Fran Lebowitz has a lot to say

Fran Lebowitz is an author, humorist, cultural critic and raconteur, a woman so interesting that her friend Martin Scorsese has directed not one but two documentaries about her.

But perhaps her greatest achievement is being famous in the internet age without ever having been on the internet. “People are always showing me their phones, saying, did you see this?” she said. “I not only don’t want to see stuff about me, I don’t want to see any of it.”

Lebowitz, 72, will appear in Tampa today as part of her current global speaking tour. She recently talked with the Tampa Bay Times, via landline phone after screening through an answering machine, about her love of public speaking, movies and books and her antipathy toward machines.

The interview has been edited for length.

During your appearances, you do unusually long question-and-answer exchanges with the audience. What kinds of questions do you like to get, and what kind do you dread?

I can’t say dread, it’s really not the right word.

The audience Q&A, which takes an hour, is really my favorite part. I would do the whole thing that way except you can’t. You have to kind of establish something for the audience to respond to.

One of the things about being old is if there’s a question I don’t want to answer, I just don’t answer it.

I prefer not-personal questions. You get them from kids. People who are young are used to discussing their personal lives with thousands of strangers, so they just think there’s nothing wrong with it. I would never ask these kinds of questions even of people I know fairly well.

But one thing I love is you never know what they’re going to ask. I love the surprise. Even the person interviewing me, I don’t let them show me the questions. They really don’t like it, especially journalists. Unlike Fran, journalists like to be prepared.

Journalists now seem like the only people who are prepared. It might be good if, say, Congress was a little more prepared.

You’ve become internet famous for not being on the internet — for not having a computer or smartphone, no email or social media. When did you make the decision to keep all that out of your life, and do you ever regret it?

Several years ago, before COVID, which is how I now tell time, anyway it was when Twitter was first created, I was outside a restaurant smoking, where I’m often to be found anywhere in the world. And this well-known actor walked past and said, oh, I loved what you said about me on Twitter, that was so nice, I loved having that back and forth. And I said, “It’s not me.” This guy was really angry, I think because he was embarrassed. At first he said no, it was me, but I said, I’m not on the internet, it’s not me.

Shortly after that I met the guy who invented Twitter, Jack Dorsey, and I told him about this and I said, you have to fix this, this guy was really embarrassed. Here’s what Jack Dorsey said. He said, you have to get a Twitter account for Real Fran Lebowitz. I said, “Wait a minute, here’s what I have to do? Do I own Twitter? Do you have no responsibility for this?” No, they have no responsibility for it.

Impersonating another person used to be an actual crime, for all sorts of reasons. Now it’s not a crime, it seems to be a business.

I just have an antipathy toward machines, period. I never had a typewriter. I didn’t have the old machines. I’m the kind of person that if a machine breaks, I hit it. And if that doesn’t fix it, I beg it not to break.

I have a car. I bought this car in 1978. About two years ago I learned to open the hood, not that I’m good at it. I just don’t want to deal with machines, and I know the phone is a machine, a really complicated one, and I don’t want to deal with it.

I know babies do it, you see them all over New York, children in strollers with phones. I do think, God, if you could do that, you probably could also walk.

You’re the only person I know of who has been the subject of not one, but two documentaries by Martin Scorsese (“Public Speaking” in 2010 and the Netflix series “Pretend It’s a City” in 2021). How did you two become friends?

Neither Marty nor I remember where we met. I know it must have been in the ’80s, and it must have been at a party because where else would I meet Marty, but neither of us knows what party it was. I’ve been to many more parties, which is why I’ve written far fewer books than Marty has made movies.

But I do know that every time I’d see Marty, we’d spend the whole night talking.

Rapport too mild a word. I just love him. Marty is really funny. You don’t see that in “Pretend It’s a City” because he’s like the straight man. But he’s really hilarious.

He’s also maybe one of the five most well-read people I’ve ever known, which is not that common in a movie director, let me assure you.

Have you seen his new movie, “Killers of the Flower Moon”?

I’ve seen it twice. It’s one of the greatest movies I’ve ever seen in my life. Not just one of the greatest of Marty’s movies, one of the greatest movies I’ve ever seen. Although unlike Marty I haven’t seen every movie ever made.

It’s a masterpiece. And you have to see it on the big screen. I know one thing that bothers Marty is that people will see it on small screens or on phones. It plays a long time in theaters for a film that was made by Apple, which is something he demanded. Visually it’s so spectacular.

I haven’t read the book. Marty reads everything. I’m apparently the only person on the planet who hasn’t read David Grann’s books, because they sell in the tens of millions. Marty says they’re like documentaries. He gave me the book and I had it, it was sitting here for a long time. Either someone stole it or it’s under the other 5,000 books.

You’re known for being a voracious reader. What kinds of books do you prefer?

I would say that until maybe 10 years ago I hardly ever read nonfiction. But that changed, I don’t know why. I would still say I read more fiction. I don’t really care whether it’s old or new.

For new books I have to go in the bookstore, because I have to look at the book, I have to read a little bit and say, Fran, you’re going to like this. It was so horrible during COVID lockdown. I couldn’t go in the bookstores. I had to rely on a friend’s Amazon account — I paid her back — and I didn’t have any way to know about new books except by reviews or recommendations. For me those are terrible ways to learn about new books because reviews, that is a horrible way to choose books, and I found out during lockdown that a lot of my friends are just wrong. I actually called up one of my friends and yelled at him because he recommended this book, and I also read great reviews of this book, everyone I know who read this book loved it, but no seemed to mention that it’s written entirely in Scottish dialect.

If I’d gone to the bookstore I would have known it. I don’t want to read anything in dialect. I don’t know why writers do that. I know artistically why they do it, but there must be a work-around.

Unless you happen to be one of the two or three greatest people who ever lived, don’t try it. And if you’re Mark Twain you’re banned anyway.

Speaking of book banning, how do you feel about its current resurgence?

It’s like the worst thing a society can do, outside of violence.

It’s done by public officials, which is totally unconstitutional. The Catholic Church used to have lists of books you couldn’t read, they’d say the books were “banned in Boston.” Do I approve of that, no. But it is not a problem because it’s the bishop talking to Catholics. Let them fight about it. But a public school, public libraries? It’s unconstitutional.

It’s outrageous. As far as I know my books haven’t been banned, although I would be proud if they were.

But what you also have now in American publishing is inside the house, from the left, not the right. We can’t publish this because it might offend somebody. Why? You don’t have to read it.

No, publish everything, record everything. There’s tons of stuff I don’t like. There’s tons of stuff I find offensive. But guess what, I’m not going to read it.

I sign books after my speaking dates. There’s always at least one person in the line who says, I’m a school librarian, and I get death threats. School librarians? School librarians are like the backbone of democracy. I can hardly think of more essential people than school librarians. This is all over the country. It’s really shocking.

There are a lot of things I never thought would happen here. But they do.