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

Still a teaser, Erica Jong unzips new book
By Bill Castanier
City Pulse
March 15, 2006

The diners looked up from their garden salads at the petite woman yelling “Tampax” and politely averted their eyes. Nearly 30 years after publication of “Fear of Flying,” Erica Jong continues to provoke.

At a recent luncheon at Schuler Books in Eastwood Towne Center, Jong reflected on more than 40 years of professional writing and discussed her new book, “Seducing the Demon: Writing for My Life.”

When “Fear of Flying” was published in 1973, it was the first mainstream book about a woman openly exploring her own sexuality, and a classic coming-of-age story for women in their 30s. It went on to become a cult classic best seller, with more than 15 million copies in print.

Jong readily admits she was not the first woman to write openly about female sexuality. She fondly invoked the influence of Simone de Beauvoir, Anne Sexton and Sylvia Plath on her writing and life.

“Even though the doors to sexuality opened in the 1960s,” Jong said, “it took nearly 10 years for a book of fiction about women’s sexuality, written by a woman, to pass through the door.”

Jong reminded her listeners that only 10 years before she wrote the tale of Isadora Wing, the sexual star of ‘Fear of Flying’ and the proponent of the “zipless fuck,” sexually provocative books like “Lolita” and “Tropic of Cancer” were sneaked past customs in brown paper wrappers.

In “Seducing the Demon,” Jong tells of her lifelong affair with fantasy. “Without fantasy sex is just friction,” she writes. Isadora Wing’s “zipless fuck” is pure no-guilt, no-baggage sex, a dreamlike encounter where “zippers fall away like rose petals.”

Not that she hasn’t pursued the real thing. Her new book, ostensibly a guide to writing, shows that Jong can still write with a passion about sex, and not just the imaginary kind. Jong laces her new book with some interesting anecdotes, including her infamous one-night stand with Martha Stewart’s husband.

Why pay so much attention to sex in a book on writing? “Sex is one of the demons that makes you write,” she said at the luncheon. “It’s the forbidden stuff we want to write about. There is a fear of writing about it. We are so scared about being judged that we look for every excuse to procrastinate.”

Jong grew up in the rich New York literary community of the 1960s. She attended Barnard College, a haven for creative types, and was a published poet in her 20s. Her classmates included Martha Stewart, and she was a part of the bohemian coffee house scene that included Allen Ginsberg and Jack Kerouac. Jong fondly recalled how Ginsberg, a Buddhist and frequent meditator, frequently called her and shouted into the phone “are you seated?”

Jong may be remembered for “Fear of Flying,” but she has written lots of historical fiction, several memoirs, a children’s book with her daughter Molly and this new confessional, which goes down like the good wine that has gotten her in trouble in the past.

“Seducing the Demon” takes a gutsy look at what it takes to write. Jong said that for her, writing has always been about “telling the truth in the age of lies.”

“I find it perplexing and deceptive that the government can call a casket a transfer device,” she said. “Language matters — it matters a lot”.