“People like Gloria Steinem,” my mother said, “they didn’t seem to understand about marriage and having children. In the days afterward, my mother described Ephron as a feminist role model for people who couldn’t connect with the more politicized manifestations of second-wave feminism. I was with my mother when the news of Ephron’s death broke. Nora Ephron was unworthy of serious feminist consideration, I thought, because she was just too girly. And I avoided and dismissed her, for that precise reason. Or failing that, an architect.”)īut I’ve always thought of Ephron - as I suspect many people do - as the Sleepless in Seattle lady, or the woman who wrote When Harry Met Sally. Or failing that, an architect who would rape me. (It also contains some lines that no contemporary feminist would dare - after reading The Fountainhead as a teenager, Ephron wrote, “I spent the next year hoping I would meet a gaunt, orange-haired architect who would rape me. Her essays were funny, and hard-edged enough to leave permanent welts on her targets - “ The Fountainhead Revisited,” her take on Ayn Rand, is funny enough to provide a cornerstone for the entire Making Fun Of Ayn Rand industry. She was a reporter for the New York Post and a columnist for Esquire. Which, since we’ve already uttered the dreaded “chick” word, we may as well call by name: The poor taste of writing for women.Įphron had a pedigree that any writer might admire. To be precise, the bad taste of sentimentality, schmaltz, continual focus on intimate relationships, and unrelenting insistence on happy endings - the poor taste of the “chick flicks” and romantic comedies of which she was one of the foremost purveyors. You must be willing to suffer, to be cruel, to be dishonest, to be unclean-anything, myĭear, anything to kill the most stubborn of roots, the ego.In the midst of waves of loving obituaries for and reminiscences of writer and director Nora Ephron, who died last week at 71, it’s worth remembering something: For many years, Ephron’s name was synonymous with bad taste. ![]() You can't make an omelet without breakingĮggs. That you've found yourself feeling cruel toward people? So what? It's just growing pains. Why make such a cosmic tragedy out of the fact Nothing but one form of misery or another. Unless you understand that completely, you can expect “Men are important only in relation to other men, in their And only when it is dead, when you care no longer, when you have lost your identity and forgotten the name of your soul-only then will you know the kind of happiness I spoke about, and the gates of spiritual grandeur will fall open before you.” You must be willing to suffer, to be cruel, to be dishonest, to be unclean-anything, my dear, anything to kill the most stubborn of roots, the ego. You can't make an omelet without breaking eggs. A beautiful woman is usually a gawkyĪdolescent first. ![]() OneĬan't jump from a state of animal brutality into a state of spiritual living without certain Why make such a cosmic tragedy out of the fact that you've found yourself feeling cruel toward people? So what? It's just growing pains. Unless you understand that completely, you can expect nothing but one form of misery or another. “Men are important only in relation to other men, in their usefulness, in the service they render.
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