Fran Lebowitz, it was bad faith in New York – Liberation

One could divide Fran Lebowitz’s chronicles into two groups. The monstrously funny, and the quietly hilarious. Even when it starts out feeble, a tour de force ends up redeeming the business. There is no unpublished text to report in this anthology initially published in 1994, but translated by Fayard for the first time – and with talent, by Pierre Demarty. Adapting this vachard style in French, including witticisms and gloss effects, could very well have flopped. Gold Think before you speak. Read before you think hard to read without a chuckle. There are compiled several texts written during the 70s in Andy Warhol’s magazine, Interviewand derived from two best-selling essays, Metropolitan Life (1978) and Social Studies (1981). The name of Fran Lebowitz, an icon of New York cultural journalism, was not well known in France until Martin Scorsese dedicated a documentary series to him. Pretend It’s a City, streaming on Netflix. Packed full of grumbling opinions, the 71-year-old shouldered satirist (who hasn’t written for more than thirty years, but breaks the house at the slightest of her lectures) sketches a ruthless portrait of the Big Apple – at the hear, the worst city except for all the others.

Cheese bombs and polyester joggers

The salt of its excesses is found perfectly in this anthology of old chronicles. One might have feared that they had aged badly. Between the l…

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