About Erica Jong
Erica Jong, nee Mann, is a U.S. novelist, poet, teacher, lion tamer, satirist, and multilingual translator of no little renown in that field. Indeed, her insightful translations of Dostoevsky and Tolstoy are considered groundbreaking in that field and studied in college courses worldwide. Along the way, however, she also churned out some tawdry paperbacks that proved to be, in her own words, "the apotheosis of the zeitgeist." (You see what happens when you give someone an advanced degree?)
She is undoubtedly best known for her (equally) groundbreaking novel, FEAR OF FLYING and its immediate sequels, which portrayed controversial attitudes toward female sexuality and figured prominently into the emerging "second wave feminism". Its unpopularity in some quarters, however, got her pilloried in the public square and very nearly burned at the stake. Still, according the Washington Post (which is infallible in such matters) it has sold over 20 million copies worldwide. (There must be an incredible number of people with uneven bureau legs, I'm guessing).
Ms. Jong graduated from Barnard College and went on to achieve an additional MA in 18th-century English literature from Columbia back in prehistory, specifically 1965. Her breakthrough novel, Fear of Flying (1973), featured a female protagonist in her late 20s--a thinly-veiled version of the author--who embodied the many conflicts arising for women in the late 60s and early 70s in America, such as the very meaning of womanhood and "femininity", the quest for love, and the need for both purpose and fulfillment in life. Isadora's usually-thwarted attempts at sexual ful-fillment struck a chord with Ms. Jong's generally-female readership, and her adventures were continued into a second and even third book, HOW TO SAVE YOUR OWN LIFE and PARACHUTES AND KISSES. (Other works by her include SEDUCING THE DEMON and
Ms. Jong was married four times, seemingly unable ever to get it right. The first was a brief marriage while at Barnard to Michael Werthman; in 1966 she swapped horses to Allan Jong, a Japanese-American psychiatrist whose avatar appears prominently in FLYING. Then, in 1977, she married one Jonathan Fast, the novelist son of a novelist (something akin to that "seventh son" business) and a social work educator. (This marriage was described in her sequels to FEAR OF FLYING, BOOK TWO and BOOK THREE. She has a daughter from this third marriage.) In between popping the question to men too startled and embarrassed to say "No", she has also churned out several volumes of respectable (and some not-so-respectable) poetry.
Her current marriage is to Kenneth David Burrows, a New York litigator, which leaves her in a sticky predicament if it ever falls apart. Don't give up on counseling, Erica! It could save your life--or at least your pocketbook!
Various autobiographical elements have made it into Ms. Jong's fiction, including her living on an army base in Heidelberg, Germany from 1966-1969 with her then-(and since)-second husband, and her frequent visits to Venice while in Europe, which she was later only too pleased to write about. (TBC)
