Nora Ephron
By: Benjamin Markovits
It's a sign that you've made it as a writer when you don't have to count yourself in the tally of people who show up to your readings. Nora Ephron was outnumbered on stage by a total of three to none. Five hundred people came to hear her speak and if she had been one of them, that would have made it five hundred and one.
Most of them probably felt they got their money's worth. Nora appeared on two giant screens either side of the podium. In the backdrop, the towers of downtown LA. Apart from her stories, and she told them well—about the making of When Harry Met Sally, her marriage to Carl Bernstein, the identity of Deepthroat, etc.—there was the simple pleasure of watching a practiced personality perform. She had told her stories before, but the repetition meant only that by this point she knew how to tell them.
Still, it was the sense of repetition, of the practised personality, that gave her amusing anecdotes a deeper interest. She seemed, of course, larger than life. The screens were about eight feet high. The fact that she was too busy to come, that she was too busy to come because she was filming something in LA, really only added to the glamour of the life she was selling: the life almost ordinary, which wouldn't interest us much if it really were.
The book, I Feel Bad About My Neck (two extracts were read), seemed on the whole a little less interesting and funny than she was herself -- but the popularity of the book, of her work in general, is one of the things that's interesting about her. She has taken a great deal of all-round smarts and a great deal of specific technical craft and turned what is essentially the life of an American aristocrat into books and movies that a huge number of people feel represented by.
She was the child of Hollywood writers; she interned with Kennedy; she married the most famous journalist of his day; she has written best-selling novels and one of the great romantic comedies of all time. An enviable life. In the process you'd think she'd have picked up a lifestyle that cushioned her against the common fates. Probably she did: that might be one of the facts that explains the difference in quality between When Harry Met Sally and You've Got Mail. She may have gotten a little less Jewish in the process; that's more than I can say.
But she showed, both in the interview, and in the book, which is about the humorous unmentioned unpleasantness of aging, the common touch -- in the sense of touch, that is, which means something sensitive, skilled, and refined. Still, it's as a kind of aristocrat, of the best American variety, liberal, rich, informed, opinionated -- that I found her most interesting, as someone who has learned confidently to expect certain things from life. The expecting is what's so attractive.
Among her most useful pieces of advice: if blogs don't come as easily as leaves to a tree, they had better not come at all.
Benjamin Markovits is the author of The Syme Papers and Either Side of Winter. Originally from Texas, he now lives in London and writes for the London Review of Books and the Times Literary Supplement.
It's a sign that you've made it as a writer when you don't have to count yourself in the tally of people who show up to your readings. Nora Ephron was outnumbered on stage by a total of three to none. Five hundred people came to hear her speak and if she had been one of them, that would have made it five hundred and one.
Most of them probably felt they got their money's worth. Nora appeared on two giant screens either side of the podium. In the backdrop, the towers of downtown LA. Apart from her stories, and she told them well—about the making of When Harry Met Sally, her marriage to Carl Bernstein, the identity of Deepthroat, etc.—there was the simple pleasure of watching a practiced personality perform. She had told her stories before, but the repetition meant only that by this point she knew how to tell them.
Still, it was the sense of repetition, of the practised personality, that gave her amusing anecdotes a deeper interest. She seemed, of course, larger than life. The screens were about eight feet high. The fact that she was too busy to come, that she was too busy to come because she was filming something in LA, really only added to the glamour of the life she was selling: the life almost ordinary, which wouldn't interest us much if it really were.
The book, I Feel Bad About My Neck (two extracts were read), seemed on the whole a little less interesting and funny than she was herself -- but the popularity of the book, of her work in general, is one of the things that's interesting about her. She has taken a great deal of all-round smarts and a great deal of specific technical craft and turned what is essentially the life of an American aristocrat into books and movies that a huge number of people feel represented by.
She was the child of Hollywood writers; she interned with Kennedy; she married the most famous journalist of his day; she has written best-selling novels and one of the great romantic comedies of all time. An enviable life. In the process you'd think she'd have picked up a lifestyle that cushioned her against the common fates. Probably she did: that might be one of the facts that explains the difference in quality between When Harry Met Sally and You've Got Mail. She may have gotten a little less Jewish in the process; that's more than I can say.
But she showed, both in the interview, and in the book, which is about the humorous unmentioned unpleasantness of aging, the common touch -- in the sense of touch, that is, which means something sensitive, skilled, and refined. Still, it's as a kind of aristocrat, of the best American variety, liberal, rich, informed, opinionated -- that I found her most interesting, as someone who has learned confidently to expect certain things from life. The expecting is what's so attractive.
Among her most useful pieces of advice: if blogs don't come as easily as leaves to a tree, they had better not come at all.
Benjamin Markovits is the author of The Syme Papers and Either Side of Winter. Originally from Texas, he now lives in London and writes for the London Review of Books and the Times Literary Supplement.
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