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On Nora Ephron

 Ricky Gervais has said there is mainly one foolproof scenario for comedy. Here is the scenario. A character is dropped into a situation for which he or she is completely unprepared. That's all.


I have boundless admiration for "Heartburn," by Nora Ephron, for a few reasons. First, it's a novel no one else would write. Ephron was pregnant with her second child when she discovered that her spouse, Carl Bernstein, was having an affair. Most people would shudder before picking up a pen. But Ephron began taking notes.

Second, the voice is so odd. Ephron's narrator--Rachel, a writer--worries about being married. She worries because, she says, things have stopped happening to me. If you're single, you can generate stories by the dozen. But motherhood means many afternoons alone with a toddler and a stack of colorful blocks. Rachel is upset because she has surrendered all of her literary material.

Third, the approach to plotting is unconventional. Who are the characters -- in a story about divorce? One standard approach would be to focus on dialogues between the two former spouses, as they try to establish a new quasi-professional partnership. (This is the thrust of the TV series "Divorce.") Another approach would be to send Rachel on a fabulous girls' trip, where spiky lifelong friends would teach Rachel about the enduring power of sisterhood. Ephron rejects both of these choices. She has Rachel travel to group therapy, where she is mugged at gunpoint. A gay man in the group confesses that he felt attracted to the assailant, "even though he had a stocking over his head." I find these narrative choices so strange and so refreshing.

It seems like Ephron just gave herself permission to discuss whatever interested her. In this way, the book is like "The Friend," by Sigrid Nunez. At one point, Rachel loses the thread of her marital story and begins a long speech about kreplach. There was once a little boy who seemed terrified of kreplach. So his mother took him to the kitchen and showed him a noodle. "Yum," he said. She then showed off a plate of cooked meat. "Yum," he said. She then combined the meat and the noodle, and produced a dumpling. "Yum."

Finally, she dropped the dumpling in a cup of soup--and the child shrieked. "YUCK! KREPLACH!" And he ran from the room.

I really enjoy Nora Ephron's company, and I'm surprised (and impressed) that "Heartburn" is now over forty years old.

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