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Metropolitan Life, by Fran Lebowitz
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Humorous book about life and social customs of New York
- Sales Rank: #116309 in Books
- Published on: 1978-03-13
- Released on: 1978-03-13
- Original language: English
- Number of items: 1
- Binding: Hardcover
- 177 pages
Most helpful customer reviews
60 of 61 people found the following review helpful.
Fran Lebowitz: A relic from the 1970s returns!
By pisces
I'm probably being a bit too too too generous giving "Metropolitan Life" 4 stars. I'm doing it more for the lovability of Frannie Lebowitz, than necessarily her laugh-out-loud funniness. And yet, I remember Fran's endless appearances on talk shows in the 1970s-early 1980s, looking very errudite and Andy Warhol-ish, with sophisticated cigarette in hand, as she spouted off her pontifications and rumination of life. We all thought she was the height of eccentric sophistication and witty urbane intelligence back then in 1980.
Does it translate as well in 2006?
Fran Lebowitz is still clever enough. It's a slice of life that we'll never see again: that Andy Warhol-Halston-Studio 54 crowd that mixed with New York City's power elite: Fran was able to bridge those two worlds. I guess I'm feeling nostalgic for that period of time, when everybody rubbed shoulders with everyone else, and people weren't so isolated and cloistered in their own little groups reaffirming their own little world view.
Fran Lebowitz represented, back then, a kind of being able to expand your comfort zone. You didn't have to live in New York City to "get" her. You didn't have to be an edgy urbane sophisticate to appreciate the cleverness of her witticism.
You still don't. Here's what Fran has to say about....sleep:
"Sleep is death without the responsibility."
Fran on ...poetry:
"Generally speaking, it is inhumane to detain a fleeting insight."
Fran on convenience foods:
"The servant problem being what it is, one would think it apparent that a society that provides a Helper for tuna but compels a writer to pack her own suitcases desperately needs to reorder its priorities".
Fran on the self-help movement:
"If you want to get ahead in this world, get a lawyer--not a book.
There are all sorts of these Fran-isms in "Metropolitan Life".
Fran wakes up at 12:35 pm to start her day:
"---The phone rings. I am not amused. This is not my favorite way to wake up. My favorite way to wake up is to have a certain French movie star whisper to me softly at two-thirty in the afternoon that if I want to get to Sweden in time to pick up my Nobel Prize for Literature I had better ring for breakfast. This occurs rather less often than one might wish."--Fran Lebowitz, Metropolitan Life
In 1978, when Metropolitan Life was published, New York City was all the rage, and we thought these urbane witticisms were the funniest thing ever.
I still think she's very clever and represents a certain urban social strata that's, today, lost forever. The Studio 54 crowd of the late 1970s, that Andy Warhol/Fran Lebowitz came out of, were some of the most dynamic, artistic, edgy, intellectuals ever. Obviously today's club kids, and what passes for today's urban "Hip Hop" youth are completely different. Today, it's an anti-intellectualism that pervades urban club culture.
So, in that sense......Fran Lebowitz's world looks very appealing, today, when you contrast it with what passes for empty, dumbed-down humor in contemporary 2006.
No, of course "Metropolitan Life" isn't laugh-out-loud hysterical/hilarious by today's standards of jaded humor. But it does represent a universal-clever urban sophistication that we are missing from society today. We have become very polarized and, today, you'd never see a Fran Lebowitz, or Andy Warhol, mixing with New York establishment types, or appealing to the general masses the way she/they did back then. You also have to remember that this was ten years before Seinfeld, and she paved the way for that kind of Seinfeld-ian dry-humor and comedic observations.
In that sense the humor book, Metropolitan Life, if short on belly-laughs, does indeed work as a historical/culture chronicle. And Fran is far more clever than anything that passes for generic/homogenized humor today.
5 of 6 people found the following review helpful.
Rounded Down From One Hundred Stars; Now, With An Index!
By Donald P. Reed
Metropolitan Life, Fran Lebowitz; A Harold Robbins Book [E.P. Dutton] (1974-78 hardcover)
This slender goldmine of fierce but subtle satire hasn't aged a bit since the day when I originally didn't read it & the recommendation that you do the opposite (read it) is unqualified.
"Unqualified" also describes Met Life's publisher E.P. Dutton (deceased, 1986), whose irked editorial representative (a summer intern) listened to the bid made by a freelancer (Fran, wanting even more money, impersonating someone else) for the assembly of the book's index --- & then rudely hung up.
My contribution to the world of Arts & Letters (winner of the Belmont Stakes in 1969) in the context of praising this book (note the Five Stars, above left) is...
The creation of the index that was never written.
***
Addict, Heroin, plausible reason for exorbitant telephone bill, 86
Agent, Hollywood, 3,000 miles away, audibly tan, ix
Amyl Nitrate, responsible for ill-advised shirt removal, 25
Bank, First Woman's, jealousy inflamed by the Other Woman's Bank, 44
Blackmail, used to neutralize outdoor clipboard-bearing bar bouncers, 24
Cartoons, New Yorker magazine, indication that they were once funny, 30
"Chairperson," newly-minted word detested by author, 3; also note, "Chairchild," equally undesirable word, possible creation of, 33
Childbirth, natural, discredited, 54
Children, shakedown targets in games of Scrabble, 33
Cigarette, picked up by mistake while intending to obtain a pen, smoked anyway, 128 (also see "Pen")
Cinderblocks, impersonated by robust human beings, 114
"Circles, Artistic," euphemism for "Arctic Circles," 591
Circumstances, youthful, factor in being mistaken for a Debutante, 21
Cockroaches, minimum acceptable number per New York City rental apartment, 38
Coma, desirable stage of consciousness, 118
Disasters, Financial, continued existence despite being prohibited by law, 49
Firbank, Ronald, identity of/why significant, reason unclear, 89
France, citizens of, inexplicable desire to speak French, 65
French Fries, American, served with Japanese food, 107
Girls, ambitious but easily discouraged (therefore, foolish), 13
"Indisposed," word correctly used by three-year old child, 82
Italians, unanticipated company of during plane flight to Italy, 62
Jeans (pants), depicting the death of Marilyn Monroe, 38-22-32
Mars, the planet, affordability of its resort beaches, 102
Martians, likelihood of existence as microbes, 101
Morristown, New Jersey, 1950s Russian nuclear bomb target (explanation for perennial condition of the Garden State Parkway), 26
Nail Bank, reason why the "Do Not Resuscitate Middle Finger" program, later abandoned, failed to gain traction in New York City, 80
Pen, picked up by mistake while reaching for a cigarette, smoked anyway, 128
People, Famous, use of as cocktail-hour arm candy, 19
Phone Bill, $148.10, written off by unsympathetic telephone company as an uncollectable Third World debt (1983)
Physical Movement, wisely rejected as unduly vigorous, x
Plowshare (with or without mule), "First Prize" in the competition for a Hungarian debutante's hand in marriage, 23
Postcard, means of economical interstate transportation, x (also see "hitchhiking germs," 103)
Preferences, Sexual, Illegal (at that time), 121
Prostitutes ("tricks"), increased sexual attractiveness while "under arrest," 70
Scientists, inherent severe social deficiencies, factor in eventually becoming computer programmers / door knobs / hermits, 78
Sleep, pleasant & safe to use, 91
Social Climbing, use of Women's Wear Daily to attain status, 10
"Them," ambiguous pronoun, 98
"those those with with," optical print illusion created by refusal of publisher to create an index, right-hand side of page 129, toward the bottom
Tractor trucks, one-time impromptu usage of as Murphy beds, Meat Packing District (later replaced by paved streets, anorexic models, drunken hedge fund flameouts & bankrupt restaurant owners), 104
"Tricks," see Prostitutes, 70
Truck Drivers, insatiable desire for hollandaise sauce, 107
TV, desire to be on, reason for taking hostages, 135
Water, percentage of times responsible for drownings, 130
"We," pronoun, used incorrectly in place of "each of us," 116
Webster's Dictionary, a volume of no small repute (& one that did not require the assembly of an index prior to publication), 97
Wit, replaced by handshakes, replaced in turn by drug-induced unconsciousness, 51
"Women Against" (identification of specific political cause, i.e., "War," "Kumquats," "Boyfriends," deemed unnecessary), 136.
11 of 12 people found the following review helpful.
I LOVE this book! LOL!
By Puck
Fran Lebowitz's work should NOT be OUT OF PRINT! Her work should be taught in schools. Do people still study the writing of essays? Do they still want to learn the cadence of wit? I laughed out loud while re-reading Metropolitan Life - one of Fran's "sports" is "getting the mail." Okay, part of that is affection for Fran, can't help it. I have to love someone who is still real. I love her work. I was inspired to re-purchase her books after seeing Martin Scorsese's Public Speaking documentary of Fran. I was astonished to see them out of print. The strange irony of this fact is that we get to see her speak more often and in more locations than she would ever lecture or read if she were raking it in from her books. It was obvious to me, while listening to her in the film, that she is still writing whether she knows it or not; she is such a natural.
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