Eat something sweet and the feeling will pass

I'm just delighted to hear that Fran Lebowitz, my hero and savior, has published a new book, subtitled "An Unreliable Memoir." Only bummer is there's mysteriously little coverage of this book in the US, and the reviews I *can* find seem to confuse the plot of the story with Lebowitz's life. (Unless someone can confirm that she recently got married and had children? Yeah, I didn't think so.)

(Via Maud.)

UPDATE: It turns out, you see, that (as was pointed out in the comments) this is not the Fran Lebowitz, but rather a former literary agent of the same name (check it out, she's listed at Predators and Editors.) Anyhow, I just thought I'd point that out. But the book does exist, however marginally.

But it kind of raises an interesting question, perhaps one for Maud's own Secret Literary Agent: Even if it's legal to use the same name as a well-known author, is it ethical? Being a literary agent herself, Ms. Fran Lebowitz The Other should've realized the confusion that could arise.

Addendum: I forgot to mention this on Monday, but before I was absolutely certain that this book was not written by The One True Fran, I decided to give the William Morris Agency a ringy-ding to ask them if she'd recently published anything longer than a Vanity Fair piece, and was greeted with terse replies in 2 different departments. (They were both men, incidentally, on the other side of the phone, which is something I'm unaccustomed to dealing with when it comes to anything remotely resembling a creative field.) Finally, one of them said to me, "She's not a client." "Really?" I responded. "Because she's featured on your website." "I can't help you." Click.

Has Fran been dumped by WMA? She hasn't published anything in, like, 25 years...what made them decide to shitcan her now?