. . . And an Older Erica Jong Learns To Love Zippers

"No . . . ," says Jong-Fast, who lives with her husband and toddler son just blocks from her mother's Manhattan home.

Not eighty-something. But older . A mom. A grandmother. No one, Jong-Fast says, wants to think of their parents having sex. When she was 15, she started reading "Fear" and couldn't bear to finish it. It had to be at least partly autobiographical, right? The horror.

Still, even if Jong-Fast can't bring herself to read her mother's writing -- she doesn't want to censor her mother, and she knows she would be tempted -- she's happy that other people are reading her mother -- 18 novels, tomes of poetry and memoirs after "Fear's" debut.

"I feel like, ' Finally , people get her.' She's totally honest, and weird and great. They finally get her, warts and all."

But not everyone gets Jong and her particular brand of brash and bawdy honesty. She is alternately viewed as the patron saint of feminine sexual autonomy and the poster girl for runaway self-absorption. Kirkus Reviews praises "Demon" as a "zesty, savvy, freewheeling memoir of the writing life," while the Chicago Sun-Times scolds: "Jong today is a mess."

Critics were no less schizoid in 1973: In a New York Times review, Henry Miller declared that "Fear" was just like his "Tropic of Cancer," but "not as bitter and much funnier"; while critic Paul Theroux dismissed Jong's heroine, Isadora Wing, as "a mammoth pudenda."

"First of all, 'Fear of Flying' was a seminal book," says playwright Eve Ensler, who invited Jong to perform in an off-Broadway presentation of "The Vagina Monologues." "It completely got women to think about their sexuality and their bodies and freedom in a whole new way."

Jong came of literary age at 31 with "Fear of Flying," pushing herself front and center into the sexual zeitgeist with Isadora Wing, who yearned for anonymous, ecstatic sex, where buttons and braces flew open magically and, after the last hurrah, phantom lovers melted away with no repercussions.

Her own life followed a similar trajectory, with sometimes painful results. She was living with husband No. 3, screenwriter Jonathan Fast, before she'd divorced husband No. 2. She was arrested in Beverly Hills and charged with DUI after one too many glasses of wine in 2004. She slept with a publisher who happened to be married at the time to Martha Stewart, her Barnard College classmate. Stewart reportedly told everyone, Jong says, that she'd wrecked Stewart's marriage. (Stewart's publicist did not return a phone call requesting comment.) Jong writes about it now, in "Demon," because for the past 22 years, everyone's been asking her, "What the hell happened between you and Martha Stewart?" And with this book, which began as a self-help book for young writers and morphed into a memoir, she decided to tell the truth as she saw it.

"It was one of the biggest mistakes of my life," she says, ruefully. "It was truly stupid. And it was hurtful."

In person, it appears that time has treated her kindly: She's pretty, soft and curvily compact, her face all rosy cheeks and pampered glow. But her impressive decolletage provides a leathery contrast, mute evidence of seasons past spent worshipping the sun.

As a young writer, she says, older women writers treated her horribly. Rebuffed, Jong, who studied poetry as a graduate student at Columbia University, sought mentorship in Henry Miller.

So what does Jong see as the headline for the next wave of feminism? Mentorship.

Mentorship?

She explains: It's about taking the next generation by the hand and escorting it into the future. Showing an interest. And telling the truth about the past.

"Feminism has to be about the next generation," Jong says before packing up her luggage and heading off to her next destination. "There's a lot of discrimination that comes from other women. Women hate themselves. They see a woman that's lived a rich life . . ." and they go on the attack. "But I don't want to trash other women. I think that abundance and generosity reverse that karma."