Fran Lebowitz in Public Speaking A Martin Scorsese Picture Now an HBO(r) Documentary Film The Fran Lebowitz Reader brings together in one volume, with a new preface, two bestsellers, M etropolitan Life and Social Studies , by an "important humorist in the classic tradition" ( The New York Times Book Review ) who is "the natural successor to Dorothy Parker" (British Vogue ). In "elegant, finely honed prose" ( The Washington Post Book World ), Lebowitz limns the vicissitudes of contemporary urban life its fads, trends, crazes, morals, and fashions. By turns ironic, facetious, deadpan, sarcastic, wry, wisecracking, and waggish, she is always wickedly entertaining."