What do You think about Wallflower At The Orgy (2007)?
I was drawn to this book because I like Nora Ephron's witty, self-deprecating style and also because one of the articles deals at length with the "foodie" scene in the 1960s, (in which I'm very interested) but which seems a world away now and featured such luminaries as Julia Child, James Beard, Judith Jones and others. Renowned as a talented journalist and story teller, Nora Ephron has written much better stuff than this. As she herself admits in the introduction to the collection, written some years later, these articles are symptomatic of the younger, more self-obsessed, vain and somewhat shallow person she was at the time (and weren't we all at some time in our previous lives?). Somehow her trademark cynicism and wit fall flat in these articles, it's as though she's trying too hard. They are as most other people have noted, very dated, clearly because they are commentaries on a culture that has long since changed and evolved. For that reason, they may have had a good deal more impact and provided refreshing insights into the various worlds she describes at the time they were published, but they just haven't weathered well.
—Anne Green
The topics are a little out-of-date since this is a collection of Nora Ephron's work from the 1960's but it's entertaining to read about once-or-stillfamous people like Arthur Frommer (of the Europe on $5-a-day budget travel guides ...how outdated is that?; Cosmo Editor Helen Gurley Brown (who oddly, died about the same time as Nora); thethen-young director Mike Nichols (directing a haughty Orson Wells in "Catch-22") and the writing of Aryn Rand (which GOP VP candidate Paul Ryan may re-popularize, God help us). I was amused to learn that Nora read "The Fountainhead" the same way I did as an 18-year-old, skipping over Rand's creepy social/political tracts and focusing entirely on the fiery red-headed Howard Roark and his passionate affair with modern architecture and his client Dominique...)
—Betsy
I found myself slogging through this book at a snail's pace. Nora Ephron is a fine writer. She does say early on that she's a succinct writer, and then she goes to ramble on more than needed (IMHO) in her essays. The topics were dated. She had a whole essay on Rod McKuen. I have no idea who he is; he supposedly sang and wrote poetry back in the 1960s as far as I could tell based on the essay. Well, he either had a career that ended in the 1960s or early 1970s, or I live under a rock. It could be either really. Since she seemed to be an author of contemporary issues during her time, such as fashion, not many of these essays stood up through the course of time. Still, she's a very good writer. It's not her fault that I had little interest in the topics that she wrote about.
—Beth Gordon
