A few weeks ago I started watching Pretend It’s a City, the Martin Scorsese documentary about Fran Lebowitz, and eventually turned it off. The great wit of New York, it seemed, had grown into a grumpy old woman. Also, even when funny, she embodies what I find most annoying in many New Yorkers: The confident belief that everyone else is inferior.
On social media I read a piece by the New York Times’s Ginia Bellafante that was a rare critique of the comedian. A number of people agreed with Bellafante’s criticisms, and reading their comments I found myself liking Lebowitz again.
