What do women want? is a book of inspiration, humor, and provocation--an intimate conversation between the reader and Erica Jong. In these personal statements Jong addresses many of the questions that concern women and men today: Are women better off today than they were twenty-five years ago? What was Princess Diana's importance to women? Has Hillary Clinton prepared us for a woman president? Why do powerful women evoke ambivalence? Why do mothers continue to be blamed for working outside the home? How does the mother-daughter dialectic influence cycles of feminism and backlash? What is the relationship of pornography to the creative spirit? Who is the perfect man? What constitutes sex appeal?
With her characteristic wit and her refreshing refusal to bow down before political correctness, Erica Jong tackles these and other issues. She also celebrates Nabokov's Lolita and relates it to the history of censorship; analyzes Anaïs Nin's importance to contemporary writers; captures the seductive charm of Italy, her second home; and honors the necessity for poetry in our lives. What Do Women Want? is at once an informal memoir and a book of inspiration for all women and the men in their lives.
What Do Women Want? is both funny and serious, full of Jong's delight in language and her passion for ideas. It grapples with the writers she loves and the hypocrisy she hates, and reveals her own original, quirky take on the world we live in.
Erica Jong burst onto the American literary and cultural scene with her audacious bestseller Fear of Flying and has been cast as a feminist spokesperson ever since--a curious conundrum for a bawdy, sometimes raging intellectual who failed so miserably to repudiate men that she married repeatedly and worried so much about growing older that she signed up for plastic surgery. Yet it's these very inconsistencies that have made her less didactic over time. The brief essays in What Do Women Want? veer from contemplation of the impossible tightrope of motherhood, the accursed nature of Hillary Rodham Clinton, and the unexpurgated Anaïs Nin to the damned-if-you-do, damned-if-you-don't life of literary women and the fatal charm of Italy. There's also a surprisingly sweet paean to that horny old goat, Henry Miller (the subject of Jong's biographical study The Devil at Large).
This is Jong at her best and worst, alternately flailing wildly and landing squarely on the mark. "It's hard to be a novelist in the age of soap opera," she observes, commenting on American President Clinton's sexual peccadilloes. "The slow accretion of 500 well-wrought words a day seems pointless beside the dizzying and breathless plot lines served up by the evening news." The delicious irony of the book's title is no accident; it's a question Sigmund Freud asked and never satisfactorily answered. Neither does Jong, but her cultural commentary has flashes of brilliance and the moxie necessary to cut to the head of the line. --Francesca Coltrera
From Publishers Weekly
Jong is sometimes a lot of fun to read. The "sometimes" is the problem with this random collection of essays, some of which bounce off the news headlines and some of which sound like presentations to eager undergraduates. Jong is snippy and funny on the subject of the impotence drug Viagra?would we have expected less from the author of the famously raunchy Fear of Flying? But she can't resist pointing out that she was ahead of her time in 1973 when her heroine Isadora Wing opined on the subject of male limpness. Jong is interesting and trenchant on why we have such mixed feelings toward Hillary Rodham Clinton. She is academic on the subject of Charlotte Bronte and less than discreet about Henry Miller and his seemingly unalloyed admiration of her. She likes Virginia Woolf and Vladimir Nabokov, but it is hard not to balk a little when she describes herself as a "celebrated writer" in such company. Judging by her frequent references to her own notorious frankness, the celebration may be more sexual than literary. Complain, complain as ruffled critics have done since Isadora made her noisy debut 25 years ago, but at the end of it all Erica Jong is an original. One may flinch at a writer who can't leave the subject of sex for more than a paragraph or two but at the same time be seduced by one who believes in the power of poetry and introduces her miscellany with the words "Poetry has saved my life. I think it can save yours." Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc.
ERICA JONG (Bio used www.ericajong.com) Erica Jong--novelist, poet, and essayist--has consistently used her craft to help provide women with a powerful and rational voice in forging a feminist consciousness. She has published 21 books, including eight novels, seven volumes of poetry, six books of non-fiction and numerous articles in magazines and newspapers such as The New York Times, The Sunday Times of London, Elle, Vogue, The New York Times Book Review and The Wall Street Journal. In her groundbreaking first novel, Fear of Flying (20 million in print around the world in more than forty languages), she introduced Isadora Wing, who also plays a central part in three subsequent novels--How to Save Your Own Life, Parachutes and Kisses, and Any Woman's Blues. In her three historical novels--Fanny, Shylock's Daughter, and Sappho's Leap--she demonstrates her mastery of eighteenth-century British literature, the verses of Shakespeare, and ancient Greek lyric, respectively. Erica's latest book, a memoir of her life as a writer, Seducing the Demon: Writing for My Life, came out in March 2006. It was a national bestseller in the US and many other countries. A graduate of Barnard College and Columbia University's Graduate Faculties where she received her M.A. in 18th Century English Literature, Erica Jong also attended Columbia's graduate writing program where she studied poetry with Stanley Kunitz and Mark Strand. In 2008, continuing her long-standing relationship with the university, a large collection of Erica's archival material was acquired by Columbia University's Rare Book & Manuscript Library, where it will be available to graduate and undergraduate students. Ms. Jong plans to teach master classes at Columbia and also advise the Rare Book Library on the acquisition of other women writers' archives.
Calling herself "a defrocked academic," Ms. Jong has partly returned to her roots as a scholar. She has taught at Ben Gurion University in Israel, Bennington College in the U.S., Breadloaf Writers' Conference in Vermont and many other distinguished writing programs and universities. She loves to teach and lecture, though her skill in these areas has sometimes crowded her writing projects. "As long as I am communicating the gift of literature, I'm happy," Jong says. A poet at heart, Ms. Jong believes that words can save the world.
Known for her commitment to women's rights, authors' rights and free expression, Ms. Jong is a frequent lecturer in the U.S. and abroad. She served as president of The Authors' Guild from 1991 to 1993 and still serves on the Board. She established a program for young writers at her alma mater, Barnard College. The Erica Mann Jong Writing Center at Barnard teaches students the art of peer tutoring and editing. Erica Jong was honored with the United Nations Award for Excellence in Literature. She has also received Poetry magazine's Bess Hokin Prize, also won by W.S. Merwin and Sylvia Plath. In France, she received the Deauville Award for Literary Excellence and in Italy, she received the Sigmund Freud Award for Literature. The City University of New York awarded Ms. Jong an honorary PhD at the College of Staten Island. In June 2009, Erica won the first Fernanda Pivano Prize for Literature in Italy.
Currently Ms. Jong is working on a novel featuring "a woman of a certain age." Its working title is secret. Fear of Flying is in preparation as a BBC mini-series. Her first anthology, Sugar In My Bowl: Real Women Write About Real Sex, will be published on June 14th, 2011. Erica Jong lives in New York City and Weston, CT with her husband, attorney Ken Burrows, and standard poodle, Belinda Barkowitz. Her daughter, Molly Jong-Fast, is also a writer.
4.0 out of 5 starsEntertaining and likeable, October 11, 1998
By A Customer
This review is from: What Do Women Want? Bread, Roses, Sex, Power (Hardcover)
This book is more entertaining and likeable than I expected. Jong's honesty is admirable. She readily admits she didn't become pregnant till she could afford a nanny; most celebrities pretend they raised their children with no help. I liked the essay Lolita at Thirty best and also her views on Jane Eyre are very acute. Her literary criticism is the best thing in the book. Surprisingly erudite and sharp. Her essay on Anais Nin made me want to read the journals which I never have. She's at her least appealing when trying to show how wordly she is , i.e. 'My Italy' where she does an awful lot of name dropping as if all the famous people she knows validate her own imporance. Her daughter, Molly, wrote an article for Mode magazine where she related how her mother's friend, Joan Collins, called her fat. I wouldn't be surprised if Erica didn't drop Joan, for all her cruelty, simply because she's a celeb.
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3.0 out of 5 starsIf you like Jong, you'll like this book, February 26, 1999
By A Customer
This review is from: What Do Women Want? Bread, Roses, Sex, Power (Hardcover)
This book of essays does hold your attention. You may not like her point of view, but you'll have to give her credit for being honest about it. She covers it all in bits and pieces, the only clue to what they all have in commom is the title. Having sex is very important to her, and I found this theme tiring after a while. She does present herself as what I'd call a typical New Yorker. She seeks to impress the reader with her life, and it comes off sometimes as bragging. I'm a fan of Henry Miller so I enjoyed her first hand impression of him - they must have been soulmates, seeking sexual experiences where ever they could find them. I can see why given her point of view she feared fifty as it gets harder to attract strangers - so I may read more of her yet. If you're a writer you'll probably be interested in her struggles as an author and mother.
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4 of 11 people found the following review helpful:
1.0 out of 5 starsPolitically Correct Feminist Ramblings, September 30, 1998
By A Customer
This review is from: What Do Women Want? Bread, Roses, Sex, Power (Hardcover)
It is very hard to follow Jung's logic. Her book jumps around like a bunge cord, never staying long enough to explain her unsupportable conclusions. Most distressing is her apologetic acceptance of the behavior of the President. In fairness, there are some amusing parts.
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