I Feel Bad About My Neck - Nora Ephron

   2006; 137 pages.  Full Title: I Feel Bad About My Neck, And Other Thoughts on Being a Woman.  New Author? : Yes.  Genres : Essays; Humorous American Literature.  Overall Rating : 8½*/10.

 

    Besides being a noted journalist and filmmaker, Nora Ephron (b.: 05/19/1942 – d.: 06/26/2012) was a prolific writer of screenplays (many with her sister, Delia Ephron), essays, drama, and one novel, Heartburn.

 

    Her most famous screenplays are probably Silkwood (1983), When Harry Met Sally (1989), Sleepless in Seattle (1993), and You’ve Got Mail (1998), and in addition to screenwriting, she also directed those last two movies.

 

    Being an “essayist” usually means writing articles that appear in magazines and newspapers.  Eleven of the essays in I Feel Bad About My Neck are listed as having previously appeared in Harper’s Bazaar, The New Yorker, The New York Times, O At Home, The Oprah Magazine, and Vogue.

 

    I Feel Bad About My Neck made it all the way to #1 on the New York Times Non-Fiction Best Seller List on September 10, 2006.  In 2019, it was included as #100 in The Guardian’s list of the 100 best books in the 21^st Century.

 

What’s To Like...

    I Feel Bad About My Neck consists of 15 essays of varying lengths, ranging from 3 to 20 pages.  Each is well-written and with a lot of dry humor.  I’d describe the writing style as what you’d get if you picked up “next door neighbor-ish” Erma Bombeck and set her down in Breakfast At Tiffany’s.  The circumstances may be different, Nora was decidedly financially more affluent, but both authors had the talent to blend keen female insight about daily life with an abundance of folksy wit.

 

    My favorite essays from the book were:

    04 : On Maitenance

        All about mani-pedis are other beauty treatments.

    07 : Moving On

        Living in an upscale apartment in NYC.

    12 : The Lost Strudel or Le Strudel Perdu

        Marcel Proust meets Cabbage Strudel.

   13 : On Rapture

        The bliss of reading a good book.

    15 : Considering the Alternative

        Thoughts about one's mortality.

 

    I found that last essay especially poignant.  Yes, it’s lighthearted, but it is also Nora Ephron telling you about the reality of being an “elderly person”.  It seems a fitting close to these essays, and it left a lump in my throat.  The second excerpt below gives you a taste of her musings.

 

    The book also has an informative slant.  The term “mouse potato” was new to me; and unsurprisingly, I'd never heard of “Kelly bags”.  One of Nora Ephron first jobs was as an intern in the JFK White House, and it was enlightening to get an “inside peek” at what that job entailed.  On a lighter note, I learned what birth control pills and Julia Child’s first cookbook have in common.

 

    There’s a bit of French thrown into the text, with both a nod to Edith Piaf and the phrase “Le sac, c’est moi.”.  Nora Ephron was a bookaholic (“I need a book to keep me company”), and I always enjoy learning what books impressed other bibliophiles.  Here, the author loved Michael Chabon’s The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay (so did I!), Wilkie Collins’ The Woman in White (haven’t read it, but looks good!), and Marcel Proust’s Remembrance of Things Past (well, two out of three ain’t bad).

 

Excerpts...

    According to my dermatologist, the neck starts to go at forty-three, and that’s that.  You can put makeup on your face and concealer under your eyes and dye on your hair, you can shoot collagen and Botox and Restylane into your wrinkles and creases, but short of surgery, there’s not a damn thing you can do about a neck.  The neck is a dead giveaway.  Our faces are lies and our necks are the truth.  (pg. 5)

 

    She said, “You know what drives me nuts?  Why do women our age say, ‘In my day…’?  This is our day.”

    But it isn’t our day.  We can’t wear tank tops, we have no idea who 50 Cent is, and we don’t know how to use almost any of the functions on our cell phones.  If we hit the wrong button on the remote control and the television screen turns to snow, we have no idea how to get the television set back to where it was in the first place.  This is the true nightmare of the empty nest: Your children are gone, and they were the only people in the house who knew how to use the remote control.  (pg. 129)

 

Ratings…
    Amazon:  4.3/5 based on 1,565 ratings.

    Goodreads: 3.71/5 based on 49,392 ratings and 5,748 reviews.

 

My first husband is a perfectly nice person, although he’s pathologically attached to his cats.  (pg. 104 )

    I Feel Bad About My Neck is a quick and easy read, an ideal option if you have a book report due tomorrow and haven’t even opened a book yet.  Ironically. that’s probably my main gripe – at 137 pages, it’s simply too short.  Even Erma Bombeck’s books usually run 200-250 pages.

 

    The language is just short of squeaky clean.  I only noted two cuss words, and if you’re looking for “tell-all” bits of the author's personal life (she was married three times), you’ll be disappointed, although she's not above shooting a spousal zinger now and then.

 

    Finally, it should be noted that, as the book’s subtitle points out, I am not the target audience.  This is a woman, writing about being a woman, and hoping it resonates with other women.

 

    Nevertheless, I was entertained from page 1 through page 137, and it’s always a pleasure to come across a talented author that I hadn't gotten around to reading before.  I was unaware that Nora Ephron only ever wrote one novel, but if I come across any more of her “essay” collections at the used-book store, I will undoubtedly pick them up.

 

    8½ Stars.  I have one Erma Bombeck book, The Grass Is Always Greener Over the Septic Tank, collecting dust on my Kindle.  It's been a while since I read anything by her, so maybe it's time to get reacquainted with her essays.