The Fran Lebowitz Reader

by Fran Lebowitz

  The dining room? Of course, I’d love to see the dining room.

  Look, let’s be honest here. I’d love to see anything now. Who knows how much time I have left? Anyway, maybe the dining room will cheer me up. Maybe the dining room will cheer me up? Who am I kidding? After that bathroom, open-heart surgery would cheer me up. A weekend in Teheran with the Ayatollah Khomeini would be a breath of fresh air. A visit from the IRS would be like the month of May. Cheer me up? I’ll tell you what would cheer me up. It would cheer me up if, in retaliation, the Ford Motor Company redecorated every one of their plants in rose velvet love seats, fringed throw pillows and teak cigarette tables. It would cheer me up if I could sneak back in here tonight and pin a few doilies around. It would cheer me up if tomorrow morning Congress voted by an overwhelming majority to make the possession of stainless-steel furniture a federal offense. It would cheer me up if only somehow I could arrange for my grandmother to get her hands on this place. Or Sister Parrish. Or my grandmother and Sister Parrish.

  Yes. Absolutely. A spectacular hallway.

  A spectacular hallway? Listen, this would be a spectacular runway. I can see it now. A DC-10 coming in for a landing, refracted light glinting off the glass brick, right through here. Perfect. Masterful. The takeoff might be a problem, but what the hell, if it has to stay, it has to stay. There’s simply no such thing as too much storage space.

  Ah, the dining room. The dining room. Pretty impressive. No amphitheater, of course, but this place has probably been cut up. Undoubtedly the amphitheater is in the next apartment. Just my luck: no working amphitheater. Oh, well, this sure is a clean dining room. Nice long table too. Shiny, real shiny. And rugged. A nice mix. Must be interesting eating here. First a small but tasteful dish of number ten nails and then on to the Salk vaccine. I wonder what kind of wine you serve with the Salk vaccine. I wonder what you serve the wine in. You probably just inject it. I wonder where the syringe goes. On the left or on the right? What if it’s a formal dinner and you’re serving more than one wine? And what about the help? What if they’re clumsy and a guest begins to bleed profusely? All over the rubber floor. Does blood come off rubber? I wonder if Pirelli makes actual dinner guests. Good, substantial, economically designed, pared-down dinner guests. Yes, rubber dinner guests, that’s the ticket.

  Big room. Very spacious. Maybe too spacious. Out of scale. If I owned this place I think I’d install two x-ray technicians a little off center at either end of the room. Fairly short x-ray technicians, about 5′5″, 5′6″, nothing taller. Bring the proportions down a little, make it more livable. And maybe, just to amuse the eye, a single black orderly set catty-corner right over there. Just one. On an angle. Yes.

  The kitchen? Well, I’m not much of a cook myself, but sure, I’ve come this far, let’s see the kitchen.

  This is definitely the kitchen, all right, no mistaking it. I guess the mess hall must be back there. Lots of big stuff in here. Nothing namby-pamby about this kitchen. And talk about light, it’s positively sunstruck. Couldn’t possibly be depressed in this place. Not if you tried. No siree, no matter how many times you pulled K.P. you’d just have to smile. Nice counter, too. Pretty stools. What do they call this place, anyway—Joe’s Co-op & Grill? Some kitchen. A lot of people could use a kitchen like this. Boys Town, for one. Nairobi. The International Ladies’ Garment Workers’ Union. AFTRA. Yes, indeed, a lot of people could use a kitchen like this. But somehow I’m afraid that I’m just not one of them. I mean, how would it look in that big glass-windowed refrigerator to see right on the shelf—yes, right over there, where the plasma should be—two grapefruits, an elderly piece of Swiss cheese and half a bottle of club soda? No, it just wouldn’t look right.

  The bedroom? Yes, the bedroom. No, I hadn’t forgotten the bedroom.

  Sleep? In here? Surely a joke. A cruel joke. Sleep, you say? For how long? Until when? What time is reveille around here, anyway? Five? Six?

  Yes, I did. I did notice the bed. Seen one like it before? No, not really.

  Not one that big, anyway. Certainly not that big. How could all the pieces fit in the box? Even the deluxe set.

  No, I don’t think I’ll try it out, actually.

  I’ve always been sort of squeamish. Silly, I guess, but I’m kind of afraid I’ll cut myself. Nothing personal, mind you—I mean I’m sure if you’re careful, it’s perfectly safe. Perfectly.

  Yes. Certainly. Go right ahead.

  In this place you probably need a dime. Maybe I can get out of here before she’s finished. I really don’t know what to say to her. Is she going to pressure me? Discuss financing? Do you apply for a mortgage, or are you taken before a judge and sentenced? She said something about low maintenance. I wonder whether she meant that it was less than $750 a month or that you could just hose the whole place down.

  What if this sort of thing really catches on and people start winning this stuff on game shows? Yes, that’s right, Mrs. Smith, twenty pounds of slotted-angle elements, and that’s not all—yes, Mrs. Smith, that’s right, this beautiful three-piece set of simple wire bicycle baskets too—all yours, Mrs. Smith, and thank you for playing our game.

  Oh no, here she comes. What will I say? I don’t want to insult her. After all, someday a real apartment might come up in this building. I know. I’ll tell her that I just can’t afford it, that it’s out of my league, that it needs too much work. It’s a shame, though. I really do love the building. I wonder what it would cost to take the cement walls down to the natural mahogany paneling. No, out of the question. Just another crazy dream.

  Places

  Places

  Perhaps one of the most notable features of contemporary life is the unprecedented expansion of the concept of freedom of thought. This has led to any number of unpleasant developments, but none more disconcerting than the fact that place, once that most fixed of entities, has now become a matter of personal opinion. This state of affairs has manifested itself in countless ways, and one can no longer take comfort and sustenance from knowing one’s place, keeping one’s place, taking one’s place or finding one’s place.

  The list, of course, does not end here. I could and would go on and on, were there not a larger issue at stake. For the hazards set forth on this list, grave though they be, are relatively insignificant when measured against the knowledge that one’s place of residence, traditionally a cold, hard fact, has now become subject to individual perception. Obviously, this is hardly a situation that can be allowed to continue. Therefore, at the risk of being labeled alarmist, I must state unequivocally that when one’s own home, historically a representational art form, becomes vulnerable to what can only be called creeping conceptualism, it is high time that something be done.

  Too late, you say? Time’s run out? It’s gone too far? I think not. There are still many of us left who, when asked where we live, reply with logic and conviction. New York, we say, or Boston. Philadelphia. Des Moines. We’re a small group but a varied one, and I feel quite strongly that by hard work and perseverance we can vanquish forever those among us who, realizing instinctively that they could never win, decided instead to place.

  The first step, of course, in any successful battle plan is to identify the enemy, and thus I have defined the following terms:

  PEOPLE WHO THINK OF THEMSELVES AS INHABITANTS OF THE PLANET, OR EARTHMAN

  Plainly given to gross generalization, Earthman is immediately recognizable by a relationship to green, leafy vegetables that can best be described as camaraderie. He eats and thinks low on the food chain and often believes in reincarnation—a theory that at least explains where he gets his money. His favorite book is something called The Whole Earth Catalog, from which he apparently orders his clothes, and he is so frequently to be seen gazing at the stars that one can only hope that he is thinking of moving.

  PEOPLE WHO THINK OF THEMSELVES AS CITIZENS OF THE WORLD, OR INTERNATIONALMAN

  Best typified by the big-time Italian fashion designer, Internationalman is at hom
e wherever he goes. He knows all the best restaurants, all the best languages and is one of the few remaining people left alive to still carry cash—not to mention paintings. Although fun at parties, Internationalman has an effect that one is compelled to characterize as trivializing. What, after all, is London to a man who thinks of the whole Middle East as just another bad neighborhood and the coast of South Africa as simply the beach?

  And how is it that with so much to do and see, Internationalman is still able to devote such huge amounts of time and attention to the driving up of co-op prices in the borough of Manhattan? An endeavor, I believe, which will eventually result in transforming the entire city of New York into a resort area comparable to Acapulco in the fifties. Here former native writers will be obliged to work in the kitchens of luxury hotels cutting grapefruits into fancy shapes for the pleasure of Internationalman—a customer who will not, by the way, probably be very much interested in meeting your virgin sister.

  PEOPLE WHO LIVE TOO FAR DOWNTOWN, OR LOFTMAN

  People who live in lofts shouldn’t throw stones, especially when they are in the enviable position of being able to sell them. Although SoHo has probably sprung to your mind, I am not, I assure you, that parochial, and can, due to unfortunate personal experience, report that such neighborhoods are now to be found in practically every minor American city. Usually occupying a renovated waterfront area, the quiche district, as I am wont to call it, has brought new and unwelcome meaning to the words “light industry.”

  You are advised that Loftman, appearances to the contrary, is really a fellow traveler of Earthman, and thus to be avoided assiduously.

  PEOPLE WHO LOOK LIKE THEY LIVE AT THE SEATTLE AIRPORT, OR SALESMAN

  Salesman, as he is commonly known, is a pretty harried-looking guy. Wandering as he does from gate to gate, it is no wonder that ofttimes he doubts his own sanity. Constantly he hears voices issuing instructions to what are openly referred to as “arriving Northwest Airlines passengers.” It sounds very official; it even sounds real. Salesman, however, is nobody’s fool and is well aware of the fact that there is no such thing as an arriving Northwest Airlines passenger—that when it comes to a Northwest Airlines passenger there is only a departing. In fact, at any given airport at any given time fully three quarters of the airport population consists entirely of departing Northwest Airlines passengers.

  It is only to be expected, then, that people who spend so much time together would come to think of themselves as a community, with all that implies. Thus they have formed their own short-lived romantic attachments, developed their own cuisine based on the indigenous smoked almond and are enviably free of social unrest, having already been assigned classes by the airline.

  Yet despite all this, Salesman is unhappy, for he knows that although he is headed straight for the top, he’s just kidding himself to think he will ever really arrive.

  Lesson One

  LOS ANGELES, laws AN juh lus, or laws ANG guh lus, Calif., is a large citylike area surrounding the Beverly Hills Hotel. It is easily accessible to New York by phone or plane (although the converse is not true).

  In 1956 the population of Los Angeles was 2,243,901. By 1970 it had risen to 2,811,801, 1,650,917 of whom are currently up for a series.

  Early Spanish settlers called Los Angeles El Pueblo de Nuestra Señora la Reina de los Angeles, which means The Town of Our Lady, Queen of the Angels. The first part of the name was dropped when Los Angeles became a Mexican city in 1835. Today Los Angeles is often called collect.

  The Land and Its Resources

  LOCATION, SIZE AND SURFACE FEATURES

  Los Angeles lies on the Pacific Coast approximately three thousand miles from midtown Manhattan. The terrain is varied and ranges from clay to grass to composition, depending upon the type of court you find most comfortable. Los Angeles is on the large side, covering over four hundred and fifty square miles, which makes it advisable to play close to the net.

  Surface features are numerous, and include hills, palm trees, large billboards depicting former and future back-up singers, highly colored flowers, eye-tucks, parking attendants and an enormous sign spelling out the word “Hollywood,” the purpose of which is to indicate that one has indeed gotten off the plane.

  CURRENCY

  The most popular form of currency in Los Angeles is the point. Points are what they give to writers instead of money. Curiously enough, it is impossible to use points to purchase either goods or services, a situation that makes imperative the possession of a round-trip airplane ticket.

  CLIMATE

  It is generally quite sunny in Los Angeles, thereby allowing the natives to read contracts by natural light. The mild weather is one of the main topics of conversation in Los Angeles, the other one being the lack thereof in New York.

  Many tourists come to Los Angeles because of the climate, attracted no doubt by the pleasant glare and festive air colors.

  CHIEF PRODUCTS

  The chief products of Los Angeles are novelizations, salad, game-show hosts, points, muscle tone, mini-series and rewrites. They export all of these items with the twin exceptions of muscle tone and points, neither of which seem to travel well.

  The People

  Many of the people in Los Angeles appear so lifelike that a sharp eye is necessary in order to avoid conversation with those who may be too dead to offer points. Initiates will carefully study a prospective producer’s gold neckchain and will not start talking until certain that it is moving rhythmically.

  The inhabitants of Los Angeles are a warm people, and family ties are so strong that a florist may volunteer the information that his sister-in-law’s stepmother was once married to Lee Major’s great-uncle before one has had a chance to ask.

  EVERYDAY LIFE AND CUSTOMS

  Everyday life in Los Angeles is casual but highly stratified and can probably best be understood by realizing that the residents would be happiest with a telephone book that contained subscribers’ first names, followed by an announcement that the party had four lines, sixteen extensions and a fiercely guarded unlisted number.

  FOOD AND DRINK

  A great many people in Los Angeles are on special diets that restrict their intake of synthetic foods. The reason for this appears to be a widely held belief that organically grown fruits and vegetables make the cocaine work faster.

  One popular native dish is called gambei and is served exclusively in Mr. Chow’s, an attractive little Chinese restaurant on North Camden Drive. The menu description of gambei reads as follows: “This mysterious dish is everybody’s favorite. People insist it is seaweed because it tastes and looks just like seaweed. But in fact it is not. It’s a secret.” This mystery was recently solved by a visiting New York writer, who took one taste of her surprise and said, “Grass.”

  “Grass?” queried her dinner companion. “You mean marijuana?”

  “No,” the writer replied. “Grass—you know, lawns, grass. The secret is that every afternoon all of the gardeners in Beverly Hills pull up around the back, the cook takes delivery and minutes later the happy patrons are avidly consuming—at $3.50 per portion—crisply French-fried—their own backyards.”

  CULTURE

  Los Angeles is a contemporary city, and as such unfettered by the confining standards of conventional art. Therefore the people of this modern-day Athens have been free to develop new and innovative forms all their own. Of these, the most interesting is the novelization, for this enables one, for perhaps the very first time, to truly appreciate the phrase, “One picture is worth a thousand words.”

  DRESS

  The garb of Los Angeles is colorful, with lemon yellow, sky blue and lime green predominating, particularly in the attire of middle-aged men, most of whom look like Alan King. It is customary for these men to leave unbuttoned the first five buttons of their shirts in a rakish display of gray chest hair. Visitors are warned that calling the police to come in and button everyone up is a futile gesture; they will not respond.

  Teena
gers of both sexes wear T-shirts that disprove the theory that the young are no longer interested in reading, and facial expressions that disprove the T-shirts.

  Middle-aged women favor for daytime wear much the same apparel as do teenage girls, but after six they like to pretty up and generally lean toward prom clothes.

  THE LANGUAGE

  Alphabet and pronunciation were both borrowed from the English, as was the custom of reading receipts from left to right. Word usage is somewhat exotic, however, and visitors would do well to study carefully the following table of words and phrases:

  Formal: long pants

  Concept: car chase

  Assistant Director: the person who tells the cars which way to go. The phrase for this in New York is traffic cop.

  Director: the person who tells the assistant director which way to tell the cars to go. The phrase for this in New York is traffic cop.

  Creative Control: no points

  Take a Meeting: this phrase is used in place of “have a meeting,” and most likely derives from the fact that “take” is the verb that the natives are most comfortable with.

  Sarcasm: what they have in New York instead of Jacuzzis.

  TRANSPORTATION

  There are two modes of transport in Los Angeles: car and ambulance. Visitors who wish to remain inconspicuous are advised to choose the latter.

  ARCHITECTURE

  The architecture of Los Angeles is basically the product of a Spanish heritage and a rich inner life. Public buildings, which are called gas stations (gaz TAY shuns) or restaurants (res tur ONTS), are characterized by their lack of height and are generally no taller than your average William Morris agent, although they occasionally hold more people. Houses, which are called homes (HOMZ), can be distinguished from public buildings by the number of Mercedes-Benzes parked outside. If there are over twelve, it is fairly safe to assume that they take American Express.