Informationen zum Autor Richard Cohen Klappentext The writer and filmmaker Nora Ephron is captured by her long-time and dear friend Richard Cohen in a recollection of their decades-long friendship.She Made Me Laugh Room 242 As she went in and out of consciousness, she was typically observing the process. In out, in out, she said. So it's happening. The room, 242 of New York Hospital, faced south, so if she raised her head she could see down the East River and, over a bit to the west, the skyline of midtown Manhattan. This was her city. She had come from the West to claim it, to make it her own, to know its writers and actors and politicians, but especially the writers because she was one herself, her fame as a director notwithstanding. People drifted in and out of the room. Husband. Children. Friends. Relatives. Her dying was taking longer than expected. She had acute myeloid leukemia and it had devolved into the inevitable and unavoidable pneumonia, and so the end was coming, although it was taking its own sweet time. She was awake and then asleep. Sometimes alert. Sometimes not. She lost track of time, once asking in late afternoon to watch an early morning TV show, Morning Joe. Outside, the river reversed course as estuaries do, sometimes going north, sometimes going south. It seemed apt. Calls were being made. The famous, the somewhat less famous; the talented, the brilliant; the immensely rich, the merely rich, the non-rich; the established writers, the young writers; the struggling young actors, the struggling older actors; Hollywood, New York, East Hampton, Paris, London, and the African American neighborhood of distant Riverhead on Long Island where she had put her longtime maid's daughter through college. A summoning was in process, a call to assemble for a memorial service. There would be no funeral, no imprecations to a god she did not believe existed. (She was mystified that anyone could believe otherwise, and she abhorred the senseless platitude that everything happens for a reason.) So a call went out to various hallsthe Ethical Culture School on Manhattan's Upper West Side and the Council on Foreign Relations on the Upper East Side. Too small. They were all too small. Slowly, it became apparent that a larger hall would have to be secured, something with about a thousand seats. Word of her impending death was spreading, and you could feel a stirring, a deep pain, a tsunami of bereavement that was building and building and which now seems appropriate but at the time was a surprise. I sat on the bed and talked to her. I told her how much she was loved, about all the love in the room. She raised herself and looked out the window, south to the skyline. She extended her left arm and scooped Manhattan into her. And out there, she said. So she could feel it. It didn't surprise her as much as it did the rest of us. Still, she was a writer, and writers do not have the deaths of celebritiesthe kitschy mourning of strangers, the sad bodega flowers, TV tears, and then the sign-off from the anchor, She will be missed. Writers just slip away. They get an obit in the Times, maybe, and then a small gathering in some dreary West Side apartment, and then, with any luck or some pull and the proper ethnic bona fides, interment in the weathered cemeteries of the Hamptons. Nora would have scoffed at that, anywaythe last-minute lunge toward religion. It was always dangerous to die while Nora was alive. She had things to say. Out there, past her outstretched arm, something was happening. There was a movement, a swelling, a something in the zeitgeista rolling groan of impending misery. She could feel it and she did not scoff at it because it was real and genuine. She had it coming, she seemed to feel. She had earned it.

Room 242

As she went in and out of consciousness, she was typically observing the process. “In out, in out,” she said. “So it’s happening.” The room, 242 of New York Hospital, faced south, so if she raised her head she could see down the East River and, over a bit to the west, the skyline of midtown Manhattan. This was her city. She had come from the West to claim it, to make it her own, to know its writers and actors and politicians, but especially the writers because she was one herself, her fame as a director notwithstanding.

People drifted in and out of the room. Husband. Children. Friends. Relatives. Her dying was taking longer than expected. She had acute myeloid leukemia and it had devolved into the inevitable and unavoidable pneumonia, and so the end was coming, although it was taking its own sweet time. She was awake and then asleep. Sometimes alert. Sometimes not. She lost track of time, once asking in late afternoon to watch an early morning TV show, Morning Joe. Outside, the river reversed course as estuaries do, sometimes going north, sometimes going south. It seemed apt.

Calls were being made. The famous, the somewhat less famous; the talented, the brilliant; the immensely rich, the merely rich, the non-rich; the established writers, the young writers; the struggling young actors, the struggling older actors; Hollywood, New York, East Hampton, Paris, London, and the African American neighborhood of distant Riverhead on Long Island where she had put her longtime maid’s daughter through college.

A summoning was in process, a call to assemble for a memorial service. There would be no funeral, no imprecations to a god she did not believe existed. (She was mystified that anyone could believe otherwise, and she abhorred the senseless platitude that “everything happens for a reason.”) So a call went out to various halls—the Ethical Culture School on Manhattan’s Upper West Side and the Council on Foreign Relations on the Upper East Side. Too small. They were all too small. Slowly, it became apparent that a larger hall would have to be secured, something with about a thousand seats. Word of her impending death was spreading, and you could feel a stirring, a deep pain, a tsunami of bereavement that was building and building and which now seems appropriate but at the time was a surprise.

I sat on the bed and talked to her. I told her how much she was loved, about all the love in the room. She raised herself and looked out the window, south to the skyline. She extended her left arm and scooped Manhattan into her. “And out there,” she said.

So she could feel it. It didn’t surprise her as much as it did the rest of us. Still, she was a writer, and writers do not have the deaths of celebrities—the kitschy mourning of strangers, the sad bodega flowers, TV tears, and then the sign-off from the anchor, “She will be missed.” Writers just slip away. They get an obit in the Times, maybe, and then a small gathering in some dreary West Side apartment, and then, with any luck or some pull and the proper ethnic bona fides, interment in the weathered cemeteries of the Hamptons. Nora would have scoffed at that, anyway—the last-minute lunge toward religion. It was always dangerous to die while Nora was alive. She had things to say.

Out there, past her outstretched arm, something was happening. There was a movement, a swelling, a something in the zeitgeist—a rolling groan of impending misery. She could feel it and she did not scoff at it because it was real and genuine. She had it coming, she seemed to feel. She had earned it.

But the rest of us were somehow, maybe inexplicably, amazed. Her family, her friends, the doctors chosen by her and thus credentialed as both brilliant and famous—all felt it. And were stunned. Yes, she was sort of famous and she had directed movies, written acclaimed screenplays and best sellers, and even had plays both on and off Broadway and another show in the works. There had been hints. Her books sold really well. And when she made an appearance, throngs materialize…