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Book Review of The Fran Lebowitz Reader

The Fran Lebowitz Reader
reviewed on + 255 more book reviews
Helpful Score: 1


Fran Lebowitz\' New York City sensibility has been called \"urban cool\" by scores of reviewers, and while she definitely embodies the sarcastic and the bitter, she makes us laugh throughout. Lebowitz floated between odd jobs before breaking into the literary circuit in the early 1970s, when Andy Warhol hired her as a columnist for his Interview magazine. Nearly overnight, Lebowitz became known as a sharp-witted, irreverent humorist.

In 1994, The Fran Lebowitz Reader was released, combining all of her essays from Metropolitan Life and Social Studies into one riotous, cohesive publication. Reading Lebowitz in the 1990s, many of the essays, with titles like \"Success Without College\" and \"When Smoke Gets In Your Eyes...Shut Them,\" still delivered the big laughs, proving that her deflating humor was still viable decades after they were originally published.

Like Dorothy Parker of Algonquin Round Table fame, Lebowitz is best known for her lightning-fast, scathing comebacks. Her sophisticated pessimism and all-too-human humor make her a joy to read, whether it\'s done all in one sitting or one essay at a time.