In the Cockpit With Erica Jong

By Carolyn See,
who may be reached at carolynsee.com
Friday, March 24, 2006

SEDUCING THE DEMON

Writing for My Life

By Erica Jong

Tarcher/Penguin. 279 pp. $22.95

As a writer, Erica Jong has always been endearing and fascinating -- in almost equal parts. Her first novel, "Fear of Flying," with its intrepid, headstrong heroine, Isadora Wing, who longs above all else for a "zipless you-know-what" -- that is, a sexual encounter with no strings attached, just lustful fun and plenty of it -- rocked the literary world and made a couple of generations of hopeful men ask: Is it really true that women are just as absolutely crazy about sex as men are? Isadora was funny and forthright and smart, and so was her creator.

As we all know, the novel sold millions of copies, and it marked Jong for life. She became an enthusiastic protegee of Henry Miller and along with him earnestly preached that sex was good and good for you, something like cornflakes. It was an interesting response to traditional American puritanical values and received ideas of literary refinement, but it backed Jong into a philosophical corner: In novels as in life, after hours of strenuous, steamy sex, what can you do as a follow-up that carries the same intensity and excitement? You can't go out and work for the elementary school silent auction. Hemingway managed his narratives by alternating sex with bullfighting and the blowing up of bridges, but what's a girl to do? Figure-skate?

Jong tried to solve this problem by writing period novels such as "Fanny: Being the True History of the Adventures of Fanny Hackabout-Jones" and "Serenissima: A Novel of Venice" (republished as "Shylock's Daughter"), full of adventure and swagger. They were lustful romps, but there's only so much romping a girl can do, and there was another troublesome aspect to it all: There was very little that was transgressive about any of this sex, nothing mysterious or exotic or forbidden; it was like working out with a medicine ball. I remember once sharing a dais with Jong, who turned out to be an extremely dignified, Nancy-Reagan-thin lady in a beautiful designer suit, still extolling the virtues of the zipless whatever. The disconnect was extraordinary -- and just a little bit nuts.

On the other hand, Jong is smart, learned, scholarly, in love with the world of traditional literature. In "Seducing the Demon" she talks about what writing has meant in her own life -- what she has tried to do throughout her long career: speak her own truth, no matter the consequences. The book is divided into an introduction and four chapters, and each segment shows us a different facet of this complex, proselytizing woman.

The introduction contains lengthy quotations from a commencement address she delivered after 9/11 to the College of Staten Island of the City University of New York: She fearlessly (or heedlessly) lectured members of the working class (that would be the parents of the graduates) on how the Bush administration was practicing Orwellian doublespeak, deceiving the public and debasing the language: "The Misleader-in-Chief says 'healthy forests' when he means clear-cutting trees, 'clear skies' when he mean pollution. His generals say 'pacify' when they mean killing people, 'collateral damage' when they mean killing foreign civilians. They say 'friendly fire' when they mean killing our own soldiers." Boos, hisses and only medium cheers all around. Nobody likes to be preached to, especially on graduation day.

Chapter 1 finds the young author at a leisurely lunch at the Algonquin being propositioned by a reptilian old publisher who has promised her half a million dollars for "Fear of Flying." She ends up performing a dubious sexual favor for him. It's that Isadora Wing voice again -- rowdy, self-deprecating and endearing: How could she have been so gullible and naive? Yet she was the one who sold the book (to someone else) and made a bundle, and now gets to make fun of him in print. She makes even meaner fun of poor old Martha Stewart, whose husband she once seduced at the Frankfurt Book Fair: "I have no idea whether she still goes around telling everyone I ruined her marriage, but I do wish I had the sexual power she attributes to me," Jong remarks, a little disingenuously.

Then, in Chapter 2, she's back to preaching. Alcohol is a depressive and bad for writers, she maintains; it's better by far to meditate or take a walk than drink or do drugs to summon the muse (although she writes later about her own fairly recent DUI).

Her chapter on Hollywood is, again, self-deprecating and hilarious, but her last, "Does Writing Trump Family?" is where the writer utterly waffles. She writes with pride about her daughter's work (and the girl's former cocaine habit, which seems out of bounds to me). She expresses her sorrow over her father's death, and she confesses her desire to best her mother and sisters. But never once does she address the question of the embarrassment her explicit, autobiographical, sexual writings must have caused her family, her husbands, even her friends. She seems entirely oblivious to her effect on her own personal world. But of course, that is the place where writing trumps family. She's smart enough to know that and exasperating enough to blow the whole thing off. She bets on being so endearing that we won't even notice.

Sunday in Book World

· Francis Fukuyama corrects the neocons.

· Shashi Tharoor dissects the ruling caste.

· Ross King finds his way through a labyrinth.

· Tracy Chevalier survives the Blitz.

· A boy risks his life to find his mother.