Wallflower at the Orgy (Paperback)

by Nora Ephron (Author)

Editorial Reviews

Product Description
From her Academy Award—nominated screenplays to her bestselling fiction and essays, Nora Ephron is one of America’s most gifted, prolific, and versatile writers. In this classic collection of magazine articles, Ephron does what she does best: embrace American culture with love, cynicism, and unmatched wit. From tracking down the beginnings of the self-help movement to dressing down the fashion world’s most powerful publication to capturing a glimpse of a legendary movie in the making, these timeless pieces tap into our enduring obsessions with celebrity, food, romance, clothes, entertainment, and sex. Whether casting her ingenious eye on renowned director Mike Nichols, Cosmopolitan magazine founder Helen Gurley Brown—or herself, as she chronicles her own beauty makeover—Ephron deftly weaves her journalistic skill with the intimate style of an essayist and the incomparable talent of a great storyteller.

About the Author
Nora Ephron is also the author of I Feel Bad About My Neck, Crazy Salad, Scribble Scribble, and Heartburn. She received Academy Award nominations for Best Original Screenplay for When Harry Met Sally…, Silkwood, and Sleepless in Seattle, which she also directed. Her other credits include the films Michael, You've Got Mail, and the play Imaginary Friends. She lives in New York City with her husband, writer Nicholas Pileggi.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 187 pages
• Publisher: Bantam (June 26, 2007)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0553385054
• ISBN-13: 978-0553385052
• Product Dimensions: 8 x 5.1 x 0.5 inches
• Shipping Weight: 5.6 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.0 out of 5 stars See all reviews (3 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #186,787 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

36 of 39 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Comedy, or history? Reprinting 30+ year old articles, June 30, 2007

By	Robert Schmidt (Honolulu, HI & Logan, UT USA) - See all my reviews (TOP 500 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)

Nora Ephron recently wrote I Feel Bad About My Neck, and wrote the screenplays for When Harry Met Sally and Sleepless in Seattle. Early in her career, she wrote for the NY Post, and then launched into writing about "life" for a well-known magazine. This book, Wallflower at the Orgy, is a reissued collection of those magazine columns with a new preface. The baker's dozen chapters are all from articles written in the late 60s.

One review stated "In this classic collection of magazine articles, Ephron does what she does best: embrace American culture with love, cynicism, and unmatched wit."

This is true. Ephron is a skilled people-watcher and behavior-interpreter. Whether discussing food (a favorite topic for her), fashion, or just life in New York, Ephron is witty, insightful, and classy. However, these articles, mostly focusing on, pardon the American, "has-beens", feel old. This is yesterday's A-list, and a list relevant to NY life, where, gasp, who you know is more important than whether you really know anything.

This reissue clearly was in response to the success of I Feel Bad About My Neck. I suggest you wait for something a bit more original.

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars I feel misled..., October 20, 2008

By	speak04 (Tucson, AZ USA) - See all my reviews

I loved I Feel Bad About My Neck. Really loved it. Thus, I immediately bought this book when I saw it. I read the back of the book and it sounded good - a collection of magazine articles written by Ephron. Ephron is a phenomenal writer, so I thought I couldn't lose.

What the back of the book doesn't tell you is that this book was originally published in 1970, so the articles are from the 60's. Based on the contemporary look of the cover, the plugging of I Feel Bad on the front, and the description on the back, I really had no idea that this book contained such old information. I am not yet 30. I had never even HEARD of many of the people highlighted in this book, let alone cared to read details about their lives and rise to fame. Don't get me wrong: the book is as well written as one might expect from Ephron. However, I believe the description on the book was highly misleading and I feel tricked into buying it simply because I liked I Feel Bad and wanted to read more Ephron.

This book may appeal more strongly to people who are old enough to remember the people and events chronicled in the articles than they do to people of my generation. If you belong to the under 50 crowd, this book is probably not going to appeal to you at all. Regardless, don't be fooled by the cover! This is not a new book, but a reprint of an old one. The publisher clearly is attempting to capitalize on the success of I Feel Bad without having to produce any new information and I feel taken in by a sham. Be warned and buy this book at your own risk.

4.0 out of 5 stars If you hated sleepless in seatle ,you might like this, February 28, 2009

By	simple sellers - See all my reviews

bet a lot of people 's jaws dropped down to their chins
when this was published, back in the late 60's. This was by the same lady who made
You got Mail,Michael and Sleepless and Seattle,but you can hardly tell in some parts this is the same person. A lot of these essays where written when she was in her early 20's, when she was a reporter for the New York Post. You can tell the person writing this is really gutsy,a little naive and full of strong opinions.You will also notice she is wise behind her years and trying to find out were she fits in this world.She writes and pokes fun at just about everything, food, her favorite books and movies, feminism, Mike Nichols and how stupid Women's Wear magazine is.She gives wry explanations of what her essays are about which I thought was a nice touch.

My favorite essay is called Makeover - When our tomboyish, fashion-impaired heroine is made over as part as an assignment for a newspaper she is writing for.It ends up being an extremely uncomfortable ordeal. First off,these two flamboyant fashionistas that are doing the makeover panic when they see her because they have never done a makeover on a average looking person(They are used to making over super models)
They argue about what to do with her and eventually cover her long face in three pounds of pancake makeup and make her look like a old lady....

Another good one is Beach Wife's which is actually a short
story about a lawyer's wife vacationing in the South Hampton's with her two young children,while her husband works on a big case over the summer.She has a great summer but misses her old life and can't wait to get back to it..

What you may not like about it
The author likes to talk about her sexual fetishes a lot, some of them may make you uncomfortable.
She has a self depreciating sense of humor and tries too hard to be funny some times.

She has a hard time writing in first person. A few of them are written like a high school student's history report. The one about Ayn Rand is a good example of this.


This little girl has gone far far away and I miss her : I hope she writes something like this soon. Most of the movies she writes/directs are way too gooey for me. I like a little bit of ironic black humor now and then. I like people to give their opinions on things even if I think are wrong.It makes them interesting and worth investing time in.
I also liked it because, it is about an era that I have heard a lot about from middleaged people's perspectives. This book is a nice twist because it is told from a young woman's perspective who is living through it all.