To Hell and Back With Author and Screenwriter Delia Ephron ’66

在中心 迪莉娅·埃夫隆广受好评的回忆录 第十街左转: 生命的第二次机会 is the author’s 2017 stem cell transplant — a brutal treatment, so grueling that it drives this profoundly resilient woman to the very edge of her endurance, 挑战她的生存意志. But with compelling prose and deft narrative technique, Ephron brings readers through it all with her. She weaves a riveting story framed by the loss of her beloved husband 杰里 (in the wake of her sister author 诺拉 Ephron’s death) that recounts her painful, 危险的, 最后是奇妙的旅程. Above all, this story of near-death and 生存 is a love story.

她是怎么做到的? Ephron’s mastery flows from her decades of writing novels, 论文, 文章, 和剧本, 包括 You’ve Got Mail, The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants, 挂 (根据她的小说改编). But when Ephron attended 十大电竞游戏综合排名 in the mid-’60s, she majored in history and had little interest in becoming a writer.

在这里, Ephron reflects on the turning point that led her to write, 在晚年“疯狂地坠入爱河”, the experience of publishing her deepest personal story.

第十街左转 引起了如此多的关注. 你对这种反应有什么看法?

The nicest thing about this has just been how people have sent me emails, telling me [how they] emotionally connected to my story, 但也, 他们在给我讲他们的故事. Cancer is out there everywhere, especially when you get older. Everyone has had some sort of bout with it or has lost somebody to it.

I felt very lucky to have these amazing connections. Somebody writes me through my website, it’s [about] their story. And 我猜 because my story is so personal, people feel they know me, they do. So it sort of sets the groundwork for an intimate exchange.

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After your illness and treatment, what led you back to writing, what drew you to
写下你的旅程?

[After the trauma of having a stem cell transplant], 我想如果我再也不写作了, 没关系. 我会没事的. 但后来, 大约一年后, 我的作家的心开始跳动, I looked at the last four years of my life, 开始, 我猜, 杰瑞的死. [He was] my husband of many, many, many years. And I am a writer and a novelist and a screenwriter. [Those four years have] everything in a story that you could ever want to write about. 有损失, 有爱, 有友谊, 有狗, 有疾病的, 生存, 伟大的爱, 伟大的医学. I don’t think I ever wrote anything this really deep about myself.

The story of your career trajectory is often linked to your late sister, 诺拉, 和你们一起工作, 包括 writing the script for the movieYou’ve Got Mail. 你是如何发展你的作家生涯的?

There was a real moment in my late 20s where I suddenly looked at myself and said, “这是什么?”, 你是谁??’ And I remember saying to my first husband, ‘I think I want to be a writer.这有点疯狂. 我的父母是作家. 诺拉已经很成功了. And my [first] husband said to me, ‘I don’t want you to be a writer.我问为什么. 他说，‘假如你出名了. 我不想让你出名.’ So I said, ‘I promise I won’t be famous.’ This tells you everything you need to know about who I was. 我知道我必须离开他. I mean, if someone wants to crush your dreams, it’s best to get out. [That’s when] I went to New York, to the arms of my girlfriends, I made serious plans. 我知道我有足够两年用的钱. I knew within two years I had to get published in 《世界十大电子游戏平台》 because at that time that was the only thing that could change your life. And I knew that I could not spend my time writing for women’s magazines because I knew that wasn’t going to make any difference in my career. Almost two years later, I was down to like $500. I was eating chocolate pudding my way: I was making a little hole in the skin and scooping the pudding out from underneath. 我想，‘我吃得像个孩子.’ And I wrote 500 words about how children eat food. 我把它卖给 《世界十大电子游戏平台》, they ran it on the back page of the [Sunday] magazine, 我的电话开始响个不停. 星期一有人给了我一份出书合同.

Do you have advice for a Barnard student or really anyone who wants to be a writer?

你总是要听从自己的内心. It’s about understanding who you are and what you really want to write about. And that is what will make you a writer who tells your own stories. 

很大一部分 第十街左转 is the kismet surrounding falling in love with your current husband, 彼得, after the loss of your beloved second husband, 杰里. Your connection to 彼得 stemmed from a series of remarkable coincidences and your sister 诺拉. Any advice for finding true love later in life?

I absolutely don’t know how one goes about that. Except I do think I must have been open to it. I think it’s about really trying to recognize what you know about yourself now and what you’re wise enough to understand about another person.