Crazy Salad and Scribble Scribble: Some Things About Women and Notes on Media

by Nora Ephron

From the bestselling author of I Feel Bad About My Neck : two classic collections of uproarious essays tackling everything from feminism to the media, from politics to beauty products, with her inimitable charm and distinctive wit.

This edition brings together some of Ephron’s most famous writing on a generation of women (and men) who helped shape the way we live now, and on events ranging from the Watergate scandal to the Pillsbury Bake-Off. In these sharp, hilariously entertaining, and vividly observed pieces, Ephron illuminates an era with wicked honesty and insight. From the famous “A Few Words About Breasts” to important pieces on her time working for the New York Post and Gourmet Magazine , these essays show Ephron at her very best.

Genres: Nonfiction, Essays, Audiobook, Humor, Memoir, Feminism, Biography

448 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1978

About the author

Nora Ephron was an American journalist, film director, producer, screenwriter, novelist, and blogger.

She was best known for her romantic comedies and is a triple nominee for the Academy Award for Writing Original Screenplay; for Silkwood, When Harry Met Sally... and Sleepless in Seattle. She sometimes wrote with her sister, Delia Ephron.

Reviews

[Kerri · Rating 4 out of 5]

I'm really confused by the reviews of this collection here on GoodReads; the idea that these essays are "dated" just because they were written in the 70s is a pretty ridiculous notion. Nora is writing about women's issues that are still completely relevant today from the objectification of women in media to the expectations of wives and mothers (and the expectation that women "need" to be wives and mothers at all... not to mention everything in the media section still being eerily easy to relate to (as a journalist myself) from revealing sources to the competition between journalists and the less than stellar state of newspaper offices etc. etc. As always, I love Nora's writing style and her witty takes on in-depth issues and lighthearted pieces alike... and I think that anyone who feels that these pieces are irrelevant today need to take a better look at the struggles women are still going through to reach equality in our society and the difficulties of being in the media.

[Joe Meyers · Rating 4 out of 5]

Don't understand the negativity about this book elsewhere on Good Reads. Ephron writes about women and the media in the 1970s giving us a witty, contemporary take on everything from Watergate to the feuds between various feminist factions. It's first rate social history. Not the short, witty personal essays of her final years but great stuff nonetheless.

[Carolyn F. · Rating 3 out of 5]

Audiobook I have read another reviewer mentioning they thought there would be more humor in this - there is humor but a lot of the essays/columns are political which isn't that funny. The essays/columns were a clear look at her side of some of the huge events during the 1970s which was interesting to me because I was ages 9-16, old enough to remember most of these events. The section that was most interesting was about the Women's Movement which I knew peripherally about but this got into the nitty gritty of it. I liked this audiobook but didn't love it. Scribble Scribble was especially hard to get through even with my slight interest in the events. Don't expect a lot of laughs - I think I smiled twice but I did do a lot of cringing and whispering "gross" during Crazy Salad. So be aware there are some graphic scenes mentioned there.

Crazy Salad I guess Nora Ephron had a column somewhere and these are some of her columns. What is fascinating to me is that although I was a child during the Women's Movement, I would wonder why other women would be so against it - like venomously against it. Why wouldn't a woman want to be paid the same as a man or be able to get credit alone, without a male signature? Nora was hugely involved in the movement and the stuff she talks about are shocking. But then she'll earnestly say something that is so naive and silly that it's like two different people are writing these columns and they are all within a couple of years.

I guess the Women's Movement had a branch that was into self-help especially concerning women's vaginal/pregnancy issues. They would literally get up on stage and take off their pants so people could walk by and see what the cervix looks like. Okay, weird but not awful. Then they talked about removing all the blood from the cervix during a period and how isn't it great that you can even perform an abortion on yourself as long as you aren't too far along. What the hell!?! I'm all for a woman's body is a woman's body to make her own decisions about but this is so irresponsible. They even did an abortion on a woman at another meeting while she was on stage. Later she had a terrible infection and had to go to the hospital. Doctors at the time were saying how this isn't good for women but of course they're men so whatever. Nora talks about how she is afraid to really say anything unfavorable because she doesn't want to rock the boat about women's rights. WTF! Now I understand why women were so anti-feminism back then. Some of them were nuts!

Then in another column Nora was talking about the porn Deep Throat and how everybody at that time were saying what a fantastic movie it was (which it isn't by the way). So Nora watched it, thought it was degrading. She then interviewed the female star. Nora Ephron was totally hung up on why Linda Lovelace shaved her pubic hair. She said she'd never heard of anyone doing that and Linda said well now you have. Nora thought that was just bizarre. This is the thing that will get you to say "How bizarre" not the women on stage?

Scribble, Scribble This is more political essays/columns. Interesting but unless you're my age or older or interested in political history you would probably find it boring. Lots and lots of columns about Nixon, which she almost portrays as a buffoon and his cabinet as opportunistic. I'm not a fan of Nixon but to belittle his power and expertise in wielding it is a little artless. While he's scrambling for purchase and after he left office it's easy to talk about him in that way but that doesn't give what he did while in office any particular influence which his time in office did have.

Also, I would hate to have been on her bad side because she eviscerates people in some of these columns. Some seem to deserve it although since these were written in the early and mid 1970s I'm not familiar with anyone but the big names as I was preteen and younger during this time. So, sometimes her stories are interesting and then other times I'm bored.

[Louise · Rating 3 out of 5]

This collection of short pieces is my first foray into Ephron's writing. While I found most of the pieces entertaining, Crazy Salad does suffer from being dated. A lot of the politicians and journalists mentioned were before my time. I got bored enough of names with no faces that I mostly skimmed the Scribble Scribble section.

[Christine · Rating 3 out of 5]

Well, I got through Crazy Salad, but not Scribble, scribble. Crazy Salad had many articles on the first wave women's movement, how those women got along, changing roles for women, etc. Those essays and Ephron's comments on her own experience of her gender, I think, make interesting reading regardless of the passage of time. As most of the essays were timely, it depends on what you are interested in reading--her writing ranges from her beginnings to the NY Post, to Watergate, to the Miami Social Register. So, both light, and political. There's also an article on a miniseries? entitled An American Family, which sounds like it could have been the first reality TV show.

So, I ran out of steam halfway through the second book, scribble, scribble. Looking at the titles of the remaining chapters, I new i would not be familiar with what she wanted to discuss, and as it wasn't more personal anecdotes or feminism, I decided to pass on it. Still, what I read was flawlessly written, with an engaging voice. I would definitely recommend Crazy Salad, especially to someone who wants to see a more personal portrait of first wave feminism. I read this as an ebook on kindle from my public library.

[Kaethe · Rating 5 out of 5]

Crazy Salad and Scribble Scribble: Some Things About Women and Notes on Media (Vintage) - Nora Ephron  Having recently read Crazy Salad again, I didn't feel like I needed to give it another go. But I have never read Scribble Scribble. So, that was great.
Ephron started a s a journalist, and I think that training informs her essays. They are personal, they are reflective, but they are also about something real, not just aimless musing.
Quality writing, often amusing, and still vital and fresh.
Library copy
 
(edited for afterthought) In case you're wondering, apparently none of the material from Scribble Scribble made it into The Most of Nora Ephron, although some from Crazy Salad did. Just to clear things up for anyone else who might be considering a massive Ephron read.

[Ivonne Rovira · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book, needless to say, is composed of two collections of articles penned by the late, great Nora Ephron. The pieces from the books Crazy Salad: Some Things About Women and Scribble, Scribble: Notes on the Media were originally published in magazines, mostly in Esquire and in the 1970s, and are gathered in this omnibus for their third outing.

The pieces in Scribble Scribble seem to have weathered better than those in Crazy Salad. I'm tempted to believe that that's because I was a journalist and have an insider's love of journo shoptalk. I read Scribble Scribble in the 1980s and loved it then. However, I'm also a feminist, and that didn't help me to like the Crazy Salad pieces. Four Crazy Salad pieces have stood the test of time (i.e., "The Littlest Nixon," "Crazy Ladies: II," "Rose Mary Woods -- The Lady or the Tiger?" and "Miami"). A few pieces provide an eye opener as to how pervasive and destructive sexism, particularly "Bernice Gera, First Lady Umpire" and "The Pig." But nearly all of the pieces are quite dated and too many simply are unreadable (e.g., "The Hurled Ashtray," "On Consciousness Raising"). "Bake Off" simply comes off as snobbery.

Let's just declare the omnibus to be two books: two stars for Crazy Salad; four for Scribble Scribble, making an average of three stars for the lot. Readers would be best served by skipping the Crazy Salad and devouring the main course of Scribble Scribble.

[Edward Champion · Rating 5 out of 5]

An invaluable volume collecting Ephron's two books as a journalist (CRAZY SALAD and SCRIBBLE SCRIBBLE). Her essay on feminists scrambling for the top position is a vital document of this era, as is her brutal piece on Ted White (which demonstrates the dangers, even in the 1970s, of becoming a lazy and lassitudinous writer). Ephron's barbs are, as usual, pointed and principled. She sees the world with a fierce judgmental clarity and is fearless about offering asides on nearly everything. I'm stunned by the low rating here at Goodreads. This collection really should be celebrated as a vital work of New Journalism.

[Katie Longbottom · Rating 2 out of 5]

I don’t know… maybe it’s unfair to give a bad review to a book that covers topics I have zero interest in. I was just excited to read something by ~Nora Ephron~ because I’d heard wonderful things about her writing. Admittedly she has a particular charm that I do like, but unless you’re particularly interested in 70’s USA politics and cultural references then I would not recommend this book.

[Ayelet Waldman · Rating 4 out of 5]

Her death made me so very sad, so I read a bunch of her essays.

[Amanda · Rating 4 out of 5]

I found some of the Crazy Salad essays a little much, but I particularly enjoyed the Scribble Scribble essays. Really fun.

[John Mchugh · Rating 4 out of 5]

Vintage Nora Ephron essays, all written in the 1970s, but offered up by Random House in one handy place in the year she died - 2012. Prior to reading these essays, I was only familiar with her work via her screenplays: Julie & Julia; You've Got Mail; When Harry Met Sally; and Silkwood (to name a few). The essays gave me a full-throated sense of the "voice" that lies beneath the overarching sensibility inhabiting those movies. While I enjoyed the essays collected in the Scribble Scribble portion of the book, I found the Crazy Salad essays both more informative and more captivating. WOMEN. WHAT DO THEY WANT? Well, Nora Ephron had her own take on the answer to that eternal question men find so puzzling. The essays are from the 1970s, but the writing and the thinking are by no means out of date.

[Jennifer · Rating 2 out of 5]

I read this book for a book club. The woman who suggested that we read it (and many other women in the group) grew up in the 70s and thought it would be interesting to revisit these essays on what was going on with women at the time. I ended up being the only one in the group who finished it. The women who lived during that time kind of had the opinion that, after reading a bit, they realized they didn't really want to go back to the 70s. I was born in the late 70s so I just found some of the material a little unrelatable. Some of the chapters were interesting for me to read, but some of the people and references she made I didn't know off the top of my head and had to look up. It took me a little effort to get through because I wasn't fully engaged with the book.

[Moira]

I got this because it apparently reprints part of Scribble Scribble (this book itself seems to be the electronic edition of Crazy Salad Plus Nine, eight pieces from the earlier book plus an uncollected essay), which is really hard to find, but is often praised as Ephron's most hard-hitting nonfiction collection -- probably not a coincidence.


ETA No, apparently this e-book reprints all of both Crazy Salad and Scribble Scribble. Good for Vintage.

[Kimberly · Rating 3 out of 5]

I am a huge Nora Ephron fan, but this book was not at all what I expected. I found it to be quite different from her other works. Here, she covers many relevant and interesting events and issues of the 1970s. Everything from Watergate to the Feminist Movement to the Pillsbury Bake-Off are included. Was it "uproarious" as the publisher has stated in its book blurb? I think not. But it was witty and captured an eventful period in history.

[Victoria · Rating 4 out of 5]

I first read like half this book in ... 2013? 2014? around then. Glad I revisited. Some of these essays are so good you could change the nouns and dates and trick someone into thinking you wrote it last week. Some have aged less well (including one that’s just straight up transphobic).

[Ana · Rating 3 out of 5]

These articles are still relevant.

[Leah · Rating 5 out of 5]

I love Nora Ephron so much. I fell in love with her when I listened to the DVD commentary she and Rob Reiner did for When Harry Met Sally, my all-time fave. I’d only known her as a filmmaker before then. I had no idea she was a journalist who wrote a couple of novels and, later, essay collections. I’ve been slowly making my way through her oeuvre ever since, savoring every bit because I know it’s finite. Heartburn, I Feel Bad About My Neck, and I Remember Nothing are so good that I’ve read them all multiple times, in print and audio. I listened to the latter two again as I made my way through this, and they made me so wistful.

This is really two books smooshed together into an anthology of her columns for Esquire and New York magazines in the 1970s. Crazy Salad features columns on women and Scribble Scribble has columns about the media. I loved reading them as primary sources, if you will, on that decade. I wasn’t alive in the ‘70s, so everything I’ve read about them has been in contemporary books looking back on them. Reading this was like being immersed in the era, and I loved learning about so many things I hadn’t heard of, or different facets of things I’ve read about. Of course I know about Watergate, but I didn’t know details about Nixon’s secretary. I know about The Battle of the Sexes, but I didn’t know about the tennis match BEFORE that one with Billie Jean King, the one between Bobby Riggs and Margaret Court. I learned about the development and marketing of vaginal deodorants, about what it was like to see Deep Throat in the theater, about consciousness-raising groups, about Washington socialites’ antics, about the people behind the milestone media moments I learned about in my journalism school textbooks, about the reverberations after JFK’s assassination, about the Pillsbury Bake-Off, about feminism in Israel, about the first high-profile trans person. So much! Each column was fascinating and educational.

This is such a rich, diverse, funny, enlightening, and supremely well-written collection and I enjoyed it so much.

[Randee · Rating 3 out of 5]

Nora Ephron was one hell of a writer. The material in these two volumes is very dated. I admit that I had to plough through with determination, more than pleasure, all the essays on Watergate, Women’s Liberation and subjects that are tied heavily to the 1970’s. But there is no question that Ephron’s commentary is interesting, well thought out and well written. It’s awful that her life was cut short because I am positive that she would have continued to write interesting pieces well into her nineties.

[Kim · Rating 2 out of 5]

This book is compromised of essays written in the 1970s, and some of it manages to be surprisingly timeless, particular the parts of Crazy Salad that appear earlier in this book. However much of it is also very dated and covers people and events I've never heard of it and didn't take an interest in through her essays.

[Kristina Howard · Rating 5 out of 5]

Even though her essays were from the 70s many issues are still relevant today (sadly). I also learned a lot about our culture and history. For example, did you know that there was a reality tv show about the Loud family in the 70s?!? Every day I was googling something new. However, Nora isn't just reporting history but giving an insightful interruption of events, movements, and people.

[Dragana · Rating 4 out of 5]

I read most of the articles, I skipped a few about people I didn’t care about. Nora was a great writer and even since the earlier part of her career it’s clear. The articles are from the 1970s, she writes about meeting President Kennedy, about the women liberation movement, about many things we might also take from granted today about being a woman. It’s an interesting look back at how much has changed and how little at the same time.

[Cassie Rauch]

even though some of her opinions are dated and she was talking a lot about politics in the 70s which i know absolutely nothing about, i found this book very fun to read and will be reading her other books

[Marshall · Rating 4 out of 5]

(4.5 stars for Crazy Salad, 3 stars for Scribble Scribble)

"Journalists are interesting. They just aren't as interesting as the things they cover. It is possible to lose sight of this. I would like not to."

[Soquel · Rating 2 out of 5]

Meh! I was hoping for more of the charm that her screenplays have.

[Cecilia · Rating 3 out of 5]

Fan of Crazy Salad, but skimmed through most of Scribble Scribble (reflections on 1970s media)

[Oriana · Rating 4 out of 5]

Es fascinante leer la manera en la que pensaba Nora Ephron y todos los aspectos mundanos de la vida diaria que le maravillaban y se dedicaba a analizar. Me salté un par de columnas muy específicas sobre la política estadounidense, porque sinceramente no me interesaban los temas, pero otras, como los insights de salas de redacción, las mujeres alrededor de la política y los medios, entrevistas a actrices de la época, y cuentos personales sobre tíos y primos, me fascinaron y no podía soltar el capítulo hasta que terminaba.
Gracias por tanto, Nora. Perdón por tan poco.

[Sionainn]

Dnf
Lots of 1970’s stuff in the beginning and I really wasn’t interested…
20%

[Diane Zimmer · Rating 4 out of 5]

3.5. I liked a few of her others better than this one!

[Chris Wilson · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.5. At the beginning Nora says this is just stuff she wanted to write about and therefore the collection wasn't mean to be a thorough examination at the time, which is both a blessing and curse. Some of the entries are excellent (hanging out at the '72 convention with the women's movement leaders, much of the media stuff as it covers the rise of the celebrity journalist and general failures of the industry that have plagued it for four decades now) but some of it is so of its time that it would be perfect for someone doing a deep dive on 70s culture but is tough without additional context. All of it is very smart and funny because no duh of course but I will note the last piece in Crazy Salad feels like a founding document for the TERF movement.