I Remember Nothing: and Other Reflections - Hardcover

Ephron, Nora

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0307595609 ISBN 13: 9780307595607

Publisher: Knopf, 2010

Synopsis

NATIONAL BESTSELLER • Here is the beloved, bestselling author of I Feel Bad About My Neck at her funniest, wisest, and best, taking a hilarious look at the past and bemoaning the vicissitudes of modern life—and recalling with her signature clarity and wisdom everything she hasn’t (yet) forgotten.

In these pages she takes us from her first job in the mailroom at Newsweek to the six stages of email, from memories of her parents’ whirlwind dinner parties to her own life now full of Senior Moments (or, as she calls them, Google moments), from her greatest career flops to her most treasured joys.

Filled with insights and observations that instantly ring true, I Remember Nothing is a delightful, poignant gift from one of our finest writers.

About this title

About the Author

Nora Ephron was the author of the hugely successful I Feel Bad About My Neck as well as Heartburn, Crazy Salad, Wallflower at the Orgy, and Scribble Scribble. She wrote and directed the hit movie Julie & Julia and has received Academy Award nominations for Best Original Screenplay for When Harry Met Sally . . . , Silkwood, and Sleepless in Seattle, which she also directed. Her other credits include the script for the current stage hit Love, Loss, and What I Wore with Delia Ephron. She died in 2012.

Reviews

Reading these succinct, razor-sharp essays by veteran humorist (I Feel Bad About My Neck), novelist, and screenwriter-director Ephron is to be reminded that she cut her teeth as a New York Post writer in the 1960s, as she recounts in the most substantial selection here, "Journalism: A Love Story." Forthright, frequently wickedly backhanded, these essays cover the gamut of later-life observations (she is 69), from the dourly hilarious title essay about losing her memory, which asserts that her ubiquitous senior moment has now become the requisite Google moment, to several flimsy lists, such as "Twenty-five Things People Have a Shocking Capacity to Be Surprised by Over and Over Again," e.g., "Movies have no political effect whatsoever." Shorts such as the several "I Just Want to Say" pieces feature Ephron's trademark prickly contrariness and are stylistically digestible for the tabloids. Other essays delve into memories of fascinating people she knew, such as the Lillian Hellman of Pentimento, whom she adored until the older woman's egomania rubbed her the wrong way. Most winning, however, are her priceless reflections on her early life, such as growing up in Beverly Hills with her movie-people parents, and how being divorced shaped the bulk of her life, in "The D Word." There's an elegiac quality to many of these pieces, handled with wit and tenderness. (Nov.) (c)
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The legions of readers who loved I Feel Bad about My Neck (2006) will pounce on Ephron’s pithy new collection. A master of the jujitsu essay, Ephron leaves us breathless with rueful laughter. As the title suggests, she writes about the weird vagaries of memory as we age, although she is happy to report that the Senior Moment has become the Google Moment. Not that any gadget rescued her when she failed to recognize her own sister. But the truth is, Ephron remembers a lot. Take her stinging reminiscence of her entry into journalism at Newsweek in the early 1960s, when “girls,” no matter how well qualified, were never considered for reporter positions. An accomplished screenwriter (When Harry Met Sally . . . and Julie & Julia) in a family of screenwriters, Ephron looks further back to her Hollywood childhood and her mother’s struggles with alcohol. Whether she takes on bizarre hair problems, culinary disasters, an addiction to online Scrabble, the persistent pain of a divorce, or that mean old devil, age, Ephron is candid, self-deprecating, laser-smart, and hilarious. HIGH-DEMAND BACKSTORY: Now a popular blogger in addition to everything else, Ephron hit it so big with her last best-seller, a 500,000 print run is planned for her latest. --Donna Seaman

Edition details

• Publisher: Knopf
• Publication date: 2010
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0307595609
• ISBN 13: 9780307595607
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 160