You had no choices.Īnd what I think is interesting is, right now in America, we have lost Roe, right? We have a real religious zealot called Mike Johnson who is the speaker of the House. And I was, like, Mom, what are you even talking about? But the point was that this was something that had not been available to women - right? - that you were sort of - you couldn't - you didn't have choices if you got pregnant. I always - you know, she'd always be, like, if you ever needed an abortion, she would be - I'd be, like, 10 years old, and you'd be, like, if you ever need it. We made Roe the law of the land, right? - 1973. When I think about my mother, I think about how she would always say to me, we got a lot of things wrong, but we got you Roe. JONG-FAST: I think, especially right now after the fall of Roe - I mean, I don't think - like, I think of my mother - and second-wave feminism gets a real bad rap because they had - certainly, some of the second-wave feminists turned out to really be disappointing. Why do you think it was important to re-release it 50 years later? MCCAMMON: You said that "Fear Of Flying" shaped the trajectory of your life in many ways. But, you know, it's impossible to know, like, what part of my - the course of my life was helped along by the fame. MCCAMMON: But that doesn't sound so bad, right? Who even knows - you know, I'd probably be, like, a butter farmer in Iowa had I not been born into this family, you know? The reality is I'm very grateful because I had huge advantages from being the daughter of someone famous. You know, this is the curse and the blessing of being a nepo baby - right? - is that you get all these advantages, and you get special treatment, but you also get this sense in which people know about - things about you that you can't - you don't know what they are, but you know they know things about you and that in the - that can make you very crazy 'cause you start thinking, what does this person know about me? What does this person think about me? I'm just glad I got out of it alive. And, you know, it was not, like, a secret. JONG-FAST: I was about 15, I think, and I was reading it. MCCAMMON: Do you remember about how old you were at that time? And I think my mental health has been the better for it, quite frankly. I thought - I had this moment of, like, you know, it's OK. And then I thought, you know, you don't have to read any more of this. JONG-FAST: So I read, like, about 200 pages, and I thought, oh, a lot of this stuff really happened. Do you remember when you first read it and what you were thinking that first time? You say it felt deeply uncomfortable at times because, as you say, the protagonist was a thinly veiled version of your mom. You know, as Erica Jong's daughter, you write that you didn't have the same relationship with this book that many people did. MCCAMMON: You know, usually we ask authors to read a section of a book, and we're not going to ask you to read your mother's writing. Erica Jong's daughter, the writer and podcaster Molly Jong-Fast, wrote a foreword to the new edition of her mother's book, and she joins me now. "Fear Of Flying" went on to sell millions of copies, and now a new edition is being released to mark the 50th anniversary of the book.īefore we get into it, note to listeners - this conversation will include discussions about sex. The book was first published in 1973, a time when it was not widely acceptable for women to actively seek out those things, much less write about them. She's on her second husband and is searching for love, independence, purpose and no-strings-attached sexual pleasure. Erica Jong's novel "Fear Of Flying" is narrated by a young writer named Isadora Wing.
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