I was fine with it all, until Dunham’s reminiscence of Nora Ephron appeared on The New Yorker’s Culture Desk blog, revealing the most jealousy-inducing fact of them all: She’d been friends with Nora Ephron!

For female writers of a certain age (that is, older than 27), the Lena Dunham phenomenon has brought all sorts of raging jealousies to the surface. Awards! Critical acclaim! A 3.7 million-dollar book advance! Actual, real friends. Ephron had met her for lunch at Barneys, referred her to ear, nose http://www.datingranking.net/inmate-dating/ and throat doctors, and given her advice about “good white paint and how to handle old tile.” Unfair, I instantly thought. I’m doing okay in my career, and I certainly don’t have any desire to be in my 20s again, or to walk red carpets while dressed in rompers – but oh, what I would have given to have lunch with Nora Ephron! To soak up everything she knew about food, husbands, second-wave feminism, the art of collaborating, which puffy coat to wear on the set and why there aren’t any good dinner parties in California.

The next best thing, I suppose, is the new book “The Most of Nora Ephron,” nearly 600 pages of Ephron’s girl-friendly and relentlessly upbeat voice chattering in your ear about the subjects that consistently preoccupied her over her 50-year career as a journalist, novelist, screenwriter, playwright and blogger: food, friendship, feminism, journalism, sex, love and politics.

Ten of the 31 items on Ephron’s 2010 list, “What I Will Miss” – written well after she had already been diagnosed with the rare form of leukemia that would take her life in the summer of 2102 – are food or food-related. (altro…)