“Talking Summer,” by Fran Lebowitz and Marc Balet, was originally published in the August 1991 issue of Vogue.
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Fran Lebowitz tells Marc Balet about her soft spot for summer camp and houseguesting and her ongoing dislike of sun, surf, tourists, and ticks.
Fran Lebowitz: No, I don’t have a summer house. I have never had a summer house. There have been years when I didn’t have a summer house because I couldn’t afford one. We’re in just such a year now. And there were years when I could have had a summer house from the financial point of view, but I didn’t buy one, so I have come to the conclusion that I don’t want a 96 summer house.
Marc Balet: Why not?
FL: Well, largely because I’m too irresponsible to have two houses. I’m too irresponsible to have one house, but I’m compelled to have one house. Instead I’m a houseguest, not only because I don’t have a summer house but also because I actually seem to be the only person of whom this is true. This has resulted in a rather severe houseguest; shortage, at least on the East Coast. I therefore feel a sort of civic responsibility in continuing not to have a summer house.
MB: So you’re filling that gap.
FL: Well, let’s put it this way: I am not the easiest person in the world to get along with, and I get dozens of invitations every weekend in the summer. I happen to be, I believe, an excellent, if not impeccable, houseguest, although I have never heard myself described as mellow. Not only can I amuse myself, I would prefer to do so. People don’t have to really go all out in entertaining me. I’m very polite, well mannered, and can spend the entire day happily reading quietly by myself.
MB: What are your requirements as a summer houseguest?
FL: I would say my primary requirement is that whoever I’m visiting runs their household better than I run mine; for instance, they might actually have food in the house. In fact, they might even have a cook in the house. That’s one way in which I choose where I’m going to stay. I’m a very appreciative eater.
MB: What’s a good host?
FL: A good host is someone whose children, if there are any, are very attractive and entertaining. I am actually quite fond of children. I would prefer a household with children as opposed to other houseguests that I have not approved. One of the worst things about going away for the weekend is that there might be other houseguests there whom you have spent the entire year in New York carefully avoiding talking to at cocktail parties, and suddenly you find yourself having breakfast with them.
MB: Do you feel that you have to participate in activities when you go to someone’s house?
FL: No.
MB: Do you feel that having a summer house is like adult camp in some way?
FL: No. The point of camp is that it’s not adult. If you asked me what I would like to do this summer, or any summer, I would say go to camp. And it’s just around this time of year that I start getting really annoyed at my parents for not mentioning it, because I would say that of all summer activities, that was the one I most enjoyed.
MB: So summer camp was a wonderful time for you?
FL: Yes. I loved camp. I loved it because there were no parents there.
MB: Did you join in a lot of activities at camp? Were you a good camper?
FL: I happen to have, in my house, a trophy for best all-around camper. A title I believe I’ve managed to retain. I have to admit that I did not receive this award for actually being, as you can imagine, the best all-around camper in the sense of being, say, the best tennis player, the best softball player, the best lanyard maker but, in fact, probably for entertaining the counselors the most. They were the ones who voted. I joined in most of the activities. But obviously the worst thing about camp was the hours. You know, camp starts in the morning. And we had reveille. There were aspects of camp that were military. You were awakened by a bugle. I would obviously be unable to deal with that now.
MB: How would you know, when you were growing up, that summer had really arrived?
FL: Well, you were out of school. The salient point of summer was no school, the way camp was no parents. I think that summer is always disappointing to an adult because, as a child, summer seems to be years long—infinite. I went to a public grammar school that got out at the end of June. Summer was really only eight weeks. But those eight weeks stretched ahead of me indefinitely. Eight weeks to me now is nothing. I routinely answer my mail eight weeks late. And I don’t think that I’m really being that tardy about it.
MB: Did you go on any summer trips with your parents?
FL: The summer trip that I remember best—certainly the biggest summer trip—was when I was sixteen, not exactly a child. My parents decided that it would be an excellent idea to herd the whole family into an un-air-conditioned car in August—the family consisting of my parents, myself, and my sister, who at that time was twelve or thirteen—and drive across the country to California. My father wrote away to the triple A, and they sent us this thing called a Triptik, which was a kind of set of maps. My mother’s job was to read these maps. I inherited my mother’s map-reading ability. I can’t read a map. And I actually am somewhat suspicious of people who can.
MB: But this was the kind of map that...
FL: They drew in with a Magic Marker to show how the Lebowitz family should drive to California. We took what was then known as the southern route to California, which we thought would be more interesting. This was 1966, so The worst thing about camp was the hours. Camp starts in the morning the South still retained quite a lot of its "regional" flavor. For instance, there were still signs in restaurants that said, "We reserve the right to refuse service to anyone." Although upon entering those restaurants you couldn’t imagine who they were keeping out. In addition to the kind of provincial southern elements of, say, racial segregation, there was also a lot of genuine local flavor, such as that to be found in food. There weren’t billions of fast-food restaurants like there are now, and it was before the advent of the three-thousand-mile-long salad bar that currently runs directly through the middle of the country. Also, there were still towns in America. It was before everything was knocked down to make a mall. I now believe that should a family inquire of the triple A how to get to California, they could possibly make one of those Triptiks so you wouldn t have to actually go outside.
MB: And the next summer—when you were seventeen?
FL: I worked at Carvel. I made $1.25 an hour, which was excellent preparation for being a writer. A dollar twenty-five an hour is not bad pay if you have no living expenses. Right now if I had the choice between making the money I make and having to pay all my own bills, or having to pay no bills at all but making $1.25 an hour, there’s no question which I would take.
MB: What about spending the summer in New York?
FL: I spent many summers in New York.
MB: Did you notice it as much?
FL: I certainly noticed it, because the first few years I lived in New York I didn t have air-conditioning. Nothing would make you notice summer so much as lack of air-conditioning. In certain ways I liked New York in the summer. Until about six years ago I lived downtown, which is emptier in the summer.
MB: Now you have air-conditioning, but you go away.
FL: Now I have air-conditioning, but I live in midtown. Summer in the city is a nightmare if you live in midtown, because every single time you walk out your door seventeen people ask you where Avenue of the Americas is.
MB: Do you find a difference between tourists in the summer and tourists in the winter?
FL: You do wonder what goes through someone s mind when they say, "You know what we should do? We should get all the kids together and go to New York in August." And judging by the thousands of people that course past my building, it’s a thought that occurs with breathtaking frequency.
MB: Maybe this phenomenon will lessen with the recession.
FL: I don’t know about the recession, but I do feel that there’s some hope that eventually Cats will close. That alone would cut tourism in my neighborhood by about 50 percent.
MB: Is the beach part of your life?
FL: Well, I go to houses that are on the beach. But during the hours that most people go to the beach, I don’t.
MB: You like to avoid the sun.
FL: Yes. I like to avoid the sun, which I think of as just particularly harsh overhead lighting. Unflattering in every respect, especially to the heavy smoker. And—long before the general public thought of the sun as dangerous—I always considered it, if not dangerous, at least in every possible respect unappealing.
MB: You don’t think that people who are tan look sexier and healthier?
FL: I think people who are tan look good, although I’m not one of those people who equate looking healthy with looking good, particularly. I don’t get tan myself.
MB: You’ve got a little tan.
FL: You know, I don’t think I’m getting tan. I think I’m just getting darker with age, because people have been saying I look tan a lot. When someone tells me I look tan I think I have jaundice—I have a hypochondriac response. Basically, I would prefer to regard the beach from bed. I like the sort of house where you can sit up, look out the window, there’s the beach.
MB: Do you eat differently in the summer? Do you feel that you’re eating lighter?
FL: Well, I feel that I am being served lighter food. People seem to feel that you are less hungry in the summer. They tend to give you lots of salads. I try to discourage this.
MB: What do you think of summer clothes?
FL: On the whole, people look better in the winter. This isn’t only because, abstractly, winter clothes are better than summer clothes, but because winter clothes are more clothes, and most people look better in more clothes. The worst thing about summer clothes is how revealing they are. Very few people can take this. Or at least very few people that you see wandering around in the street. I would say the single worst article of clothing ever invented is the tank top, which would not look good on the world s most beautiful sixteen-year-old but is worn, in fact, by some of the world’s least beautiful forty-five-year-olds. Shorts are another thing. Shorts really are either for children or the young Brigitte Bardot.
MB: But on messengers shorts look great.
FL: A messenger is an eighteen-year-old boy who spends his entire day on a bicycle. And to many people, Marc, as you are well aware, a messenger is the young Brigitte Bardot.
MB: Do you travel in the summer?
FL: I usually go to Europe in the summer—not the optimum time to go.
MB: Is it different being a houseguest in Europe?
FL: The food is better, and you are less likely to understand the conversation of the other guests.
MB: Do you have a summer reading list?
FL: Well, there’s a notion that there’s such a thing as the summer book. And this is predicated on the same idea that people are not as hungry in the summer and that they need lighter food. People who don t read all winter feel they deserve to read even less in the summer. I try to avoid celebrated tick areas. I know they’re not on sofas It’s not as if all winter they’re plowing through Ulysses.
MB: Do you think people show off with their books?
FL: I think that there are definitely large numbers of people who buy books to take on vacations, and I would never dissuade anyone from buying a book for whatever reason. I frankly don’t care whether they read them or not. Buying them is naturally the important thing. But there are people—you’ll go on a trip with someone and see that they are still reading Under the Volcano ten days later. It didn’t take him that long to write it.
MB: Did you have to go to summer school?
FL: Yes, I did. I believe I went to summer school four times. It could have been more. The reason I can’t remember how many times is because I always took the same subject: Algebra I. Which I also took every winter. I know I’ll be accused of exaggeration, but I believe I took Algebra I seven times. I never, by the way, remember taking Algebra II, because at that point I got kicked out of school. And it would be unseemly for someone of, say, thirty-seven to be taking Algebra II. I took Algebra I every summer in summer school and every winter in regular school, and to this day no one has ever asked me an algebra question. I don’t know what they were preparing me for. It’s just never come up.
MB: You had to take only one course?
FL: I believe I took French I many times too. It was pretty much the same as algebra, although people have often asked me French questions, which are, of course, easily ignored.
MB: You’re a terrible hypochondriac, and I wonder if now in the summer the one thing that you think of more than anything else might be ticks.
FL: Now I do think of ticks. Lyme disease is a very current and modern idea.
MB: Do you check yourself thoroughly before you come in from outside?
FL: I try to avoid celebrated tick areas. I know, for instance, that they’re not on sofas. They’re in grass, right?
MB: And some trees.
FL: I assiduously avoid climbing trees. I think they’re in grass. So I avoid walking through the grass on the way to the beach, which is fairly easy if you avoid going to the beach. I do look for them, but I’m not sure that I would recognize them, so I’m always thinking I’m missing them. I have no real sense of how small they are. At this point in my life I am just changing my eyeglasses. I think there’s an excellent chance that a tick on my leg could escape detection by me.
MB: There’s no relief in sight. But you wouldn’t turn down an invitation somewhere, thinking...
FL: That it was a very tick-ridden environment?
MB: Right.
FL: That would depend upon which comes first—a cure for Lyme disease or a cure for Cats.