Ha

I just think this is kinda funny. Recently I took a break from thinking and decided to ingest something. I finished an essay called Pentimento by Nora Ephron in I Remember Nothing. Pentimento is about how N.E. idolized a certain older woman writer.

"I went to see her at her home on Martha's Vineyard, which sat on a rocky beach near Chilmark. The interview is an embarrassment. I did not ask a tough question, and, by the way, I didn't have one." --N.E.

And then decided she didn't much like her after all.

"When she returned with the knockwurst, she said, 'His daughter, some fine writer, eh?' I said I didn't know, my shoulder now healed. She said 'What kind of talk is that? You don't know a fine writer when you hear a fine writer?'" --N.E., quoting a letter from the writer she idolized, about a waitress who said nice things about her.

"Well, in the next twenty minutes, by the time I had indigestion, it turned out it was your father she was talking about..." --N.E., still quoting the same letter.

I read it while eating Tillamook cheese that is "freezer-burned or something" according to the person who bought it, sandwiched between toasted slices of a loaf of sourdough I got at the 99 cent store. The cheese didn't take bad. It was just crumbly. So it was quite delicious.

"I have a pile of her letters. When I look through them, it all comes back to me--how much I'd loved the early letters, how charmed I'd been, how flattered, how much less charming they began to seem, how burdensome they became, and then, finally, how boring." --N.E.


Although some part of me enjoyed reading this and I didn't think what I was reading was particularly great, I felt drawn to it anyway. Maybe because it did not seem great. And I do not seem great. So it was a fine thing to read.

"Here was a thing Lillian liked to do: the T.L. Most people nowadays don't know what a T.L. is, but my mother had taught us the expression, although I can't imagine why." --N.E.

"T.L. stands for Trade Last, and here's how it works: you call someone up and tell her you have a T.L. for her. This means you've heard a compliment about her--and you will repeat it--but only if she first tells you a compliment someone has said about you. In other words, you will pass along a compliment, but only if you trade it last." --N.E.


I didn't think it was great but the mediocrity of the subject matter resonated. And, it's by a great writer. Could it be, we are both great, but I just didn't notice our genius?

"This, needless to say, is a strange, ungenerous, and seriously narcissistic way to tell someone a nice thing that had been said about them." --N.E.


"It's a delightful letter, isn't it?" --N.E.