I Spent Halloween Watching Fran Lebowitz in Zurich
Here are a few short notes on the experience
1.
The streetcars in Basel have screens hanging from the ceiling that cycle through news headlines. You can’t not look at them; they’re next to the map and the list of upcoming stops. When I’m riding somewhere with a local, they’ll see a headline about U.S. politics and ask if that’s why we moved here.
In truth it’s not why we moved. We moved for family, for adventure, because this is where Linda (my wife, the reason I’m writing “we” in all these paragraphs) is from. Giving this answer usually just invites more questions about politics, though.
If someone doesn’t ask why we moved, there are signs they’ve already assumed the answer—a tone in conversations about politics that conveys a mix of sympathy and understanding.
On the trams, I wait to see news from the U.S. that isn’t about politics. There might be an update on Beyoncé or Taylor Swift, but those are rare. American culture is limited to politics.
When I saw an ad for a Fran Lebowitz speaking engagement in Zürich, I bought a ticket. Finally, I thought, a different kind of American culture.
2.
The talk was on Halloween. I wondered what the crowd would be like. There are a lot of Americans in Switzerland, but they tend to work in pharmaceuticals or finance. It was hard to imagine someone who has dedicated their career to marketing pills spending the evening listening to a writer whose diagnoses of the ills of American culture include “there are no longer any competing values to money.”
It was just as hard to imagine how a Swiss native would respond to Lebowitz, a literary figure who is so closely associated not just with the United States, but with the city of New York.
Maybe, I thought, because it’s Halloween, there’d be people cosplaying in Lebowitz’s signature look of Levi’s, boots, and an Anderson & Shepherd jacket.
I wondered how much of the Q & A would be about the election. I hoped the Swiss tendency to ask Americans about politics (or at least about one particular American politician) might be set aside for the night. Besides, Lebowitz has already spoken a lot about Trump (“a poor person’s idea of a rich person”; “nobody in New York thinks he’s a New Yorker”; “a level of moral squalor so profound”). It would be more enlightening to hear her comments on other current cultural events, or other politicians.
3.
Over a drink in the theater lobby, I kept a tally of languages: a lot of American-accented English, plenty of German, a fair bit of French.
On stage, the moderator asked for an autobiography. What was Fran Lebowitz like in high school? (She was expelled.) How did she first meet Andy Warhol? (She knocked at the door of the Factory and said she was Valerie Solonas.) Did she ever meet Donald Trump? (She saw him at a party and left, because, as she said, when you’re at the same party as Trump, you’re at the wrong party.)
As the Trump question unspooled, a good portion of the crowd grumbled. Maybe everyone wanted escapism?
Maybe not. Lebowitz told a story about how, when Trump won, a British person told her “this will be just like Brexit.” That is, Trump’s political success will be reason enough for everyone to care about (and ask about) American politics.
When the lights came up for the audience questions, that panned out.
4.
Audience Q & A’s are awkward in any language. There were no rambling, more-of-a-comment prologues that so often pop up at these events (maybe a side-effect of the notorious Swiss punctuality and directness?) but it wasn’t clear what anyone really wanted to know.
There were more questions about the election, about Trump, not just about Elon Musk, but about Elon Musk’s super PAC. The non-political questions rehashed topics Lebowitz had already discussed. Asked for advice about growing up, she said “I just grew up…one day I was five, then I was seven.” After that, another question about politics.
At times I felt like I was at a rock concert and the fans kept calling out to hear the hits.
5.
The hits are, of course, hits for a reason. Lebowitz is funny on almost any subject. But even though it seemed like the crowd would be happy hearing something they’d read in a magazine or seen in a documentry, that’s not what Lebowitz delivered. She said she was working on very little sleep, but the exhaustion didn’t show. What came through was a sense of experience with Q & A’s and something even more valuable than experience: quickness.
Lebowitz is very fast with her responses in a way that not a lot of funny writers, or funny people in any field, are. This is an amazing gift to see in action. It’s not just the ability to craft a speedy reply or an instant witticism, it’s a talent at reading a room and planning ahead. She knew when not to labor a question (asked how she would cope with a Trump win, she said simply “I smoke,” then took another question) and when to shift tones with a longer answer (a story about a star-studded dinner in Stockholm when her longtime friend Toni Morrison accepted the Nobel Prize had a few laugh lines before ending on a point about privilege and perspective).
Even though Lebowitz said a few times that she doesn’t really care about sports, the best comparison I can make is to watching a star soccer player on a breakaway, sprinting down the field, maneuvering around obstacles, and finishing with a goal that was so expertly achieved, it seems pre-ordained.
6.
And so, five days before the election, we spent an evening laughing about the election. There was a thread of worry underneath. Even if it seems more like anthropology than politics, Swiss and Americans alike knew that whatever happened on Tuesday would have ramifications close to home, and everywhere else in the world. There’s no way to be an empathetic person and not think about the implications of a global superpower’s rightward shift. Even Switzerland, a country with notoriously unexciting politics (can you name a single Swiss politician? can I?) has its own tranche of disaffected, disappointed conservatives.
The humor in Lebowitz’s answers to even the most rote questions came from speed and from directness. Even though she’s had a famous, decades-long writer’s block, she’s still a critic. She’s a critic in a time when a lot of criticism, as she says, is “not very critical.”
“You can call it judgmental, I call it discerning,” she said. I wanted to cheer.
7.
The line about discernment was in my head on the way home, along with another quote from the evening—“there’s a fine line between confidence and ignorance.”
Where do I draw those lines, I wondered? How do I say (or write) something that’s discerning and confident and not ignorant or baselessly judgmental?
I thought about my discomfort when American politics come up on the tram. I excuse my silence by saying I’m exhausted—I spent my adult life in the U.S. reading and writing news and I don’t feel up to spending my Swiss years doing the same (though I still obsessively read the news).
But that’s not entirely the case. I’m also quiet out of shyness, or maybe out of an exceeding courteousness, an indirectness. I don’t want to bother the person I’m with. But then again, I wondered, what’s the point of following all this if I don’t have an opinion I can share, especially when I’m asked for it directly?
If I’m asked, I should have something to say. And if I’m going to say something, it needs to be sharp.
8.
When I got home, there was one last quote in my head. When the moderator asked Lebowitz about moving to New York City after getting kicked out of high school, she said, “if your goal is to just live someplace…you can achieve it.”
I wanted to live here. I achieved it. But I don’t want to just live here.