Social Studies
Lebowitz, Fran
ing not to notice her glistening eyes. Our family was never much for crying, and when someone did, you weren't supposed to notice. "I think there's some summer sausage left. You mean you never...
...Metropolitan Life, I recall, had me whooping and calling up friends to quote passages at length from her grab bag of epigrams ("Sleep is death without the re sponsibilify...
...Then, if you happen to hit it big, you must face the prospect of a career spent living up to the initial hype...
...she might have progressed more from one book to the next...
...And beneath the jaded, chain-smoking persona, there lurked a heart o f - - what...
...Not that I d o n ' t like my humor mean...
...You mean you never have to go back...
...Her much-vaunted impeccable style--that of a supercilious wiseacre p e d a n t - - l a p s e d frequently into labored manner:,sm...
...Eugene, Mr...
...Now, this may be true enough--in fact, it may even be a truism--but for the author of a major biographical study to offer it as the final summing-up of his work suggests at tile very least a certain lack of imagination...
...I f genius is doing a thing perfectly," Mr...
...Gold, according to friends who describe Lebowitz to magazine interv i e w e r s . If so, it did nothing to deepen her sketches from those of an If You Love Words, you'll, love VERBATIM, The Language Quarterly...
...Munro, a foreign correspondent and political s a t i r i s t who took the pen name of "Saki" when he turned to fiction-writing, was a homosexual-the principal "revelation" (it was for years an open secret) of A.J...
...I won't say that Fran Lebowitz, the Urbane Literary Curmudgeon who gave us the acidly funny best-seller Metropolitan Life in 1978, has slept 'til noon with her eagerly awaited second volume, SoczaIStudies...
...In my case, the teacher was more or less on the mark...
...But a sour undertone also ran through Met Life, redolent of Interview, Andy Warhol's tabloid for the airheads of the haut demimonde, where many of these pieces originally appeared...
...She-busied herself with buttering bread, and pouring milk...
...Does it matter...
...Allow 6 weeks...
...Essential Products Co., Inc...
...Munro, and the reasons for its absence--thoroughly documented by Mr...
...Langguth tells us, "[Munro] was a genius...
...J e a n Shepherd e x p r e s s e s with transfiguring clarity the t e r r o r and poignancy that can shred the heart of an ordinary mortal when he realizes, at that decisive point in his lifelong progress, that the light at the end of the tunnel is . . . New Jersey...
...Pritchett's apt phrase, "are done in cyanide...
...As a rule, the humorists who would be tolerable on a desert island are those who see the quirks as clearly as the cliches: Thurber, . g r e a t - h e a r t e d Woody Allen, and even on occasion the journeyman Russell Baker...
...On mood jewelry: "One can safely assume that a person who finds it necessary to consult a b r a c e l e t on the subject of his own s t a t e of mind is a person who is undoubtedly perplexed by a g r e a t many things...
...Langguth's chronicle of Munro's life and work is not without flaw...
...Candied violets are the Necco wafers" of the overbred"), shameless puns, and enough droll put-downs of s e v e n t i e s lunacy to furnish a time capsule...
...Miss Lebowitz, dubbed a "major new American humorist" with the publication of Metropolitan Life, may be the beneficiary of a continuing knight shortage in the space where the Round Table stood--because Social Studies, while i n t e r m i t t e n t l y delicious, still made me wonder how many of its critical garlands represented wishful thinking by the laughstarved...
...it's the aren't-we-naughty ethos that New York magazine has been dishing out to its yearning middle-class subscribers for years...
...you risk being mistaken for one of them the moment you sit down peevishly at your typewriter...
...And-his critical approach to the stories themselves, though sometimes penetrating, is usually little more than a tweedy surface "appreciation" of the Christopher Morley variety...
...J ~ s t hold the laurels, if not the laughs, for a curmudgeon who ends her final essay: " T h i s piece is too short--much too short...
...It is a risky thing, I acknowledge, to make pronouncements on what is and isn't funny...
...SOCIAL STUDIES Fran Lebowitz / Random House / $9..95 Brenda L. Becker t 61j'et~ a name for early r i s i n g , " says my mother ominously, "and you can sleep 'til noon...
...Send for free sample and fragrance list...
...for Saki, despite his obvious appeal, is no author to hand out casually to impressionable children...
...dealing with all aspects of language...
...m m,, -=, =,= n m =,,, ,,m mev.m9 i ~-J VJ ~1~ At" y0ur D00KsI0re or MCGRAW-HILL BOOK COMPANY i 1221 Avenue of the Amencas New York, N.Y 10020 paperback copy(ies) of LOW | Please send me | PROFILE: How to Avoid the Privacy Invaders by | Wittiam Petrocel~i @ $5.95 each...
...and so it is no wonder that his best work should revolve endlessly around a single theme and a single emotion...
...Others--the less blatantly decadent, I'd imagine--appeared in Mademoiselle...
...Indeed, it is the very existence of such authority, whether invoked or merely implied, which serves to set the typical Saki story in motion...
...Langguth--can b e found in the details of Munro's life...
...A New York, NY 10005 212-344-4288 Serving Wall Street area since 1895 especially sophisticated comedienne to those of a genuine humorist...
...In subsequent years, however, I have sometimes wondered whether that teacher of mine realized just how much of a risk she was taking with the moral development of her students...
...It's considerably harder to satirize in the classic tradition a society t h a t ' s already balmy...
...SAKI: A LIFE OF HECTOR HUGH MUNRO A.J...
...W r i t e r s may remember the good times of their childhood," Mr...
...A phone book advertisement for the Weak Speech Handset inspires her theory that it's "aimed for the tedious crowd--those who are weak in the speech department"and must surely come in models like the Oscar Wilde ("produces speech that is entirely epigrammatic")and the Evelyn Waugh ( " t h r i l l and amaze your loved one . . . the ultimate in contempt...
...Business is business...
...Never...
...t h e r e is a genuine sadism beneath the civilized verbal violence with which Clovis invests his conversational salvos, and one cannot read very much of Saki without feeling that the grisly denouement of "Sredni Vashtar"--however atypical in its intensity'--tells us far more about the secret concerns of its author than the high comedy of, say, "The UnrestC u r e . ' ' The tension between Saki's frothy surfaces and his darker preoccupations is a highly suggestive one, ahd it will hardly surprise close readers of his work to discover that H.H...
...But in order to clarify the matter, dear reader (as Fran Lebowitz might put it), I shall now endeavor to set forth a few points...
...Her first Social Study declares that "except in extremely rare instances, people are pretty much like everyone e l s e . " It's a nice point and well proven (she sums up conversation s~nce time immemorial in four convincing sentences, starting with "Hi, how are .you...
...The hardcover is pretty costly for an h o u r ' s read...
...There are certainly plenty of goodies, like her "Tips for Teens"- lt's fine to argue politics with your parents, she advises, but "unseemly to do so with your mouth full--particularly when it is full of the oppressor's standing rib r o a s t . " And t h e r e ' s "The Fran Lebowitz High Stress Diet and Exercise Program," enlisting equipment like lawyers, landlords, and cigarettes in the fight against fat...
...the rest, no matter how g l i t t e r i n g the poison-pen wit with which they are written, are little more than extremely amusing period pieces which e i t h e r follow the O. Henry formula or stick to exchanges of dialogue between a dandy and a foil...
...This is an extreme but nevertheless characteristic example of what can happen in the world of Saki when adults invoke arbitrary authority to disrupt the lives of children...
...Forgive me, but I needed the money...
...Fran would snort with refreshing contempt at P a r k e r ' s maudlin bravado...
...but it also limits her field of operations...
...Interesting thought: one tart-tongued aesthete prodding a stodgy society from the posture of flamboyant effeminacy, the other snickering at Sodom with the sensibility of a Brooks Brothers buyer...
...For one thing, humor tends to melt under analysis like ice cream under a photographer's lamp...
...easy, despite the show-biz perception that the world is tough on its jesters...
...But mean-spirited is another thing, a thing that happens when the vitriol sprays only outward...
...Like an aspiring actor, you must struggle to imprint yourself on the public retina alongside a glut of fellow would-be's, most of them banking more on native charm than craft...
...Every college newspaper office bristles with obnoxious youths who want to arch their eyebrows and toss off light essays for a living...
...He makes us laugh...
...Langguth / Simon & Schuster / $14.95 Terry Teachout When I was a fairly young boy, an obliging English teacher furnished me with a volume of short stories by Saki, acting on the widely held belief that these fantastic, gossamer vignettes of Edwardian life were in some way suitable fare for bookish neophytes...
...Sentiment, however, is a quality conspicuously missing from the fiction of H.H...
...Social Studies, then, may seem weaker not because it's an inferior collection, but simply because it's more (or slightly less) of the-same-and Fran Lebowitz's same d o e s n ' t wear well...
...On discos: " I f you are of the opinion that an evening without amyl nitrate is like a day without sunshine, you Should avail yourself of this substance in the privacy of your own truck and not in the middle of a Crowded dance floor...
...Her eagerness to parade an intimate, smirking knowledge of Manhattan's gay subculture infects many New York women anxious to surf on the crest of chic...
...No one's to blame for wanting an encore performance...
...But she does show signs of resting--or at least fidgeting--on her laurels...
...though many of the stories sailed right over my head, I was immediately taken by Saki's talking cats, cheerfully maltyclient children, and snappy repartee, and I acquired a taste for the doings of Clovis Sangrail and his languid friends that has lasted to this day...
...for which I ~_ II enclose ch'eck or money order totalinq $ II | Name ! I Address i | City State Zip I i Please add applicable taxes NR AS | n i l I l l l l l U m I I I I l l m' H i =m= m mira m m i N THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR MAY 1982 37 to her irreproachably ascetic maleprep wardrobe...
...Read this book, if you're a veteran (of World War I, World War II, Korea, Vietnam, or even Canada...
...seeing a suitable t a r g e t , Clovis Sangrail or his equivalent steps in to scramble the orderly, complacent lives of "innocent" people r e p r e s e n t i n g this a u t h o r i t y - - sometimes by lethal epigram, less Terry Teacbout is jazz critic for the Kansas City Star...
...His various r e f e r e n c e s to Munro's homosexuality, for instance, tend to be a trifle twee: "For the initiated," he coos at one point, " a n added charm to the stories was an occasional word to suggest that Reginald refused to play by the rules of the Marquess of Queensberry...
...Present Lebowitz with an i n s t i t u t i o n called the F i r s t Women's Bank and dangerous speculations ensue: a bank closed two or three days a month for cramps, and a host of spin-offs like the First National Piggy Bank for children-with Banking by Color--or the First National Raving Bank for homosexuals, featuring three-dollar bills, a two-drink minimum, and tellers named Mr...
...Walk through So ho with a lily in your hand today, and in a month People subscribers all over t'he country will rush to their locai mall to stock up on plastic lilies...
...I contend that, for anyone in the humor business, this can be surprisingly / Brenda L. Becker is a writer and editor living in New York City...
...often by more direct means, but always in a mere handful of casually lapidary paragraphs which, in V.S...
...Send $7.50 (U.S...
...0r~$8.50 (elsewhere) for a one-year Subscription, starting with the current issue...
...Wilde, a f t e r all, produced letters and stories of heartbreaking humanity as well as decorative literary icicles...
...his father, a military policeman stationed in Burma, was forced to leave the three Munro children in the frigid care of two spinster aunts who made their lives miserable and who would be symbolically (even gleefully) pilloried in one Saki story after another...
...It's a shame that I.ebowitz dicln't immerse h e r s e l f in Wilde ~i little deeper...
...It is Oscar Wilde whom Lebowitz confesses as her idol...
...She has disavowed what is inevitably drawn as her soul sisterhood to Dorothy Parker, and so she should...
...Baker can sum up the essence of Manhattan by describing a whole pizza lying mysteriously on the sidewalk it/front of his house one morning...
...But the highlights of Metropolitan Life were its loopy conceits, like Monty Python sketches in prose, often inspired by mundane fixtures of New York life...
...in its sharp edges and easy use of paradox, it bridges the gap between the older, more formal diction of Oscar Wilde and the postwar work of Noel Coward, an avid Munro fan whose plays are in some ways merely Saki sentimentalized...
...plus $2.00 delivery charge first bottle, 50 cents each additional one...
...Consider the fate of Mrs...
...ESSEX CT 06426 U s A ~ l i i SAVE UP TO 90% ON PERFUMES We've created our versions of Opium, Bal A Versailles, Joy, Oscar de la Renta, 1000, L'Air du Temps, Chloe, Shalimar, Noretl, Halston Night, etc...
...Saki makes up for these shortcomings, however, by providing a 38 THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR MAY 1982...
...First of all, it's no easy thing being an Urbane Literary Curmudgeon...
...in fact, the bits in both her books that tender critics winced at were the ones i liked best (such a s Social Studies' breezy rich person's guide on where to meet poor people...
...Munro's arch, "camp" dialogue, which still sounds startlingly modern today, is an obvious giveaway...
...His mother was kicked to death by a cow when he was less than two years old...
...at $15.00 per oz...
...Men's colognes too...
...Occasionally," Evelyn Waugh observed in his introduction to ?'be Unbearable Bassington, "seven or eight times perhaps, the theme, by chance, it seems, exactly fits the prescribed dimensions and the result is a m a s t e r p i e c e . " Saki's best stories invariably run to about seven pages and deal with authority defied...
...Don't avoid Social Studies on the basis of these ponderous quibbles-especially if you can wait for a paperback...
...Money back if nOt pleased...
...If y o u ' r e going to do something, do it halfway...
...In fashioning herself as the scourge of the tacky, Lebowitz has adopted a pose of seething invulnerability, even down F m...
...The rest!lts could be deadly...
...Moreover, even the half-_dozen undeniable mgsterpieces have about them a curiously obsessive quality that unsettles as it provokes laughter...
...Not bad, for a faker...
...What does Lebowitz make, I wonder, of "The Selfish Giant" ?) Of course, it was easier to run wild in late Victorian society, with the whole elaborate bastion just sitting thcre to be sniped at...
...Lebowitz's rake-offS on conceptual art, for instance, are amusing, but no sillier than conceptual art itself --because it is impossible for anything to be sillier than conceptual art itself...
...Langguth points out, "but they make use of the b a d . " Ironically, Munro traded the hated authority of his youth for the equally hated s t a t u t e s which made t h e sexual predilections of his adulthood a dangerous secret...
...Or stuck in traffic...
...Randy, and Eduardo...
...Langguth's outstanding new biography Saki: A Life of Hector Hugh Munro...
...If genius is doing all things perfectly, he was not...
...De Ropp, who is attacked and killed, by Sredni Vashtar, the pet ferret and" (literally) idol of her ten-year-old charge Conradin, chiefly because she found b u t t e r e d toast too much trouble to serve at teatime...
...read it if y o u ' r e a kid, or if y o u ' v e ever been one...
...Never, Morn...
...For another, we all giggle and guffaw at different things--and most of us secretly revel in our selectivity...
...90 Water St., Dept...
...he doesn't need to elbow his way through Xenon and Regine's...
...read it if you've ever been hopelessly in love, or bored, or frightened, or disillusioned...
...Saki's limitations as an author stem directly from his inability to get very far beyond this theme and a few basic variations on it...
Vol. 15 • May 1982 • No. 5
