Seducing the Demon: Writing for My Life - Hardcover

Jong, Erica

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 1585424447 ISBN 13: 9781585424443

Publisher: Tarcher, 2006

Synopsis

The author of Fear of Flying shares the story of her career as a poet, novelist, and feminist provocateur, offering insight into her experiences with both fame and notoriety while discussing such topics as the motivations behind her writings, the literary masters who inspired her work, and her struggles with alcohol. 40,000 first printing.

About this title

About the Author:

Erica Jong is the author of nineteen books of poetry, fiction, and memoir, including Fear of Flying, which has more than 18 million copies in print worldwide. Her most recent essays have appeared in The New York Times Book Review, and she is a frequent guest on television talk shows. Currently working on a novel featuring Isadora Wing-the heroine of Fear of Flying-as a woman of a certain age, Erica and her lawyer husband live in New York City and Connecticut. Her daughter, Molly Jong-Fast, is also an author.

From Publishers Weekly:

In four discursive essays and an introduction, Jong (Fear of Flying; Any Woman's Blues) ruminates on the elements of her writer's life. Most notable is sexuality: pursuit of the muse has often meant pursuit of a demon lover, a man utterly wrong for her. She walks away from Ted Hughes in the 1970s, but not from many other wrong men. Jong has had four husbands, one child and 20 books in the past four decades. Now in her 60s, she's well-read, well-traveled, therapized, happily married and sexually satisfied. Her memoir in vignettes asserts that without writing, Jong would go crazy, drink well beyond the excesses of her past and be miserable. Writing has propelled her forward into a fulfilled life. There is a fine section on women writers who pursued death (Plath, Sexton, Woolf); Jong explains why she refused to be one of them. These chatty, gossipy essays are just serious enough to count as literary. Jong, however, shrugs off the immense economic privilege that allowed her to write and travel from adolescence and meet famous people who influenced her writing early. She also never explains how she writes. Engaging and amusing, this work is less substantive than it could or should be. (Mar.)
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About this edition

• Publisher: Tarcher
• Publication date: 2006
• ISBN 10: 1585424447
• ISBN 13: 9781585424443
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 304