Nora Ephron's journalism -- and mine

 

I have read, and re-read, and re-re-read, Nora Ephron a lot, in the copies I have of three of her books:  Wallflower at the Orgy, Crazy Salad and Scribble Scribble. This should give you an idea of how long I have had those books. Just look at that price tag on one of the paperbacks:

These books hold such Ephron gems as "A Few Words About Breasts," one of her most famous works; her scathing consideration of Deep Throat, which included a can't-you-see-this observation I have never forgotten; "The Making of Theodore H. White"; "A Rhinestone in a Trash Can," which argued convincingly that Jacqueline Susann's "trash is better than it has been made out to be." And more. You should read them, and later collections such as I Remember Nothing, and I Feel Bad About My Neck and Other Thoughts on Being a Woman, or dive into the selections from all of the above in the massive The MOST of Nora Ephron, released after her death in 2012.

Of course, to the world at large, Ephron was famous for more than her early nonfiction. She wrote movies (When Harry Met Sally ...), and then wrote and directed them (Sleepless in Seattle). She wrote plays, such as Lucky Guy, pictured at the top of this post, and had a major tabloid moment when she married Watergate journalist Carl Bernstein, caught him cheating, left him -- and then turned the whole agonizing experience into the novel Heartburn. That became a movie, too, with an Ephron screenplay, and a cast topped by Meryl Streep and Jack Nicholson.

 She also took up blogging, and you can some of those pieces in The MOST  of Nora Ephron, along with essays, articles and the complete texts of Lucky Guy, When Harry Met Sally ... and the novel Heartburn. Since her death, she has also been the focus of a documentary, Everything Is Copy: Nora Ephron Scripted and Unscripted, written and directed by her older son, Jacob Bernstein. You can find that on HBO On Demand, where you should also look for Breslin and Hamill: Deadline Artists, a documentary about Jimmy Breslin and Pete Hamill, which fits with the larger point I am going to get to pretty soon. Ephron's success is underscored in Can You Ever Forgive Me? when writer Lee Israel (played by Melissa McCarthy) decides the best way to get her agent to answer her phone calls is to pretend to be Ephron.

All that being said, there was still a long time when I drifted away from Ephron. I liked When Harry Met Sally ... but hated Sleepless in Seattle, although that hatred was based in part on my own then-current role as a widowed, single dad, which felt nothing like what Tom Hanks was doing in the movie. I liked parts of the Ephron-directed Michael (which she co-wrote with a team including her sister Delia) and a lot of the Ephron-written My Blue Heaven (which she did not direct) but not as much as I loved that early writing.

When I decided not long ago to go beyond her beloved older work to read more recent writing, I was sorry I had taken so long to get back to the dance. The essay "I Feel Bad About My Neck," for one, was a passage-of-time companion to "A Few Words About Breasts,"and a perfect meditation made more so because, shortly before I read it, my wife observed that an actress on TV had made beautifying efforts that had not succeeded with her neck.

But when revisiting Ephron, I also realized that one reason I loved her so much was that she was long connected to journalism in a way that I would also feel -- a way that led to her 2010 essay "Journalism: A Love Story." From that essay:

I loved my job. In my first year there (at the New York Post) I learned to write, which I barelyi knew when I began. ... I wrote about heat waves and cold snaps; I covered the Beatles and Bobby Kennedy and the Star of India robbery. ... I believed in journalism. I believed in truth. ... I loved the city room. I loved the pack. I loved smoking and drinking scotch and playing dollar poker. I didn't know much about anything, and I was in a profession where you didn't have to. I loved the speed. I loved the deadlines. I loved that you wrapped the fish. ... I known since I was a child I was going to live in New York ... a place where I might be able to become the only thing worth being, a journalist.

Now, that essay also covers disillusionment Ephron would feel, that for one thing "Now I know there's no such thing as the truth." And, Ephron writes, "I married a journalist, and that didn't work." But, she added, "then I married another, and it did."

The first journalist was Bernstein. The second was Nick Pileggi, best known for the book Wiseguy which was turned into the movie Goodfellas, but also a veteran journalist who is among those who knew Breslin and Hamill in their glory days, and who is therefore among those talking in Breslin and Hamill. And that documentary captures the jazzed feeling that Ephron had when she was most in love with journalism.

While Ephron despaired at times about the business -- see some of her Scribble Scribble columns -- one of the last things she was working on when she died was Lucky Guy, a play about New York newspaper columnist Mike McAlary. (That's Tom Hanks as McAlary in the photo above, from a 2012 production of the play.) The play does not entirely work, but it catches the zest and camaraderie of a vigorous newsroom -- along with the ambition, jealousy and at times excessive egos that came with it. Breslin worship is big in this tale. (Donald Trump is also spoken of, mockingly.) And there's a beautiful section of an editor working with McAlary, pulling details from McAlary to make a column better.

All of which just reminded me how much I loved working for daily newspapers for the decades that I did. Loved the feeling when there's a great story in front of you, and the bit is in your teeth, and you just might find the right words for it. Loved kicking possibilities around with the people I worked with. Loved it when my editor would -- as she put it -- dangle the bright shiny object of a story idea in front of me and the light went on in my head. Loved sitting around with other TV critics, wisecracking to be sure but also seeing how others played the game -- and what I could learn from them. (Also from reading Breslin and others.)  And loved it when, now and then, people told me that I had written something that mattered to them.

Which all sounds very romantic, and nostalgic, and I admit that part of that comes from my being retired for 2 1/2 years now. I have not forgotten how weary I was before I retired, and the concerns I had about where the business was going, and that I was right to hang it up when I  did. But who doesn't love a little romance. Ephron certainly did, in her date-night comedies -- and her portraits of  newspapering.