Erica Jong
From The Art and Popular Culture Encyclopedia
|
Related e |
|
Featured: |
Erica Jong (née Mann, born March 26, 1942, in New York City, New York) is an American author and educator.
Contents |
Career
A 1963 graduate of Barnard College, Jong is best known for her first novel, Fear of Flying (published in 1973), which created a sensation with its frank treatment of a woman's sexual desires.
Jong wrote Fear of Flying in the first person, and her main character suffers from the fear of flying in more than one way, including the literal one. As her airline flight is taking off from New York on its way to Vienna, Austria, she says, "My fingers (and toes) turn to ice, my stomach leaps upward into my rib cage, the temperature in the tip of my nose drops to the same level as the temperature in my fingers, my nipples stand up and salute the inside of my bra (or in this case, dress--since I'm not wearing a bra)..." She created a new type of heroine, that used an affair as a means to self-discovery, breaking the boundaries of the traditional narratives that used affairs as a consequence to disaster.
Bibliography
- Fear of Flying (1973)
- How to Save Your Own Life (1977)
- Fanny, Being the True History of the Adventures of Fanny Hackabout-Jones (1980)
- Parachutes & Kisses (1984)
- Shylock's Daughter (1987): formerly titled Serenissima
- Any Woman's Blues (1990)
- Inventing Memory (1997)
- Sappho's Leap (2003)
Non-fiction
- Witches (1981,1997,1999)
- Megan's Two Houses (1984,1996)
- The Devil at Large: Erica Jong on Henry Miller (1993)
- Fear of Fifty: A Midlife Memoir (1994)
- What Do Women Want? Bread Roses Sex Power (1998)
- Seducing the Demon : Writing for My Life (2006)
- Bad Girls: 26 Writers Misbehave essay, "My Dirty Secret" (2007)
- It Was Eight Years Ago Today (But It Seems Like Eighty) (2008)
Poetry
- Fruits & Vegetables (1971,1997)
- Half-Lives (1973)
- Loveroot (1975)
- At The Edge Of The Body (1979)
- Ordinary Miracles (1983)
- Becoming Light: New And Selected (1991)
