Erica Jong
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Erica Jong (née Mann, born March 26, 1942, in New York City, New York) is an American author and teacher. Her birth name was Erica Weisman.
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[edit] Career
A 1963 graduate of Barnard College, which is a women's liberal arts college, and with an M.A. in 18th century English Literature from Columbia University (1965), Jong is best known for her first novel, Fear of Flying (published in 1973), which created a sensation with its frank treatment of a woman's sexual desires.
Jong wrote Fear of Flying in the first person, and her main character suffers from the fear of flying in more than one way, including the literal one. As her airline flight is taking off from New York on its way to Vienna, Austria, she says, "My fingers (and toes) turn to ice, my stomach leaps upward into my rib cage, the temperature in the tip of my nose drops to the same level as the temperature in my fingers, my nipples stand up and salute the inside of my bra (or in this case, dress--since I'm not wearing a bra)..." She created a new type of heroine, that used an affair as a means to self-discovery, breaking the boundaries of the traditional narratives that used affairs as a consequence to disaster.
[edit] Personal life
Jong was born and grew up in New York City. She is the middle daughter of Seymour Mann (né Nathan Weisman, died 2004), a drummer turned businessman of Polish Jewish ancestry who owned a gifts and home accessories company [2] known as "one of the world's most acclaimed makers of collectible porcelain dolls". [3] Born in England of a Russian immigrant family, her mother, Eda Mirsky (1911-2007), was a painter and textile designer of Russian descent who also designed dolls for her husband's company.[1] Jong has an elder sister, Suzanna, who married Lebanese businessman Arthur Daou, and a younger sister, Claudia, a social worker who married Gideon S. Oberweger (the chief executive officer of Seymour Mann Inc.). Among her nephews is Peter Daou, who writes "The Daou Report" for salon.com and was one-half of the dance-music group The Daou.
Jong has been married four times. Her first two marriages, to college sweetheart Michael Werthman and to Allan Jong, a Chinese-American psychiatrist, share many similarities to those of the narrator described in Fear of Flying. Her third husband was Jonathan Fast, a novelist and social work educator, and son of novelist Howard Fast (this marriage was described in How to Save Your Own Life and Parachutes and Kisses). Her daughter from her third marriage, Molly Jong-Fast, has published a novel (Normal Girl) and a memoir (Girl, Maladjusted). Jong-Fast's writing speaks of the emptiness she encountered in trying to live out the sexual liberties lauded in her mother's work. Jong-Fast is working on her third book, a novel (The Social Climber's Handbook).
Jong is now married to Ken Burrows, a New York divorce lawyer. In the late 1990s Jong wrote an article about her fourth marriage in the magazine Talk. Since she and her prospective husband knew much about the hazards of marriage, they drew up a prenuptial agreement. After ten years, they noticed that they had never taken it out of the drawer where it had resided since its signing. She and her husband decided that it was no longer needed, so they ceremoniously burned it. This act has become a tradition in some circles.[citation needed]
Jong lived for three years, 1966-69 in Heidelberg, Germany with her second husband, while he was stationed at an army base there. She was a frequent visitor to Venice, and wrote about that city in her novel, Shylock's Daughter. Jong was mentioned in the Bob Dylan song "Highlands".
In 2007, her literary archive was acquired by Columbia University in New York City.
[edit] Views on September 11, 2001
Jong has publicly questioned the official version of the September 11, 2001 attacks. [4] She has made an appearance on Showbiz Tonight and more recently on Real Time with Bill Maher. Jong has openly expressed her support for Charlie Sheen in his 9/11-related interviews, calling him "a brave man."
[edit] Bibliography
- Fear of Flying (1973)
- How to Save Your Own Life (1977)
- Fanny, Being the True History of the Adventures of Fanny Hackabout-Jones (1980)
- Parachutes & Kisses (1984)
- Shylock's Daughter (1987): formerly titled Serenissima
- Any Woman's Blues (1990)
- Inventing Memory (1997)
- Sappho's Leap (2003)
[edit] Non-fiction
- Witches (1981,1997,1999)
- Megan's Two Houses (1984,1996)
- The Devil at Large: Erica Jong on Henry Miller (1993)
- Fear of Fifty: A Midlife Memoir (1994)
- What Do Women Want? Bread Roses Sex Power (1998)
- Seducing the Demon : Writing for My Life (2006)
- Bad Girls: 26 Writers Misbehave essay, "My Dirty Secret" (2007)
- It Was Eight Years Ago Today (But It Seems Like Eighty) (2008)
[edit] Poetry
- Fruits & Vegetables (1971,1997)
- Half-Lives (1973)
- Loveroot (1975)
- At The Edge Of The Body (1979)
- Ordinary Miracles (1983)
- Becoming Light: New And Selected (1991)
[edit] Awards
- Poetry Magazine's Bess Hokin Prize (1971)
- Sigmund Freud Award For Literature (1975)
- United Nations Award For Excellence In Literature (1998)
- Deauville Award For Literary Excellence In France
[edit] References
- ^ As her granddaughter Molly Jong-Fast has written in her memoir, Read from Book, "Grandma Eda painted flowers and children. Grandma’s flower paintings were filled with lavish colors, sensuous shapes, and the hand of her abused housekeeper, who’d been holding the flowers since early the day before. Grandma’s flower paintings were the stuff of midwestern hotel room walls. But Grandma’s portraits of her children and grandchildren seemed to express something more than just a love of flowers or housekeepers: Grandma’s paintings of her family highlighted her distaste for motherhood". See: [1]
[edit] External links
- Official website
- What this woman wants - The Guardian, April 3, 1999.
- In-depth interview and profile.
- Audio interviews by Don Swaim at Wired for Books.
- Review of Seducing the Demon at Powells.com
- Aging and Sex with Erica Jong - October 3, 2007
- Erica Jong at the Internet Movie Database
