I Feel Bad About My Neck

Title: I Feel Bad About My Neck
Author: Nora Ephron
Date of Publication: August 1, 2006
Company: Alfred A. Knopf
Number of Pages: 137
Awards: Book Sense Book of the Year for Adult Nonfiction (2007)

Ah, Nora Ephron. The queen of the romantic comedy. You've Got Mail. Sleepless in Seattle. When Harry Met Sally. And more recently, Julie & Julia. I'm not the quintessential "chick," that's for sure. I think when pressed, people say I'm interesting and intelligent and kind of dark. But even I am up for a bowl of popcorn, my sweats, and any of the above selections on a rainy October day.

Nora Ephron was technically writing scripts a little before my time. You've Got Mail came out in 1998, when I was twelve. But that didn't stop me from discovering it in my early twenties and watching the hell out of it. There's something timeless about her work; about her, I guess. And this is one of the things that attracted me to her book I Feel Bad About My Neck: And Other Thoughts on Being a Woman. That, and a recommendation from a dear friend.

Again, I'm a little young for this. But it was definitely compelling. I Feel Bad About My Neck is a collection of nonfiction essays written out of Ephron's experience as a consummate New Yorker in her mid-sixties. They are interesting, and honest, and, as we've come to expect of Nora, charming. I opted for the audiobook version, because she narrates it herself—a treat.
The topics of the essays vary. I came to find out that many of them were written for submission to different magazines, especially Oprah Winfrey's publication O. They fit together nicely, though.

Her essay Me and JFK: Now It Can Be Told is about the brief time she spent as a nominal clerk at the White House. This piece is hysterical. I was laughing out loud. And the last chapter, Considering the Alternative, is about growing older and sometimes losing friends. The author urges us to consider death before we think we need to, and offers thoughts on being left behind to grieve and what that feels like. This is personal, poignant, and beautiful work. Listening to Nora Ephron is a lot like listening to one of your friends. Or your mom. It's damn comforting, and I got used to it, and now the book is over. And I'm still thinking about death. I need more. So much more.

I have one beef with this book. Ephron's frank observations on the litany of creams she keeps in her bathroom, or her quest to find a cabbage strudel just like that one she had at that shop that one time are certainly entertaining. But I found there to be a disconnect here—perhaps generationally, and definitely monetarily.

She bemoans the fact, among others, that she has to wait forever for her toenails to dry after getting a pedicure at the shop. But I'm a millennial. I bemoan the fact that I will never have enough money to get a pedicure in the first place. Or to get my hair professionally dyed. Or to rent an 8-room apartment in New York. Much of her comic material, I am sorry to say, reeks of privilege. In trying to be relatable to the everywoman by confirming that life is hard and getting old sucks, she's outed herself as an elite New Yorker—and I think that younger generations reading her, at least for now, will respond with contempt.

Not withstanding, this is brave, good stuff. Listening to it was like eating a granola bar, but the good kind that's chewy and studded with chocolate chips. The warmth and familiarity of the author's literary voice is soothing. And it should be: I can quote some of her whole film scripts word-for-word. That's a high percentage of Nora Ephron in my brain, and I suspect you've got a lot, too.