In today’s modern cultural landscape full of pundits and influencers, Fran Lebowitz stands out as one of our most insightful social commentators. Her essays and interviews offer unapologetically pointed opinions on current events, politics and the media.
She’ll be in Colorado for four speaking engagements, beginning Monday, Aug. 7 at the Boulder Theater. She’ll also visit Steamboat Springs and Beaver Creek before wrapping up with an appearance in Breckenridge on Friday, Aug. 11.
She spoke by phone with KUNC’s Erin O’Toole ahead of her Colorado tour.
Erin O’Toole: You are so famous in part for just being a New Yorker. I’m wondering what’s it like for you to leave the city and come to a place like Colorado, where especially our mountain towns have kind of the opposite vibe of New York. Is it difficult to adapt to no crowds when you go outside?
Fran Lebowitz: Well, you know, I am only going to be there a week, so I'm not going to make any effort to adapt. I've only been to Colorado a few times. And the main thing I remember, is it's very beautiful. I know that. But also, there's no air. I also remember that.
Oh, yeah. Especially up in the mountains. You definitely want to take your time and drink lots of water. I'm sure everyone will tell you that when you get here.
I'm not really big on exerting myself that much anyway, so I'm sure — I'm hoping to survive.
We hope so too. I’m going to assume you’re not a hiking person..?
No! I'm not only not a hiking person, truthfully, there are things – there are many things – I don't like to do, but I understand why people like to do them. Hiking, I have to tell you, I do not understand. I don't get it at all. And whenever people say, “Well, you see these great views, you know,” I think, yes, but, you know, we have all these cameras and stuff now. I see views on screens. It's enough for me. Or out of a window, it’s enough for me. I truly know people love it, and I don't really care what other people do. In other words, I'm not taking a stand against hiking. I don't think hiking is a bad thing to do. I just think I don't understand it. I'm quite a big walker, you know, in New York; although not in this weather. It's very hot here, as I'm sure it apparently is everywhere, including, like, Alaska. But, you know, I like to walk to get somewhere. Like, at the end of my walk, I'm in a restaurant!
I want to shift gears for a moment and talk about the arts. You are someone who’s been part of the art world in a way that few other people have. You're a writer and an actor. You're a TV talk show staple. You wrote for Andy Warhol's Interview Magazine. Was this something you saw for yourself growing up in Morristown, New Jersey? Was art going to be part of your life?
Yes, absolutely. It was always what I was interested in. My father wanted to be an artist. He actually went to art school. He didn't end up being an artist, but he was wonderful. In fact, I have many of his drawings in my apartment. So, it's always been important to me. It's always been my interest. When I was really young, my father taught me how to draw, and I would draw with him, and I thought I'd be an artist. But then I thought – and this is something I surmised in later life – why did I not [become an artist]? And I thought probably, “You know what, Fran? No. This is too pleasurable. I really enjoy drawing.” You know?
It’s too much fun?
Too much fun. This can't be actually something you could do your whole life. So, no, I don't do that as a profession. But, you know, I always loved to read and write. And that’s always what I've thought about doing. By the way, I'm 72, so I was a child in the 1950s, and I was also a girl in the 1950s. People say to me, “Did your parents want you to be a writer?” No. “Did they not want you to be a writer?” No, they didn't care. “What did they want you to be?” A wife. That's what I was raised to be. Not just me, all girls my age were raised to be a wife. So, when I said I want to be a writer, they didn't object to it; they just didn't pay attention to it. If I had been a boy, they would have really objected for sure.
I’ve been thinking about art lately, which of course is one of those great connectors of humanity. I don’t think I’m alone in feeling that it’s being used by some as a wedge right now, to divide humanity. You’re someone who closely follows politics and Supreme Court decisions. What are your thoughts about this current climate?
Fran: You know, I notice you just said politics and Supreme Court decisions. The problem now is, unfortunately, they're the same thing. Supreme Court decisions are politics – which is the exact opposite of how it’s supposed to be. You know, I'm not surprised by this. As you know, there's tremendous amount of book banning. The cliché is to say that the people who ban books almost have never read one. I always feel like saying, “Why don't you read one first? Read a book, see how you like it, or see how dangerous it is, you know?” Book banning, of all these things, is the thing that I find to be the most upsetting. And, we all know – I mean, we, who've read a book in our lives – we all know that this is an incredibly dangerous sign in a society, with this book banning. And there's always been book banning in a certain way. There's always been schools that, you know, don't have certain books or, you know, libraries that don’t carry certain books. But this is a concerted effort by a political party that represents close to half the country, you know, and it's not the half of the country that I am running into in bookstores and libraries.
And you had a very strong friendship with one of the authors who happens to be one of the most banned right now, Toni Morrison.
Oh, even when Toni was alive, she was very frequently banned. Not like now, because it, you know, it wasn't an industry the way it is now. But whenever she would get one of her books, a book would get banned, she would call to tell me proudly, “Guess what?” ‘Cause she knew where it came from. But, you know, I think now she would be, you know, like every other sane person, close to hysterical about this.
I mean, when I was young - a hundred years ago [laughs], the Catholic Church was very politically important in certain places and many places, and they had lists of banned books. They were banned, for Catholics. However, the practice of Catholicism was much more common. I mean, all the Catholic kids that I grew up, they went to church every Sunday; a lot of them went to Catholic school. That church had a list of banned books. The public school where I went as a child didn't serve meat on Fridays because there were so many Catholic kids in school. So if their priest or the church said, “You can't read these books,” I don't think anyone would have objected to that, by the way, because that is the province of a religion. But it's one thing for a church to do it if the church sticks to the experience of the religion. It's another for the United States, for government bodies to do it for public schools, public libraries. It's un-American.
What are your upcoming shows going to be like, for those who aren’t familiar? What can people expect when they go to see Fran Lebowitz live and in-person?
Well, a lot of it is up to them, I like to point out. I do the same thing all over the world. Someone interviews me for half an hour, and then that person leaves the stage, and then I go to a podium and I answer questions from the audience for an hour.
Any questions?
I mean, sometimes people ask me a question I won’t answer. There are not many upsides to being old, but one is you just say, “I'm not answering that.” You know, when I was younger, I wouldn't have done that. So, obviously the questions are different in different places, but I've been doing these speaking dates since I was in my late twenties. That’s fifty years, or a little less maybe. But truthfully, the political questions? I used to only get lots of them in presidential election years. But now you get them every night, all over the world, nonstop. And it is a bad thing that everyone is so preoccupied with politics, and it's an understandable thing. I myself am much more preoccupied with politics, but it's because the politics are dangerous. In fact, you know, when things are going all right, then people can pay attention to other things. That's one of the upsides of having, you know, a good political society, you know, and we don't have one now. And that’s true of the entire West.
You know, the bad thing about being an American outside of the United States, since Trump [was elected] is that no matter what the government does wrong, I get blamed for it. I was in London when the Supreme Court overturned Roe v Wade. And night after night. “Why did you overturn Roe v Wade?” You know, I said, "actually I'm not on the Supreme Court. I didn't overturn Roe v Wade. You can't blame this on me." Then for me, luckily at that moment, there was a Boris Johnson scandal, and so they moved on from that for the moment. And the interest in American politics is all over the world, and that has always been the case to some extent, but it's much more now, and that's because people feel imperiled.
You can join Erin O’Toole as she talks with Fran Lebowitz about politics, the arts, and much more live on stage at the Boulder Theater Monday, Aug. 7. And KUNC’s Rae Solomon talks with her Friday, Aug. 11 at the Breckenridge International Festival of Arts.
