Nora Ephron (Author)
Nora Ephron was an Academy Award-winning screenwriter and film
director of When Harry Met Sally, Sleepless in Seattle, You've Got
Mail and Julie & Julia. She was also a bestselling novelist
(Heartburn, made into a film starring Jack Nicholson and Meryl
Streep), and journalist. Her last books I Feel Bad About My Neck
and I Remember Nothing were both huge international bestsellers.
She died in 2012.
"Nora Ephron was the person everybody wanted to hang out with, in
part because she was funny and charming but more critically because
she made the people she was with feel funny and charming . . . She
was the one who listened and then finally tossed in the one
fabulous line that brought everything together. Her best writing
was exactly the same . . . It takes a particular combination of
winning voice and brutal candor, of intimacy and objectivity, to
turn what happens to you into a story that means something to the
wider world . . . The Most of Nora Ephron gives her fans a chance
to rummage through her desk . . . This is the kind of collection
meant for snacking . . . She would want readers to meander,
sampling things they had never tried or bits that look especially
tasty. But I was surprised by how satisfying the big chunks are."
--The New York Times Book Review
"A giant gem, suitable for anyone who admired, worshipped or was
even jealous of the writer Nora Ephron . . . A nifty Christmas gift
for anyone who cares about the life and times of a contemporary
writer who is sometimes compared to Mark Twain." --Liz Smith,
Chicago Tribune "Nora Ephron takes tragedy and bewilderment and
spins them into rambling comedic reflections . . . [She and Joan
Didion] are trailblazing Boomer-era best-selling writers, but both
also illustrate with unusual force the rhythms of emotional
confession and emotional withholding that have marked the golden
age of journalistic writing by women that they shaped . . . When
life gave Ephron lemons she made a giant vat of really good
vodka-spiked lemonade and invited all of her friends and her
friends' friends over to share it, and gossip, and play charades .
. . She knew how to capture every quirk, and she knew just when to
cast the slightest shadow of doubt . . . Ephron's fun-house lens
distilled accomplishments and disappointments alike into excuses to
laugh. She took comfort in the little things and held fast to the
notion that every terrible experience might someday redeem itself
by making a really funny story." --Heather Havrilesky, Bookforum
"Ephron's arc as an American storyteller was various and unique . .
. Her works are bound by her equitable sensibility, cool
observational skills, and irresistible trains of thought . . . [She
was] a cultural sophisticate driven by the gritty, truth-obsessed
heart of a journalist . . . a savvy and expansive media critic . .
. a master of the art of common sense . . . with assured charm,
dead-on honesty, and wry humor . . . Her distinctive voice, that
mix of anthropologist and the sharer of impolitic confidences, was
clear and intact from the start . . . The 1970s pieces sparkle with
prescience and intense curiosity . . . Rich." --Matthew Gilbert,
The Boston Globe
"When Nora Ephron died last year, we felt like we lost a friend.
Which is why we are all over The Most of Nora Ephron . . . We will
never get enough of her searing wit and the deliberate way she
turned life's tragic twists into heartbreakingly funny material."
--Carolyn Mason, Daily Candy "A pleasure . . . Solid gold."
--Marion Winik, Newsday "Readers will admire their literary heroine
even more when, thanks to The MOST of Nora Ephron, they discover,
or are reminded, of the brave positions she took, and of how far
her preoccupations and her writing ranged." --Francine Prose, The
New York Review of Books "Gives you a close-up and thorough view of
the writer . . . and goes far in clarifying who Ephron was, not
just as a sentimental favorite, but as a writer and thinker . . .
Anyone who knows of Ephron's virtuosic career . . . will remember
that she wasn't just [the] intrepid reporter and filmmaker and
opinion-sayer and personage who was played onscreen by no less than
Meryl Streep. She was also someone who lived, and who people who
never met her felt like they knew. And that, I think, gives a clue
as to why she will last. Because in the great rushing loneliness of
the world, when a writer's voice makes you feel befriended, you
want more of it even after the person is gone." --Meg Wolitzer, NPR
"A big, gratifying collection . . . It's the work of a brilliant
woman who took copious notes on four decades of tumultuous social
and political history and who exerted astonishing authorial control
over the story of her own place within that history . . . A
stirring portrait of both a nation in flux and of an extraordinary
woman who retained a tight grip on her place within it, right till
the end." --Rebecca Traister, Los Angeles Times "Representing
40-plus years of work, this volume illustrates not only Ephron's
dynamic writing career as a
journalist-turned-novelist-turned-filmmaker but also her incredible
wit. Whether Ephron is writing about politics or purses, sexism or
soufflé, her appeal is her intelligent, incisive sense of humor.
This is also part of what makes her such an icon . . . for America.
Women may idolize her--she is the major inspiration for funny girl
Lena Dunham, creator of the HBO hit Girls--but through her writing
and films, she has changed the actual timbre of American humor . .
. Gottlieb manages to pack this almost 600-page anthology with
Ephron's most timeless pieces. Since we will never have enough of
Nora Ephron, the most will have to do." --Library Journal (starred)
"This hugely entertaining collection includes classics like
Ephron's novel Heartburn and her screenplay for When Harry Met
Sally . . ., as well as columns, blog posts, and her final play,
Lucky Guy . . . Many people already know how Ephron felt about her
neck (bad) and what she'd miss when she died (bacon). But while
these gems are included here, they're offset by the ruthless young
Ephron, who skewered journalistic ethics at The New York Times and
made Gloria Steinem and Helen Gurley Brown cry during interviews.
Tracing her evolution from these hard-nosed early pieces to the
later, vulnerable essays on aging makes this book even more moving
. . . What made Ephron great was that she took the very things
seriously that others dismissed as frivolous, Cosmopolitan, Teflon,
breast size, and, most of all, herself." --Entertainment Weekly
"Reading nearly 600 pages of Ephron in one volume is a joy, not
only due to the range of her interests, her capacious mind, her
mixture of humor and satire and self-deprecation, but also her
skill as a stylist. Few writers of Ephron's range and output have
written so few clunky sentences or so many memorable ones. Included
is perhaps her most famous essay . . . which expounded on the
flatness of her chest; her neck became as famous as her chest but
not until 2003. Ephron might be best remembered, however, for her
searing insights into the craft of journalism and the complications
of feminism. A delightful collection from a unique, significant
American writer." --Kirkus Reviews (starred) "Celebrates Ephron's
talent for turning her experiences into material . . . The book's
most delicious offering is Ephron's magazine journalism from the
1970s, with razor sharp profiles . . . and keenly intelligent
reportage . . . The book documents the changing culture of the New
York media world. 'Everything is copy, ' Ephron's mother always
said. This collection fulfills that motto with aplomb, and will
likely serve as a perfect holiday gift for Ephron fans."
--Publishers Weekly (boxed)
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