Not the same old thing

BEFORE Nora Ephron the director, or Nora Ephron the screenwriter, or even before Nora Ephron the novelist, there was Nora Ephron the journalist and essayist. \o7That\f7 Nora Ephron, known for her wit, candor and vulnerability, has returned and is holding forth in "I Feel Bad About My Neck and Other Thoughts on Being a Woman." The slender volume of essays debuted this week at No. 4 on the New York Times bestseller list.

Sales have been brisk, no doubt because it's the kind of book women don't get only for themselves; they purchase copies for their best friends and sisters, and buy more to be given as birthday gifts and party favors. Women who find themselves somewhere between the arrival of their first wrinkle and death have to hear only the title to get the message. They get that she gets it, and thank God for that. Ephron is a happily married, successful writer-director with grown children who aren't doing eight to 20 upstate, so when she whimpers about the indignities and annoyances that accompany getting older, readers who have followed the high highs and low lows of her life know that her rants are dependably free of bitterness.

But she does feel bad about her neck. And about needing reading glasses. And about having to spend so much time on personal maintenance, just to avoid looking like someone who no longer cares, that it's practically a second career. Make no mistake, though, she does not \o7hate\f7 her neck. She hates her purse, hence the second essay in the book, called "I Hate My Purse."

Ephron's purse, resting beside her in a booth at the Beverly Hills Hotel Cabana Club Cafe on a toasty August day, was a smart, woven straw tote in shades of brown and tan. Even in bright sunlight, her neck looked pretty good, better than many 65-year-old necks. Although one of her firmly held beliefs is that after 60, life should not be lived without a collection of turtleneck sweaters, her exposed neck was adorned with tiny pearls spaced along a delicate golden chain. Her face was unlined (thanks, as she reports in the book, to her dermatologist and the miracle of cosmetic fillers), her hair looked casually terrific (it should, considering how long coloring and styling it takes). Her teeth were beautiful (they should be, since the cost of making them camera-ready white approximates the price of a Jeep Wrangler). All these pursuits she cheerfully classifies as "pathetic attempts to turn back the clock."