9 of My Favourite Nora Ephron Essays

This isn't going to be a deep think-piece about Nora Ephron's literary and cinematic legacy. No. I read The Most of Nora Ephron and wanted to introduce some of my favourite essays. So I looked for quotes and added links for your enjoyment.

Introduction to Wallflower at the Orgy

Wallflower at the Orgy is one of Ephron's essay collections. The intro alone is gold. 

Some years ago, the man I am married to told me he had always had a mad desire to go to an orgy. Why on earth, I asked. Why not, he said. Because, I replied, it would be just like the dances at the YMCA I went to in the seventh grade—only instead of people walking past me and rejecting me, they would be stepping over my naked body and rejecting me. The image made no impression at all on my husband. But it has stayed with me—albeit in another context. Because working as a journalist is exactly like being the wallflower at the orgy. I always seem to find myself at a perfectly wonderful event where everyone else is having a marvelous time, laughing merrily, eating, drinking, having sex in the back room, and I am standing on the side taking notes on it all.

I Just Want to Say: The World Is Not Flat

I love Nora Ephron's meandering essays. So much more readable than the artificial thesis-with-3-supporting-sections format. Read it here.

Friedman, of course, is not just a columnist for the world's most powerful newspaper -- he's something else. He's a panelist. There's an entire population of panelists today, mostly guys, who make a living in some way or another but whose true career consists of appearing at conferences like this.

Warren Buffett, who is the king of the panelists, the uber-panelist, the second-richest man in the world, the sage of Omaha who plays on-line bridge with the first-richest man in the world, gave a speech during this period, and reminded all his acolytes that between 1904 and 1908 there were 240 automobile companies in business; by 1924 10 of them accounted for 90 per cent of revenues. This sentence was quoted as if it had come straight from the Ba'al Shem Tov, although no one was entirely sure what it meant.  

The Food Establishment

One of several of Nora Epron's essays in which she's a fly on the wall at a ridiculously bitchy and absurd event. (Another one is Baking Off, set in the alternate universe of the Pillsbury Bake-Off, which I can't find.) You can read The Food Establishment here.

I Just Want to Say: The Egg-White Omelette

It's a rant about egg-white omelettes. Enough said.

So this is my moment to say what's been in my heart for years: it's time to put a halt to the egg-white omelette. I don't want to confuse this with something actually important, like the war in Iraq, which it's also time to put a halt to, but I don't seem be able to do anything about Iraq, whereas I have a shot at cutting down consumption of the egg-white omelette

One Small Blog

Nora Ephron goes to a panel called "The World Is One Big Blog". Read it here.

Calacanis is very impressive and confident, reeling off endless thrilling acronyms and technical terms that are Greek to me. He says that what blogs are really good at is getting to the truth. [...] I can't help but think Calacanis is missing the delicious point about truth and blogs. It's not that the blogosphere doesn't care about the truth, but that truth is a very limited. overrated concept, and nowhere is this more clear than on the Internet.

She also spoke eloquently about drinking, being drunk, being hung over, and never being anywhere without a miniature bottle of Jim Beam. She was fantastically fast and funny, and if I were a straight man or a gay woman I would have gotten a huge, pathetic crush on her. She has written a novel and showed me the manuscript, which was in her tote bag. Her tote bag was pretty messy, and so was mine, so that made things even more exciting.

On Maintenance

There are several wonderful Nora Ephron essays about ageing as a woman. I think this one is my favourite. Read it here. 

Maintenance is what they mean when they say, "After a certain point, it's just patch, patch, patch." Maintenance is what you have to do just so you can walk out the door knowing that if you go to the market and bump into a guy who once rejected you, you won't have to hide behind a stack of canned food. 

We begin, I'm sorry to say, with hair. I'm sorry to say it because the amount of maintenance involving hair is genuinely overwhelming. Sometimes I think that not having to worry about your hair anymore is the secret upside of death.

The 6 Stages of Email

Nora discovers email. Read it here.

Viagra!!!!! Best Web source for Vioxx. Spend a week in Cancún. Have a rich beautiful lawn. Astrid would like to be added as one of your friends. XXXXXXXVideos. Add three inches to the length of your penis. The Democratic National Committee needs you. Virus Alert. FW: This will make you laugh. FW: This is funny. FW: This is hilarious. FW: Grapes and raisins toxic for dogs. FW: Gabriel García Márquez's Final Farewell. FW: Kurt Vonnegut's Commencement Address. FW: The Neiman Marcus Chocolate Chip Cookie recipe. AOL Member: We value your opinion. A message from Barack Obama. Find low mortgage payments, Nora. Nora, it's your time to shine. Need to fight off bills, Nora? Yvette would like to be added as one of your friends. You have failed to establish a full connection to AOL.

I Hate My Purse

Someone has very kindly scanned Nora Ephron's purse monologue here.

Parenting in Three Stages

An excellent essay which I can't find online, but I found a quote of my favourite part here:

Back in those days – and let me stress that I am not talking about the 19th century here, it was just a few years ago – no one believed that you could turn your child into a different human being from the one he started out being.

Suddenly, one day, there was this thing called parenting. Parenting was serious. Parenting was fierce. Parenting was solemn. Parenting was a participle, like going and doing and crusading and worrying; it was active, it was energetic, it was unrelenting. 

Parenting began with the assumption that your baby was a lump of clay that could be moulded (through hard work, input and positive reinforcement) into a perfect person who would someday be admitted to the university of your choice.