Fran Lebowitz is the patron saint of staying at home and doing nothing. What insights does she have on the art of inactivity?
,” which I’m really looking forward to. These are books I expect to finish, because I expect to like them.
There have been a lot of reports of wealthy New Yorkers fleeing to their second homes or renting places in the Hamptons. Would you ever flee New York City? I read that you didn’t have a microwave until you moved into your new apartment. Have you used it yet? One thing that’s been going around is this idea that Shakespeare wrote “King Lear” while he was under quarantine for the bubonic plague, as a way of inspiring people to use their time productively. Have you felt any of that pressure?people have tried to put that pressure on me. For instance, I’ve already read and heard this thing about Shakespeare fifty times. I’ve heard it from writers, and I’ve had to point out to them, “You are not Shakespeare.
New York City is pretty much unrecognizable from when I was young. I don’t expect it to be more unrecognizable at the end of this. It’ll be different. This morally grotesque “stimulus bill”—they call it a stimulus bill—they could give this money to people who run little businesses. If there is a giant corporation that is doing poorly, who cares?go out of business. I’m more concerned with how we will know this is over.
Are there everyday parts of life you think might change? Like, will this be the end of the handshake? There’s also all this new vocabulary, like “social distancing.” What do you think of that as a phrase? Well, I haven’t been a fan of de Blasio’s in quite some time. Look, I could see right away when de Blasio was running that he was slow. Whenever he talks, I’m always going, “Come on! Come on!” So that is a flaw. The mayor of New York is the second-hardest job in the country, after the President, and I never thought he was up to it. But his heart was in the right place, and it had been a really long time since the mayor cared about poor people, of which there are zillions in New York.