Table Talk: Write it Funny

No sense getting bent out of shape

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The Chicago psychologist David A. Carbonell once found himself seated across from a client in her late thirties who suffered from anxiety. Her particular brand of angst manifested in an intense fear of illness and disease. “All my life I’ve been afraid I’ll die young,” she told him. Carbonell thought for a moment. Then he pointed out that it was probably too late for that — she was already middle aged.

I had to laugh when I read that story in Carbonell’s The Worry Trick: How Your Brain Tricks You Into Expecting the Worst and What You Can Do About It. It was fitting as I’d spent the week thinking about how humour could restore us to sanity. By humour, I mean witticisms and clever jokes and wry amusement. I mean tongue-in-cheek asides and perfectly-timed punchlines. I mean spontaneous, gut-deep laughter, that great bodily release that comes when our neurosis is unmasked.

But I also mean humour as in good humour. I mean something akin to charm. What we used to call pluck. A determination to confront challenges with a decent disposition and a desire not to wallow. A conscious decision to lighten up, even — especially — when things seem dire. As my friend Kathy once put it: wearing your life like a loose shawl.

All of this is why I adore Nora Ephron. I love When Harry Met Sally. I love Ephron’s essay about journalism. And I love her essay about not sleeping with JFK. (Have you read it? It’s not to be missed.) But I especially love Heartburn.

The food-themed novel is a loose fictionalization of Ephron’s divorce from Watergate reporter Carl Bernstein. According to Mike Nichols, who directed the movie version, Ephron cried for six months — and then she “wrote it funny.”

In the bestselling book, cookbook author Rachel is seven months pregnant when she learns that her columnist husband Mark is having an affair. Worst of all, he’s fallen in love with her. Rachel is devastated, but she is absolutely allergic to victimhood. Rather than giving in to self-pity, she cooks elaborate meals, cracks self-deprecating jokes, goes to group therapy, and spreads rumours that her rival has herpes. In the end, she throws a key lime pie in Mark’s face and packs her bags. The novel was scandalous when it came out, although, as Ariel Levy has noted in The New Yorker, “it is difficult to imagine anyone caring much about a pair of divorced journalists now.”

Since its publication in 1983, much has been made of how Ephron used Heartburn to shape the narrative around her marriage. “Because she wrote it funny, she won,” Mike Nichols has said. By the time the book’s 40th anniversary rolled around a few years back, Heartburn was mainly remembered for this theme of female empowerment — after all, it is, per one writer at Eater, “a book that is famously by and about a woman telling her own story as a form of agency and revenge.”

But I have to say, I think that misses the point. Revisiting a key passage of the novel, we find Rachel reflecting on the key lime pie incident. She recalls that her therapist had once asked her why she felt compelled to turn everything into a story. Rachel replied: “Because if I tell the story, I control the version.” Everybody always points to this sentence — see, it’s all about women taking back their power. But that is not all that Rachel said. She went on: “Because if I tell the story, I can make you laugh, and I would rather have you laugh at me than feel sorry for me. Because if I tell the story, it doesn’t hurt as much.” And then: “Because if I tell the story, I can get on with it.”

What we are missing here, in fact, is what we most need right now — fortitude. Writing it funny is not about triumphing over men. It’s about not giving in to despair. It’s not a feminist impulse, it’s a human one.

Heartburn is famous for its vinaigrette, which improbably played a role in another celebrity break-up, this time featuring Olivia Wilde and Jason Sudeikis. But it also contains fifteen other recipes — quick, easy, unpretentious dishes, the kind of food I like to cook and eat.

The Writer’s Table author Valerie Stivers cooked a whole menu from the novel for her column in The Paris Review. (The notorious key lime pie looks divine.) When Stivers came on the Lean Out podcast, she especially praised the pot roast recipe in Heartburn, which originally comes from the playwright Lillian Hellman. My husband and I have been making it ever since. It’s a breeze to throw together, leaving us lots of time to watch Nate Bargatze stand-up specials while it cooks.

Lillian Hellman’s Pot Roast

Adapted from the pot roast recipe in Nora Ephron’s Heartburn

Serves 8

4 pound good quality beef roast (we use a Blade roast)

1 can of cream of mushroom soup

1 onion bouillon cube, crumbled (I prefer the Go Bio! brand)

1 large onion, chopped

3 cloves of garlic, peeled

2 cups of dry red wine

1 bay leaf, crushed

1 teaspoon of dried basil

1 teaspoon of dried thyme

Preheat oven to 350 F. Slather beef roast in mushroom soup and place in a Dutch oven, on top of onion and garlic cloves. Top with crumbled bouillon cube, crushed bay leaf, basil, and thyme. Pour wine over and cover with a lid. Cook for 3 and 1/2 hours or so, until fork tender.