While driving along Bloor he started to talk about how much things had changed. This, a safe conversational starter for men past a certain age.

What used to be there.

What’s there now.

All the things we had known and lived.

And so we shared our wonder at the velocity of the world overtaking us, of all the businesses popping up on the blocks passing by and the real estate prices that had long since soared beyond our reach. Each aspect of this conversation revealed an unresolved bitterness in the man, a sense of having missed out, and then a car cut him off. He slammed his fist on the steering wheel, “DID YOU SEE THAT ASSHOLE?!”, he shouted as he accelerated into traffic. I tried to say something neutral yet supportive in tone, and then in an attempt to distract him from his rising fury, I asked where he’d most like to live if there were absolutely no limitations.

After some struggle, he offered up San Diego, but this only served as an entry point for a long, detailed story about being on a cruise ship with his ex-wife, getting ripped-off at the bar, and the fist fight that ensued. “They didn’t know who they were dealing with,” he said to me, his voice a cold, flat hiss.

And then we came to a red light and stopped. It felt like the barometric pressure had changed, that some destructive potential was either gathering or dispersing inside the car. And so we sat there quietly, lonely now in ways that could not be acknowledged. And beside us at the red light a beautiful young woman idled on her bicycle. When her eyes accidentally fell upon us, she quickly averted her gaze, just as we knew she would.

And then the light turned green.

She stood up on her bike and pedalled confidently away, into the future, I guess, and there was something so sad and beautiful in this, that neither the driver nor I even thought to speak for the rest of the ride.

(Photo credit to the great Lincoln Clarkes)

Lebowitz is in possession of a verbal brilliance that’s brusque and clarifying. Without hesitation or doubt, she can distill complex matters into weighty yet witty gems that are so elegant you want to wear them as if jewelry.

Massey Hall, which is as beautiful as an old movie, was about half full of her acolytes, and we all awaited her arrival in happy anticipation. Unfortunately, the talk was a brief, superficial and epigrammatic “Show.” I suppose I’d been hoping for something more along the lines of a conversation, an organic flowering of thought that wasn’t bound by subject, time or convention, but what Lebowitz delivered was more like a greatest hits, as if she was a tribute band of her own best material.

Ghomeshi, who was affable and charming, was little more than a straight man, with Lebowitz, like some Vaudeville comedian, delivering the punch. There was nothing that she said on Friday that I had not heard her say before. She was the Fran Lebowitz persona throughout, and that was kind of exciting in itself, but overall it was a thin and disappointing experience, leaving me feeling the way I usually do after leaving the Ex.

Taking the subway home, I couldn’t help but feel kind of sorry for Lebowitz. She burst onto the New York cultural scene back in the 70’s, amidst much fanfare and expectation, and has been unable to produce a written work (she considers herself a writer, not a Hollywood Square wit) since 1981, when she published a collection of essays called Social Studies.

Now 62, she complained– with customary charm– about other people’s children, how suburban New York had become, our impoverished arts culture, and information technology—a revolution she’s heard about rather than participated in. It was stellar cocktail party chatter, but not very sturdy, lacking in any desire toward self-awareness or examination.

When I think of her now, I imagine a ghost living in a timeless, self-created limbo.  Pacing the same 15 Manhattan blocks, too frightened or unsure to realize her genius, she remains in the golden age of her potential, locked in a glittering city that will always be bigger, better and more real than any subsequent iteration. It’s ironic that New York, a city defined by velocity and constant change, is the place that Lebowitz, who seems the very opposite of these qualities, has chosen as a professional avatar.