Erica Jong Web Site: Her works, books, poetry, and life

New York Social Diary
April 11, 2006
By David Patrick Columbia

Beautiful, sunny early Spring day in New York with temperatures in the low 60s.
I went down to Michael’s to lunch with Erica Jong who has a new book out called Seducing The Demon; Writing For My Life. She has published 19 books including poetry, non-fiction and novels. Her first, Fear of Flying, was published in 1974 and has sold 8 million copies and 18 million worldwide. I remember that one (and so do millions of others) for, among other things, the phrase “the zipless fuck.” In fact, after our lunch I was walking up Madison Avenue and bumped into a woman friend of mine. When I told her I’d just had lunch with Ms. Jong, she nodded and automatically repeated the phrase.

I’d met Erica Jong a couple of times before. I once went to a book party (for another author -- Phyllis Chesler) at her Upper East Side apartment. She’s a very warm and friendly person with none of the self-importance that best-selling writers can develop (or had all along). I would guess it’s her natural curiosity that’s kept her real: she’s always in the state of learning.

Seducing the Demon is a kind of memoir -- the memoir about writing. She’s a very up front person, which is also her objective as a writer. It is a book that if you’ve ever even thought about writing (becoming a writer), you can’t put down. It’s like walking in on a fascinating conversation that you think you can listen to briefly and leave . . . but you can’t. It’s the author’s candor about herself that is so compelling.

And her generosity which does not lessen the impact of her thoughts about people who are wide open to criticism. During our luncheon conversation she dropped in a line of W.H. Auden: “If perfect equality cannot be; Let the more loving one be me.”

From Seducing The Demon: “Once I was seated next to Robert Redford at a flashy New York dinner party and I was so scared by his good looks and his possible interest in me that I kept drinking wine till I passed out. I didn’t get a date with Redford, and not only was I not invited back but my hosts gleefully told the gossip columns. Hardly kind of them. But even elegant people can stoop low. I got sober after that -- and stayed sober a good long time. I even dated sober and had sex sober during my single days. Not an easy thing to manage.”

Our lunch date was for one o’clock. I, remarkably, was there before she was. We’d never sat down to have a one-on-one conversation before. There were a lot of well known people in the room including Peter Duchin, who stopped by to say Hello to Erica; Caroline Kennedy Schlossberg who was lunching with Gayle King, Oprah’s best friend and a-d-c, as well as Lesley Stahl, who stopped by to say hello to Erica, as well as Susan Silver (who writes “Search for Mr. Adequate” here on Fridays) who was lunching with Margo Howard (who had the piece in the Sunday Times Style section about having an affair with a married man). Margo and Erica have a mutual friend in Kitty Kelley.

Despite the occasional (and pleasant interruptions) the conversation was intense -- relationships, the male idea of sex, the female idea of sex; children (she has a daughter Molly) by her last husband; marriage. She’s been married four times -- the first being a college classmate. For the past eighteen years she been married to Ken Burrows, a divorce lawyer. This marriage took. Obviously.

It was almost three o’clock and the entire restaurant had cleared out and we were still talking away.

It was one of those times which were far more common when we were much younger when we could have just gone on and on talking. About ourselves. This life. And what we think we’ve learned and what we still haven’t grasped. All this from just having delved into Seducing The Demon.

Erica Jong, author of
Seducing the Demon: Writing for My Life