We’re thinking of Nora Ephron, the food-loving screenwriter, journalist, essayist, and director who died yesterday at the age of 71.
After reading my colleague Steven Thrasher’s moving post on what Ephron taught him about writing, I wanted to revisit that famous old scene from When Harry Met Sally, set in Katz’s Deli. It’s more awkward than I remember it being, sharper and funnier too.
3 more good things to read today:
Via The Browser, Ephron’s Girl with the Dragon Tattoo parody for The New Yorker
A profoundly simple list on Open Culture from I Remember Nothing of what Ephron will miss. It includes butter, “dinner at home just the two of us,” and pie.
A great collection of Ephron quotes on Brainpickings, including this sweet one from Heartburn:
I look out the window and I see the lights and the skyline and the people on the street rushing around looking for action, love, and the world’s greatest chocolate chip cookie, and my heart does a little dance.
Updated 2:51 p.m., three food writers have written about Ephron today and I wanted to point you toward their stories, which are truly lovely:
Frank Bruni for Diner’s Journal:
Nora was a foodie in the best way: driven not by snobbery but by the joy of discovery and eager not to one-up you with her latest bliss, but to share it with you, guide you toward it. Nora was my kind of foodie.
Corby Kummer for The Atlantic:
From the time I started writing about food–the time I started writing, really–Nora Ephron was my ideal reader, the audience of one I hoped would somehow see my stuff and think the voice worth listening to.
Ed Levine for Serious Eats:
If you haven’t read her collections of essays such as Crazy Salad you are missing some of the most prescient non-fiction writing about food and life ever written.