Fran Lebowitz in
Public Speaking
A Martin Scorsese Picture
Now an HBO® Documentary Film
The Fran Lebowitz Reader brings together in one volume, with a new preface, two bestsellers, M etropolitan Life and Social Studies , by an "important humorist in the classic tradition" ( The New York Times Book Review ) who is "the natural successor to Dorothy Parker" (British Vogue ). In "elegant, finely honed prose" ( The Washington Post Book World ), Lebowitz limns the vicissitudes of contemporary urban life—its fads, trends, crazes, morals, and fashions. By turns ironic, facetious, deadpan, sarcastic, wry, wisecracking, and waggish, she is always wickedly entertaining.

This isI am awarethough not a particularly popular<br > sentimentalso not exactly a novel one eitherI do believe<br > howeverthat this is the very first time it has ever been<br > expressed with an intention to substantiate it with well<br > documented written evidenceI n other wordseverybody<br > talks about people but nobody ever does anything about<br > them<br > What I have decided to do about them is to point out that<br > except in extremely rare instances people are pretty much<br > like everyone elseThey all say the same thingshave the<br > same names and wear their hair in the same stylesThis iS<br > not a modern phenomenon but one that has been true<br >

From the pen of Fran Lebowitz: Special-interest publications should realize that if they are attracting enough advertising and readers to make a profit, the interest is not so special. The opposite of talking isn't listening. The opposite of talking is waiting. Humility is no substitute for a good personality. When you leave New York, you are astonished at how clean the rest of the world is. Clean is not enough. If you are of the opinion that the contemplation of suicide is sufficient evidence of a poetic nature, do not forget that actions speak louder than words. I do not believe in God. I believe in cashmere. From a woman who considers herself a lazy writer and who once said, "Your life story would not make a good book. Don't even try," comes this new volume, which brings back into print two of her most celebrated collections of essays. Written in the tradition of Dorothy Parker, Fran Lebowitz's hilariously acerbic Metropolitan Life and Social Studies are classics of their genre. In them Lebowitz does what she does best, caustically portraying the vicissitudes of contemporary urban life--its fads, trends, crazes, morals and fashions. By turns ironic, facetious, deadpan, sarcastic, wry, wisecracking and waggish, she is always wickedly entertaining.