#fran leibowitz

[notesfromachair]

Grumpy Golden Faucets

Here’s a great and meaningful story this week that’s not about that big, bloated news hog. Four children were rescued in Colombia’s Amazon jungle, surviving alone for 40 DAYS after their plane crashed last month.  That crash killed all three adults onboard, including their mother. But the kids – aged 13, 9. 4 and 1 – lived due to the knowledge and skill they acquire at a young age as members…

[johnwatersvhs]

John Waters, Fran Leibowitz and Henny Garfunkel. New York, October 1988.

[kvetchlandia]

Chris Felver Fran Leibowitz, New York City 1984

[yuri-alexseygaybitch]

Oh James Somerton was also the guy responsible for the awful "AIDS killed off all the hot/artistic gays who got laid" take I kept seeing on my dash a few months back using the out of context Fran Leibowitz quote? Super cool.

[cup-and-chaucer]

Really the problem with these BookTok books like Romantic Comedy is that...they are commodities. The answer to Fran Leibowitz's brilliant quote, "A book is not a mirror, it should be a door." is that, with advent of a literary social media, we are not reading to engage with a story or an idea but to attain an ideal. Marketing is built on the tension of relatability and aspiration. We see commercials set in clean, pristine suburban homes with happy, well-behaved children because it feels like it something we could attainably be if only we had the right brand of cereal or peanut butter or dish soap or life insurance. We want to see ourselves in those places that feel within our grasp. With the rise of books as a commodity to be marketed, rather than as art or entertainment, we increasingly want to see ourselves in the books we read. We want to see aspirational versions of ourselves either reading the book (aesthetics bloggers like Dakota Warren) or within the pages of the books. This why so many of those romance books feel so...conflict-avoidant. Don't get too close to reality or imperfection.

As the idea of a corporate morality (think: rainbow capitalism) emerges, it comes out in books too. Books have to have queer or PoC characters...not because those characters are essential or interesting or natural parts of the landscape or have their own purpose in the books but because the people reading the books want to feel like they are reading diversely and want to believe they are the type of people who also have queer or PoC friends. It doesn't matter if these portrayals are sanitized or feel tokenish.

A book like Romantic Comedy, where the characters mouth literal Facebook think-piece memes I saw during the height of the Black Lives Matter protests in 2020 as their political beliefs, without much self-reflection on the fact that these are two culturally powerful white people who are saying those things to signal that they are good people. It feels like a distraction and a benediction so you can support them in their rockstar fantasy romance, white guilt free. They are saying you are a good person for liking this book because the people in it are good the way you want them to be good and in the way you also want to be good. And they don't have to mean a word of it, they don't have to examine themselves any deeper, if the box is checked and disclaimer signed.

It's also why I think there is so much moral puritanism in reading now. We can't read Lolita because most of us don't want to be associated with its content and what we read, because it is now synonymous with what we buy and own and identify with, is a mirror to who we are and what we aspire to be. The problem is that books are not material things, not really, not the way jeans or furniture or cooking utensils are. They aren't forms of self-expression for the reader, the way fashion or make-up or paint is, they are simply a collection of thoughts from the imagination of an individual put into the world to tell of an experience or make an argument for us to read. That's all.

And all of this, all of this, all of this fucking capitalism is going to get conflated with the very real need for representation in literature and media, for more equitable publishing, for uplifting marginalized voices and experiences.

*sighs*

[mariacallous]

Had a dream where Fran Leibowitz was doing a talk on “Is NYC brat and what does it matter?” (Conclusion - NYC has always been brat, or at least always full of them) and then there was a hot dog cart explosion.

[lightyaoigami]

NJ is winning my poll rn. Tell me everything about newark (if u want)

-a Canadian

i hardly know where to begin...let me just say the caveat that i grew up there and i don't live there anymore. but basically everyone from nj me included has a huge chip on their shoulder because everyone hates us and makes fun of us despite being one of the wealthiest, best educated states in the us. also we gave the world mcr, frank sinatra, whitney houston, bruce springsteen, queen latifah, fran leibowitz, etc i think it can be summed up in two images (for context, trenton is nj's capital city):

[velocitations]

i am enjoying life too much ❗️drinking black coffee slice of cherry pie reading fran leibowitz bliss😇❌❌❌❌❌bitch you got assignments!!

[if-only-angels-could-prevail]

Tonight I had the revelation that I want to watch a conversation between Fran Leibowitz and Paris Hilton

[nanjokei]

the new fr*drik kn*dsen video is so mid. loses steam halfway. why didn't he split the video in half and post the second part at a later date? it would have ensured quality and clarity throughout instead of it turning into a slog after the 4 hour mark. by that point flow of information becomes cumbersome and difficult to follow. no, it's not because "there's too much to keep up with". that's not an excuse. there are ways to write it to make it much easier to digest and not be a clusterfuck. so glad i downloaded the video so he didn't get a cent of my revenue, the guy is weird as fuck anyway.

but you know, people cream their pants over any video over an hour, and they put it in the background and barely listen to it anyway, then act like it was amazing. but if you asked them 10 questions about what they watched, they would only be able to answer like two of them. so this is the audience that youtubers are playing to these days. i'm not saying he didn't put effort into it, but people praising it and saying it's the greatest youtube video they have ever watched, i truly do feel bad and hope you engage with better videos. i have no idea what corner of youtube you are inhabiting, the video overall was very okay if i average out my experience throughout the six hours.

btw, before any of you get mad, i'm not saying i don't do "passive watching" or whatever, i absolutely listen to podcasts and videos somewhat passively while i cook or draw, but please be more critical about it. if i realize i didn't absorb what i heard, i rewind however many times it takes until i get it and process it properly, and if i realize im not absorbing shit at all, it means the video is boring and/or badly written. you have to internalize that many youtubers are not as good at writing essays as you think they are. LISTEN discerningly. do yourself this little service! i promise it will make everything more enjoyable!! there is a quote i wanna share one day by fran leibowitz about how audiences need to be more discerning about what they consume because they are just as important as the art and people making said art. sometimes editing and diction saves certain poor script/essay writers, but others cannot be saved. for what it's worth, i don't think kn*dsen sucks at it, but he bit off more than he can chew and could not handle it. if i said who actually sucks at it i might get death threats lol (but i'll say one of them is a certain lying white woman here on tumblr who has a danron url and blocks everyone. absolutely dogshit videos and SHE HAS A SCRIPT EDITOR. JESUS)

[discworldwitches]

fran leibowitz is always so full of shit when talking abt feminism/gender

[nameless-and-joymaking]

realizing my dance prof hates me bc im a fran leibowitz girly and shes a michael kirby

[teamrocketgender]

had my new yorker fan girl moment where Fran Leibowitz walked into the restaurant I was at and sat two tables away from us as my friend and I both hyperventilated with excitement

[hairtusk]

hey i dont know if you're still interested in fran leibowitz but she's touring the uk in april. i think tickets are still mostly available. sorry if this is weird !

no don't worry, that isn't weird at all !! I actually really want to go, but the nearest venue to me is the lowry in salford, and because I don't drive anymore the train + tram journey there from my city would be hellish :/

[velocitations]

idk how intentional it is because obv to some extend it's just her real life but the specific world Fran Leibowitz evokes through implications in her writing is sooooo alluring a world of reading while smoking while staying in bed late and calling up writers to smoke and complain with and evading bills and publishers going to 70sconcerts, not taking any shit ,

[hiramabyss]

thinking abt that fran leibowitz spiel about gay connoisseurship culture being all but wiped out during the AIDS crisis in the States and it really has never rang more true to me.

like earlier i brunched with another gay dude from work and they didnt even know who oscar wilde was. mitski is heavy metal to them. paris is burning is a literal statement to them.

and i was just sitting across from them, gawking internally at the fact that these things ive always considered like cornerstones of queer & esp gay culture are apparently not as much of a cornerstone as i had once thought