{"id":26113,"date":"2012-06-28T09:31:54","date_gmt":"2012-06-27T23:31:54","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.booktopia.com.au\/?p=26113"},"modified":"2016-03-01T09:48:29","modified_gmt":"2016-02-29T23:48:29","slug":"caroline-baum-farewells-nora-ephron","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.booktopia.com.au\/blog\/2012\/06\/28\/caroline-baum-farewells-nora-ephron\/","title":{"rendered":"Caroline Baum Farewells Nora Ephron"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"Vale Nora. You were one of those writers who sounded so confiding, so intimate that I thought of you as a friend I\u2019d never met- and that was before Facebook exploited and devalued that concept.<\/p>\n

I loved Heartburn<\/em><\/a>. Think it was the first novel I ever read that interrupted the narrative to give readers a recipe. What a trend that started! Can anyone remember any other novelist doing this before Nora? She made writing about frivolous subjects like handbags seem important rather than trivial. She made you laugh at her neuroses because of course they were yours too and suddenly you felt it was ok to be highly strung and anxious and worried about superficial things. I Feel Bad About My Neck<\/em><\/a> was such a perfect title for her collection of essays – that admission of insecurity hit a bull\u2019s eye for so many women.<\/p>\n

Nora was one of those writers that you fantasize about becoming your New Best Friend.<\/p>\n

I\u2019d imagine going to interview her in New York; after an intense and candid conversation she\u2019d insist I stay for dinner and she\u2019d make some heavenly chicken soup with the proper little jewish dumplings bobbing around in it , while I chatted casually with her husband Nick Pileggi, who happens to have written the scripts for some of the best Scorsese movies (Goodfellas<\/em>, for example ). Then a few friends would drop, by the usual gang, Woody, Tina, Meryl and we\u2019d laugh a lot and tell jokes and she\u2019d say, why don\u2019t you move out of your hotel and come stay for a few days and then we\u2019d all go to the Hamptons for the weekend\u2026. sorry I got carried away.<\/p>\n

To quote just two pearls of wisdom from the list of things she wishes she\u2019d known:<\/p>\n

\n

You can\u2019t own too many black turtleneck sweaters <\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n

You can\u2019t be friends with people who call after 11 pm<\/span> <\/strong><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

I hope the New Yorker publishes your To Do lists or any other scraps of paper you left lying around. I\u2019ll miss you.<\/p>\n

Caroline Baum<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Vale Nora. You were one of those writers who sounded so confiding, so intimate that I thought of you as a friend I\u2019d never met- and that was before Facebook exploited and devalued that concept. I loved Heartburn. Think it was the first novel I ever read that interrupted the narrative to give readers a recipe. What a trend that started! Can anyone remember any other novelist doing this before Nora? She made writing about frivolous subjects like handbags seem important rather than trivial. She made you laugh at her neuroses because of course they were yours too and suddenly you felt it was ok to be highly strung and anxious and worried about superficial things. I Feel Bad About My Neck was such a perfect title for her collection of essays – that admission of insecurity hit a bull\u2019s eye for so many women. Nora was one of those writers that you fantasize about becoming your New Best Friend. I\u2019d imagine going to interview her in New York; after an intense and candid conversation she\u2019d insist I stay for dinner and she\u2019d make some heavenly chicken soup with the proper little jewish dumplings bobbing around in it , while…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":12,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"spay_email":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[1161,3996],"acf":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.booktopia.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26113"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.booktopia.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.booktopia.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.booktopia.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/12"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.booktopia.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=26113"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.booktopia.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26113\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":57213,"href":"https:\/\/www.booktopia.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26113\/revisions\/57213"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.booktopia.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=26113"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.booktopia.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=26113"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.booktopia.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=26113"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}