Morristown, New Jersey.

She had one sister, Ellen.

Her parents were Ruth and Harold Lebowitz, who owned Pearl's Upholstered Furniture, a furniture store and upholstery workshop.

She developed a love of reading from an early age, to the point that she would surreptitiously read during class and neglect her homework.

Lebowitz describes her "Jewish identity [as] ethnic or cultural or whatever people call it now. But it's not religious."

She has been an atheist since age 7.

She did not have a bat mitzvah, but did go to Sunday school until 15 and had a confirmation.

Lebowitz was a poor student overall, particularly in algebra, which she failed six times.

She has called it "the first thing which they presented to me that I absolutely could not understand at all, and had no interest in understanding".

She worked at a Carvel ice cream store.

Her grades were so poor that her parents enrolled her in The Wilson School (now defunct), a private girls' Episcopal school, in Mountain Lakes, where her grades marginally improved but she had difficulty following the rules and was eventually expelled for "nonspecific surliness".

She also was suspended from Morristown High School for sneaking out of pep rallies.

As an adolescent, Lebowitz was deeply affected by James Baldwin: "James Baldwin was the first person I ever saw on television who I heard talk like that—by which I mean, he was the first intellectual I ever heard talk... And I was just flabbergasted. That made me read him."

She also enjoyed watching television appearances by Gore Vidal and William F. Buckley, though she did not agree with Buckley.

After being expelled from high school, Lebowitz earned her certificate of high school equivalency.

When she was 18, her parents sent her to live with her aunt in Poughkeepsie, New York.