San Francisco Chronicle

By Leah Garchik
Wednesday, March 29, 2006

Erica Jong, whose new book is "Seducing the Demon; Writing for My Life,'' spoke to the Monday Group at lunch at the Big Four this week. Her audience included people of varying political persuasions. The group's four organizers include Chris Boskin, whose husband was chair of the Council of Economic Advisors to George Bush the elder, and Gretchen Leach, whose husband was until recently ambassador to France for George Bush the younger. At lunch two years ago, Richard Goldman, describing himself as a lifelong Republican, told about why he was going to vote for Kerry. One of the women introduced herself on Monday by ever-so-gently alluding to her work against the war in Iraq. In table conversation before Jong's formal talk, some of this political background was mentioned.
Jong happened to say in that conversation that she often gets calls from administrators of Arianna Huffington's blog urging her to write for them, about whatever makes her angry. So in the Q&A after her talk, I asked if there was a difference between what made her angry when she wrote "Fear of Flying'' and what makes her angry when she writes nowadays.
As a young writer, she said, she'd been angry about feminist issues. "I'm angry now about the corruption of language,'' she said. "I'm angry when the government says it's talking about 'healthy forests' '' and "means clear-cutting trees.'' References to WMDs, she said, were corrupt and "body bags'' have become " 'transfer cases,' the official Pentagon term for aluminum boxes bringing home our brave young people. ... I'm angry about the lying from political figures that people accept as their due.'' She went on to say that Hollywood people lie, and "advertisers lie ... and people are not mad enough about it,'' but it was clear her strongest wrath was political.
I thought it polite to keep my eyes on the speaker instead of turning my head to check out whether anyone was offended. One of the final questions/comments came from gracious hostess Leach, who said how stimulating the talk had been, and how eager she was to re-read "Fear of Flying.'' Boskin then cheerfully thanked Jong and plugged her book as "fabulous.''
There was room under the roof for those with differing opinions. Which is something that Mark Leno, who told The Chronicle that that fundamentalist Christian youth group should get out of town, and Tom Ammiano, who wrote a supervisorial resolution condemning them, could learn.

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