CRAZY SALAD: Some Things About Women

Like almost all the personal journalism we can think of, Nora Ephron's smart and voguish bons mots tend to bubble up quickly and evaporate soon after. She's the sort of writer who thinks in hyphenation: ""going-a-step-further"" for sex or, in extremis,""how-these-women-do-go-on-and-we-really-must-try-to-understand-what-they-are-getting-at-whatever-it-is"" for male chauvinism. Not all the time, you know-only every-now-and-then. Esquire seems to have picked her up to add a feminist-chic touch to their product and her opener ""On Breasts,"" included here, drew a large response from women who like to deplore their endowments (the boys-in-the-locker-room-with-their-tape-measures syndrome). Condescending as it is, her reportage of the Pillsbury Bake-Off is also funny. Her tenth-year reunion at Wellesley echoes the spirit of school reunions everywhere: who's Making It? She writes about the vulgarity of Linda Lovelace, a more substantial muckrake of the vaginal deodorant business, and then about why she gave up Group. She pays homage to Dorothy Parker. Clay Felker lured her over to New York, and at one point she hit on a formula: ""Every so often, you turn a comer and life, or the times, or the public-relations mechanism that makes the world go round throws out a hero. . . ."" That's Bobby Riggs. Other easy-to-write-about PR spin-offs: Julie Nixon, Rose Mary Woods, Pat Loud, Martha Mitchell and Jan Morris. Here they're all grotesques and fools, served up for your entertainment.