I Remember Nothing: And Other Reflections

I Remember Nothing and Other Reflections is a collection of personal essays by Nora Ephron, a screenwriter, director, and journalist. The book combines memoir, humor, and cultural commentary, with aging and memory loss serving as its central preoccupations.

The title essay establishes the collection's tone. Ephron has been forgetting things since her thirties, but the nature of forgetting has changed: What once slipped away would eventually return, while now what is gone is permanent, and new information refuses to stick. She catalogs major historical events she attended but cannot meaningfully recall: meeting former First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt at Hyde Park in 1961, covering the Beatles' 1964 arrival in New York, attending the 1967 march on Washington to protest the Vietnam War. She describes building a wall against new information, from Twitter to the Kardashians, and concludes that Google can retrieve a forgotten fact but not a life.

"Who Are You?" extends this theme into social comedy, presenting three scenarios of failing to recognize people: a dinner guest whose name she cannot summon, a possible acquaintance she greets with "Nice to see you" to avoid the correction "We've met," and a long-unseen friend named Ellen who has aged so dramatically that neither woman recognizes the other.

"Journalism: A Love Story" traces Ephron's journalism career from a high school vocational day, where a female sportswriter inspired her, to her 1962 hiring as a mail girl at Newsweek magazine for $55 a week. She was told plainly that women did not become writers there: College-educated women were hired as mail girls, then promoted to clipping and fact-checking roles, while men with identical qualifications were hired as reporters. Through her friend Victor Navasky, editor of a satirical magazine called Monocle, Ephron wrote a parody of a gossip column that caught the attention of Dorothy Schiff, publisher of the New York Post. Schiff ordered her editors to hire the parodists, and Ephron was offered a permanent reporting job after four bylines in her first week. She spent five years at the Post, where editors taught her to write. She later became a freelance magazine writer and reflects that her early beliefs in journalistic truth and objectivity have been complicated by experience.

"The Legend" centers on a family story: Ephron's mother, a working screenwriter in Beverly Hills, once threw New Yorker journalist Lillian Ross out of their house. Ross, famous for making interview subjects look foolish, had come to a dinner party and, during a house tour, saw a photograph of the children and asked Ephron's mother, "Do you ever see them?" Ephron's mother marched Ross downstairs and said, "Out." Ephron loved this story but began doubting its truth as she grew older, noting its too-perfect punchline. She describes her mother's descent into alcohol addiction and her death at 57. Years later, at a 1978 party, Ephron met Ross and tried to confirm the story without revealing it. Ross volunteered the answer: "I went to your house once. I met your mother." The legend was true, and the confirmation returned to Ephron the idealized version of her mother that addiction had destroyed.

"My Life as an Heiress" recounts the tragicomic saga of inheriting money from her uncle Hal, her mother's estranged brother, who had become wealthy in real estate. When Hal died in 1987, Ephron was struggling with a screenplay and immediately began mentally spending the inheritance, passing through what she calls the first two stages of inherited wealth: Glee and Sloth. Her father then claimed he had told Hal to cut Ephron from the will. Her sister Delia offered to share, but another sister, Hallie, refused, triggering a third stage: Dissension. The lawyer revealed that Hal had not cut Ephron out, but the estate was worth far less than expected; a relative's failed real estate venture had consumed nearly all of it. Each sister inherited roughly $40,000. Ephron concludes she was lucky, because had she inherited real money, she might never have finished writing When Harry Met Sally, which changed her life.

Several shorter essays function as comic editorials. "The Egg-White Omelette" argues against the egg-white omelette, citing the debunked link between dietary cholesterol and blood cholesterol. "Teflon" bids farewell to Teflon cookware after learning that heating it releases a carcinogenic chemical. "No, I Do Not Want Another Bottle of Pellegrino" catalogs restaurant annoyances, from vanishing salt shakers to oversized dessert spoons. "The World Is Not Flat" critiques the cycle of conventional wisdom about the Internet, using Thomas Friedman as an emblem of the conference-panelist culture that validates whatever consensus happens to be current.

"Pentimento" traces Ephron's infatuation with and disillusionment with playwright Lillian Hellman. In 1973, Ephron interviewed Hellman for The New York Times Book Review and was besotted by the woman who had defied the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC) and loved detective novelist Dashiell Hammett. They became friends, but the friendship soured over time. Hellman regularly called to play "Trade Last," a game requiring each person to exchange a compliment heard about the other, and Ephron found it increasingly difficult to produce flattering material as Hellman's reputation declined. When Ephron's second marriage ended, Hellman insisted she forgive her husband, and Ephron used this as a pretext to withdraw. Later, Muriel Gardiner published a memoir revealing that Hellman's "Julia" story was taken from Gardiner's own life. Ephron acknowledges that the pattern is universal: The younger woman idolizes the older one, discovers she is human, and the relationship ends.

"Flops" examines the psychology of professional failure. Ephron notes that flops stay with you in ways hits never do and describes the false optimism of film production, where a hysterically laughing crew can mask a movie that will test poorly. Her biggest flop was a play she considers the best thing she ever wrote; it lost its entire investment and is never performed.

"Christmas Dinner" describes how the death of her best friend Ruthie fractured a 22-year tradition of holiday dinners among a makeshift family of friends. Without Ruthie, whose bread pudding was the only dessert anyone truly loved, the group devolved into squabbling over menu assignments. Ephron realizes Ruthie was the glue that gave them the illusion of being a family.

"The D Word" reflects on divorce. Ephron's second divorce was devastating: While pregnant with her second child, she discovered her husband's affair after reading a screenplay about marital infidelity on a plane, then found evidence in a locked drawer at home. She wrote about the experience in her novel Heartburn. With time, her defining characteristic shifted from being divorced to being old.

"The O Word" confronts aging directly. Ephron catalogs its indignities and describes trying to live deliberately but aiming low: frozen custard, a walk in the park, the Manhattan skyline at night. She recounts how the sound of geese over her Long Island summer house shifted from magical to menacing as she aged, becoming a reminder that nothing lasts.

The collection closes with two spare lists. "What I Won't Miss" includes dry skin, email (listed twice), technology, and funerals. "What I Will Miss" includes her children, her husband Nick, waffles, bacon, reading in bed, butter, coming over the bridge to Manhattan, and pie. Together, the lists serve as Ephron's understated farewell.