The Flip Side of Nora Ephron

THE BASIC POINT that Nora Ephron is making about women and the women's movement is a good one. "In fact," she writes, "the movement is nothing more than amorphous blob of individual women and groups, most of whom disagree with each other." And the way she usually makes that point. In this collection of 25 deftly written little essays most of which originally appeared in Esquire or New York magazines, is to zero in on all sorts of different women, all of them indisputably individual--Gloria Steinem. Julie Nixon Eisenhower, Linda Lovelace. But there is one highly individual woman who is present in all of them--sometimes lurking in the background, more often right up front--and that is Nora Ephron herself.

Ephron writes in a startlingly hones, self-mockingly confessional style, the essays read like letters from someone you've known for years. She plunges right in with the first piece in the book, "A Few Words About Breasts," which reportedly set off a storm of reaction when it first appeared. In it, Ephron details the lasting trauma she suffered as a result of having grown up flat-chested, apparently more of a problem in the Jane Russell-dominated 50s than in the Twiggy-dominated 60s. After nine pages of breast-related anecdotes, all recounted with an exasperated detatchment that makes them funny rather than embarassing, Ephron finally comes right out and confronts the reader, her gradually building defensiveness spilling into half-joking accusation:

You probably think I am crazy to go on like this: here I have set out to write a confession that is meant to hit you with the shock or recognition, and instead you are sitting there thinking I am thoroughly warped. Well, what can I tell you? If I had had them, I would have been a completely different person. I honestly believe that.

The fact is, you were beginning to think she was a little, well, obsessed. But not warped. Everyone's a little crazy on at least one subject, and most women probably do feel that their craziness is in some way linked to their being women, so Ephron's naled confession of her own craziness sets up a sort of bond between her and the reader. It's probably only coincidental that this essay is the first in the book--the pieces are arranged chronologically but it somehow justifies Ephron's assertive presence in the next 24.

With her penchant for taking the subject, any subject, by the horns, she doesn't let her own involvement in all the things she's writing about go unremarked, and she remarks on it with the same between-you-and-me honesty she uses so well on the subject of breasts. She sweeps aside any pretense of objectivity to quickly it doesn't even get a chance to become a full-blown pretense. She went to her tenth reunion at Wellesley she tells us just because she was writing a column for Esquire about it, but (wink) we all know why she really went--she wanted to. And similarly, she told her friends that the reason she joined a consciousness-raising group was because she didn't see how she "could write about women and the women's movement without joining a group...The disinterested observer and all that...This was a lie. The real reason I joined had to do with my marriage."

EPHRON STARTED out thinking she was "temperamentally suited" to be an objective reporter, a witness to events. But "now things have changed. I would still hate to be described as a participatory journalist; but I am a writer and I am a feminist, and the two seem to be constantly in conflict." Perhaps the problem is that the women's movement, by its very nature so bound up with emotions and subjective reactions, is an impossible subject to report on objectively--and that goes for mate reporters as well as female ones. In any case. Ephron's journalistic method of casting herself prominently as the flat-chested reluctant tomboy who wonders what all those beautiful women are complaining about, as the wallflower at the orgy (the title of her previous book), and most often, as the little boy who points out that the women's movement sometimes has no clothe--this is a method that usually suits her subject quite well.

For instance, the subject of consciousness-raisin. No doubt it is possible to write an "objective" examination of such a topic--interview various people, authorities, social critics, etc., pro and con--but it probably wouldn't be nearly as interesting or nearly as revealing. What Ephron found her group degenerating into was "a running soap opera, with new episodes on the same theme every week"--Episode 13 of the Barbara is Uninhibited and Peter is a Drag Show, Episode 19 of the Will Joanna Ever Get Dave to Share the Household Duties Show; Claire and Herbie in the Claire has Sexual Boredom but Loves Her Husband Show; and of course, Ephron as the co-star of her own show, which is left untitled.

Ephron began to see that the kind of "support" the group was giving was along the lines of "I think-you're crazy to-stand another minute-of-that," and that it seemed to be pushing several of brink of divorce. So she found herself in the horrifying position of agreeing with, of all people. Midge Decter, arch anti-feminist, who sees CR groups as potential homewreckers; but Ephron's words carry much more weight, because you know how it hurts her to have to say them.

BUT THERE are pitfalls to the personal involvement method, pitfalls of which Ephron is often aware. she is careful not to make the mistake of generalizing from her own experience when it comes to consciousness-raising; she knows that her conclusions are limited to a certain group of women conclusions are limited to a certain group of women from a certain socio-economic background living in New York, at a captain time, and she is willing eyes eager, to concede that some CR groups may be "wonderful." But she is not so careful and even handed when it comes to other subjects, particularly people. The tendency to introduce herself and her reactions extraneously when writing about the other individual women in this book is one pitfall that Ephron slips right into. If often makes her appear condescending and unsympathetic, and it does much to weaken the important bond that Ephron established in her first essay.

When Gloria Steinem turns to her at the Democratic Convention, tears of frustration rolling down her cheeks, all Ephron can think is, "I have never cried over anything remotely political in my life, and I honestly have no idea of what to say." Here Ephron is obviously trying to underline the difference between herself and Steinem, between two individual women who both consider them selves part of the movement. But her underlining is gratuitous; what we're interested in at the moment is what's going on in Steinem's mind, not in Ephron's

When Ephron focuses on women who are really vastly different from herself, her presence sometimes becomes not just gratuitous, but annoying. And those are just the sort of women that she seems to enjoy writing about most--Bernice Gera, first lady umpire; the housewives whose biggest thrill in life is participating in the Pillsbury Bake-Off. The condescension, even mockery, is almost unavoidable. Even when you suspect she's right on target--when she says that Pat Loud "has made a fool of herself on television, and now she is that Jan Morris has become not a woman but a girl, "and worst of all, a 47-year-old Cosmopolitan girl"--you want to draw back a little because of the harshness, the lack of sympathy.

But Ephron doesn't let you draw back--she writes from the assumption that you're on her side, that you share her point of view. It's a flattering assumption, and the temptation is to play along. But if you decide at some point that you want nothing to do with it, you're more or less stuck--it's the flip side of that old bond she set up, just as Ephron's harshness about others is the flip side of her honesty about herself. Perhaps that is the worst thing about Ephron's method of personal journalism--you have to take her in her good moods as well as in her bad, just the way you would with any friend. But on balance, for a few hours, Ephron makes a terrific companion.