For Jongs, No Fear of Writing

By Heidi Mae Bratt, New York Post, August 7, 1997

The mother-daughter relationship, if only it could be as easy as writing a novel.

Feminist author Erica Jong, who just published her seventh novel, "Inventing Memory" (HarperCollins), and daughter Molly Jong-Fast, who is trying her hand at writing, know that both ain't easy.

[Read Molly Jong-Fast's recent Mode magazine article]

But they also know that their own relationship and writing are very much intertwined.

Mother has just written an historical novel of Jewish American women, where she picked her own family tree for research.

Daughter is mining her sometimes turbulent Jewish American life growing up in the shade of fame and literati for her sharp, witty pieces that she recently debuted at a public reading at the Gotham Comedy Club.

"I think my mom thinks I'm a talented writer," says Jong-Fast, a Barnard sophomore who's also working on her first novel, with the working title "Girl." "And I think she's relieved. What would she do if I wasn't?"

Jong says she's amazed at her daughter--who was dyslexic and vowed as a teenager never to make writing her profession.

Now, Jong says, her daughter reads parts of her novel saying, "Mom, don't be upset about this, this is really not you."

"If I can't understand a writer using their family for comic material, who can?" asks Jong laughing. (Most of Jong's books, including her most recent memoir, "Fear of Fifty," focused on herself.)

While 55-year-old mother is busy critically reading her daughter's work in progress, Jong-Fast has not read the latest, let alone any of her mom's books.

"I know how much of life creeps into novels," explains Jong-Fast. "I guess it comes down to not wanting to read about your mother having sex."

But not reading the books isn't going to save Jong-Fast from penetrating questions about her mother.

Earlier this summer, while accompanying her mother on a book tour in England, along with the requisite press attention came the tiresome question posed to Jong-Fast: "How does it feel to be the daughter of the 'Queen of Erotica?'" That question, she laments, has been stuck to her like a nagging piece of toilet paper on her shoe.

Then after being cornered by a pesky persistent journalist who asked, "How many men has your mother slept with?" Jong-Fast shot back in perfect dead pan, "Do you know how many men your mother has slept with?"

Jong, who is married to her fourth husband, attorney Kenneth Burrows, says she completely understands why her daughter wants to distance herself from the novels: "It's a way that children of writers defend themselves."

While some writer-mothers may feel that a child going into the family business may be too close for comfort, Jong offers the fact there is no competition.

"If there's going to be a "Fear of Flying" for the '90s," says Jong, "it's going to be Molly's generation that is going to write it, not mine."

Copyright ©1997 The New York Post

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