Tales from a Broad: An Unreliable Memoir

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.

Other than as a prefix to the word 'me', love is almost absent from the text. Hatred, on the other hand, has star billing. Page 7: '[E]verything's too hard ... I cried and thought of more things I wanted, needed, hated.' Page 85: 'He tells me he hates me.' Page 101: 'Every time I get angry I run better. So, I keep myself angry. I curse at everyone and everything. I shout at the hawkers that their food really reeks ... I feel great.' Page 121: '[O]nce I start yelling, I just can't stop. It's like an orgasm.' And let us not forget the delicacy of page 122, on which she records an interaction with her Asian maid: 'I hand her $800. 'Get yourself a little fridge, a toaster oven, a microwave. Hey ... buy yourself a nice little rice cooker too.' ... I pretty much shove her out the door. I hate her and I don't know why.'

Cruelty, to Lebowitz, is fantastically amusing. In conversation with a fellow expatriate about her maid, she concludes: ''So ... she's sort of like a useful pet.' We laugh.' Maids are her favourite target, and she relishes each punch. 'She smiles, showing all 900 teeth and lots of gum.' (p11) '[M]aybe they just got dressed in the dark.' (p112) 'This is a woman who doesn't give a shit about being a macho, fat Asian broad.' (p114) 'I want you to be like the shoemaker's little elves and just keep the place running smoothly.' (p115) 'You're a f****** idiot, Rose. Stealing our money.' (p239) On page 240, the thief is confronted: 'She's still madly thumbing through her mental catalogue: 'Liver transplant could save my life, sir. I have no insurance. I yam ashamed.''

Her attitude to children is equally repulsive ('We give each kid a lot more than the recommended dose of cough syrup ... The meds have the desired effect.'). There are no insights into character, and praise is alien. 'What's to see,' she asks herself. 'They're kids.' Another's child is redolent of crushed clover, but hers 'smell like fries and clutch Happy Meal junk'. A little girl is remarkable for her sweetness, but her child, Sadie, takes 'a dump on the floor ... There's a nasty spray of crap on my left heel.'

Was her publisher on acid? This is not just dumbed-down prose but double-dumbed. Dumbed for six. Dumbed right out of the playing field. Why, she should consider dumbing for America. On page 159, she states: 'I lacked the correct upbringing to knowingly humiliate myself.' But not at all. She's done a superb job here. Doppelganger or not, this Lebowitz must never write again. Ever.

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