Tales from a Broad: An Unreliable Memoir
by Fran Lebowitz
Bantam $110
Fran Lebowitz, the New York-based lesbian, is a uniquely elegant humorist. Memorably photographed in jeans, with thighs akimbo, snoozing and with a gorgeous moue, she is the author of Metropolitan Life and Social Studies (recently distilled into The Fran Lebowitz Reader). She is that first drop of rain at a hypocrite's picnic. That Fran Lebowitz - refined, relaxed, a gentle anarchist - is not in any way responsible for this lavatorial memoir.
Tales from a Broad has the distinction of being the worst book I've ever read. Imaginatively marketed as humour, this mess of narcissism, greed and inanity was produced by a woman whose obliviousness to her own deficiencies beggars belief.
This Fran Lebowitz is a woman in her 30s who is ashamed of being a woman in her 30s, insincere, aggressive, rabid, seemingly devoid of both talent and affect, and self-aggrandising in compensation. Born in Baltimore, she worked as a literary agent in New York, and was transplanted to Singapore by way of Frank, her inexplicably masochistic husband.