Erica Jong
Erica Jong
Erica Jongis an American novelist and poet, known particularly for her 1973 novel Fear of Flying. The book became famously controversial for its attitudes towards female sexuality and figured prominently in the development of second-wave feminism. According to Washington Post, it has sold more than 20 million copies worldwide...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionNovelist
Date of Birth26 March 1942
CityNew York City, NY
CountryUnited States of America
A wet dream in the mind of New York.
Sex and creativity are often seen by dictators as subversive activities.
Women in America read 'lifestyle' pages which are really glorifications of shopping. They teach us we must veil ourselves in make-up to be loved. And we willingly take the veil, thinking ourselves freed by it. Make-up is no more optional for us than the veil is for Arab women: it is our Western version of the chador.
Underneath it all, you longed to be annihilated by love...
Unhappiness is our element. We come to believe we can't function without it.
But come back in November or December, in February or March, when the fog, la nebbia, settles upon the city like a marvelous monster, and you will have little trouble believing that things can appear and disappear in this labyrinthine city, or that time here could easily slip in its sprockets and take you, willingly or unwillingly, back.
Photographs... are the most curious indicators of reality.
If sex and creativity are often seen by dictators as subversive activities, it's because they lead to the knowledge that you own your own body (and with it your own voice), and that's the most revolutionary insight of all.
How could one create life with someone who represented death?
I thought of the nameless inventor of the bathtub. I was somehow sure it was a woman. And was the inventor of the bathtub plug a man?
Surviving means being born over and over.
Is perception equivalent to existence?
I knew I was in England by the smell.
Keeping a journal implies hope.