I was fine with it all, until Dunham’s reminiscence of Nora Ephron appeared on The New Yorker’s Culture Desk blog, revealing the most jealousy-inducing fact of them all: She’d been friends with Nora Ephron!
For female writers of a certain age (that is, older than 27), the Lena Dunham phenomenon has brought all sorts of raging jealousies to the surface. Awards! Critical acclaim! A 3.7 million-dollar book advance! Actual, real friends. Ephron had met her for lunch at Barneys, referred her to ear, nose and throat doctors, and given her advice about “good white paint and how to handle old tile.” Unfair, I instantly thought. I’m doing okay in my career, and I certainly don’t have any desire to be in my 20s again, or to walk red carpets while dressed in rompers – but oh, what I would have given to have lunch with Nora Ephron! To soak up everything she knew about food, husbands, second-wave feminism, the art of collaborating, which puffy coat to wear on the set and why there aren’t any good dinner parties in California.
The next best thing, I suppose, is the new book “The Most of Nora Ephron,” nearly 600 pages of Ephron’s girl-friendly and relentlessly upbeat voice chattering in your ear about the subjects that consistently preoccupied her over her 50-year career as a journalist, novelist, screenwriter, playwright and blogger: food, friendship, feminism, journalism, sex, love and politics.
Ten of the 31 items on Ephron’s 2010 list, “What I Will Miss” – written well after she had already been diagnosed with the rare form of leukemia that would take her life in the summer of 2102 – are food or food-related. Continue Reading
