I was sorely disappointed with Nora Ephron’s non-fiction piece entitled I Feel Bad About My Neck. My Book Club had decided to devote our December meeting to any Nora Ephron work of our own choice, inasmuch as she died in June 2012 and was greatly acclaimed by persons both inside and outside of the literary world.
I was so prepared to make Nora Ephron my idol, hoping to replicate her style as well as her success. I Feel Bad About My Neck was my first venture into reading anything by Ephron, although I was mightily impressed with her screenplays When Harry Met Sally, Sleepless in Seattle, and You’ve Got Mail.
I could not help comparing her essays which included her Neck with the writings of Erma Bombeck, a humorist who wrote about her house-bound activities back in the 60’s and 70’s. I came to the conclusion that Nora Ephron set the women’s movement back about fifty years when she released this group of essays.
She represents herself as a woman who is totally disorganized, a bad cook, with damaged hair, skin and nails, who is prone to losing objects, particularly her glasses, which then renders her to be blind as a bat. No woman wants to emulate someone who lowers the status of women by relating her own personal foibles. I did not find her treatises funny; instead, I felt sorry for her.
Nor did she hold back about her two failed marriages. This effort of hers near the end of her life seemed more of a catharsis for her than a humorous piece about “thoughts on being a woman.
Yet, she is listed as a journalist, essayist, playwright, screenwriter, novelist and blogger. She admits to spending her days and her life in front of her computer, which might account for her lack of ability to adapt to the ways by which the rest of the world lives.
I had forgotten that her second husband was Carl Bernstein, the newspaperman who helped bring down Richard Nixon, as set forth in his book entitled All the President’s Men, which he co-authored with Bob Woodward.
She seems to have had everything going for her and achieved great literary success. I only wish that she did not leave I Feel Bad About My Neck as part of her legacy. She is a far greater person than what is portrayed in this, her penultimate work.
Source:
I Feel Bad About My Neck by Nora Ephron (2006)
