The joy of Fran Lebowitz
Blocked? Maybe. Tortured? Nope.
Welcome to the latest issue of Subtle Maneuvers. Previously: Hayao Miyazaki, creativity, and selfishness.
Fran Lebowitz (b. 1950)
I’ll be honest: I delayed starting the new Fran Lebowitz Netflix series that everyone’s been talking about, because, having just finished a four-part documentary about Japan’s irritable genius of animation, I wasn’t really in the mood for another tortured-artist type groaning about, well, whatever. But once I finally put on Pretend It’s a City, on Friday, I discovered what everyone else has been saying: It’s an absolute delight! Lebowitz may be the world’s most famous sufferer of writer’s block, and she may play up her persona as the ultimate neurotic New Yorker—but what surprised me is how at peace she seems, how not tortured she is, and how much fun she seems to be having.
This comes across perhaps most clearly in an exchange about guilty pleasures near the beginning of episode six. Asked if she has any, Lebowitz says:
No. I have no guilty pleasures, because pleasure never makes me feel guilty. I think it’s unbelievable that there’s such a phrase as guilty pleasure. In other words—like, unless your pleasure is killing people! My pleasures are absolutely benign, by which I mean: No one dies. No one is molested. You know? And, I think: No, I don’t feel guilty for having pleasure! We live in a world where people don’t feel guilty for killing people, they don’t feel guilty for, like, putting babies in cages at the border. They don’t feel guilty for this, but I should feel guilty for—what? For having two bowls of spaghetti? For reading a mystery?
Lebowitz continues (and here I’m switching to screenshots because it gives you some sense of her delivery, which is of course part of the pleasure of watching the series):
Though I also couldn’t help but wonder if part of the reason Fran Lebowitz is able to have so much fun is that she no longer writes?
Which brings me to another, related question: Does Lebowitz really have writer’s block? Though it’s true that she has never delivered a follow-up to her second book, 1981’s Social Studies, it seems to me that she isn’t so much blocked as retired—as a writer, that is. As a public speaker, a kind of itinerant professional wit, she is at the absolute top of her game, and I dearly hope we’ll all be able to return to theaters and lecture halls before too long so that Lebowitz can continue to ply her craft.
In the meantime, we have this wonderful series; if you haven’t checked it out yet, please do. And if you have a sneaking suspicion, as I do, that you can either enjoy your life or be engaged in a long-term writing project . . . well, please feel free to leave your comments/complaints below.
FRAN LEBOWITZ BY PETER HUJAR
Any excuse to post this amazing 1974 Peter Hujar photo of a young Fran Lebowitz in her childhood bedroom in Morristown, New Jersey—I’ll take it.
WELL, THIS BLEW UP
In case you missed it last week, my Twitter thread of The Creative Process in 43 Hayao Miyazaki Screengrabs has . . . gone viral? Apparently, everyone feels like a tortured artist, at least some of the time. View the entire thread here.
WRIGGLING THROUGH 🐛
My monthly advice column returns next Monday. Send me your creative dilemmas and I’ll do my best to provide some concrete advice based on my research into great minds’ work habits.
Thanks for reading! This newsletter is free, but if you’re feeling generous you can support my work by ordering my Daily Rituals books from Bookshop or (if you must) Amazon.
I looooooooooove Fran Lebowitz! She makes me laugh so hard and always gives me a new, refreshing perspective on life. I'm grateful that I've had the chance to see her live twice in Seattle. Thanks for this newsletter, Mason. I've been wondering about her new show on Netflix with Marty Scorsese and can't wait to renew my membership so I can watch it! It's great to hear that Fran is living her best life in NYC and not feeling tortured about not writing. I agree with you that she probably "retired" from writing many years ago. Lucky for us, she's still speaking and telling us exactly how she feels. ;-)
Answer to your suspicion comes from Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, “Few things are sadder than encountering a person who knows exactly what he should do, yet cannot muster enough energy to do it. "He who desires but acts not," wrote Blake with his accustomed vigor, "Breeds pestilence.”. So for an aspiring writer, I think there’s always joy in being able to write and only pity is not having writer’s block, it is lack of time and lack of opportunity to write. If you really idealized “writing” then that’s vital, only reason and joy in your life; nothing rather than writing could satisfy you anymore.
-That’s my view as a person who wants to write but never starts:). So that could be the cause for me to see writing vital, maybe if I start I will hate it but still I don’t think so..