Erica Jong

Early life and education

Erica Mann was born in Manhattan, New York, on March 26, 1942. She is one of three daughters of Seymour Mann (died 2004), and Eda Mirsky (1911–2012). Her father was a businessman of Polish-Jewish ancestry who owned a gifts and home accessories company known for its mass production of porcelain dolls. Her mother was born in England of a Russian-Jewish immigrant family, and was a painter and textile designer who also designed dolls for her husband's company.

She has an elder sister, Suzanna, who married Lebanese businessman Arthur Daou, and a younger sister, Claudia, a social worker who married Gideon S. Oberweger (the chief executive officer of Seymour Mann Inc. until his death in 2006). Among her nephews is Peter Daou, a political strategist and former musician who in 1994 produced an album titled Zipless, a concept album based on Jong's novel Fear of Flying.

Mann attended the High School of Music & Art in Harlem, New York in the 1950s, where she developed her passion for art and writing. As a student at Barnard College in Manhattan, Jong edited the Barnard Literary Magazine and created poetry programs for WKCR, Columbia University's radio station.

In 1963, she graduated from Barnard College, and in 1965, she graduated from Columbia University with an MA in 18th century English Literature. She wrote her master's thesis on the representations of women in the poetry of Alexander Pope. During her time at Barnard, she married Michael Werthman in 1963, although they soon divorced. In 1966, she married Allan Jong, a Chinese American psychiatrist, whose surname she kept after their divorce.

Career

Jong is best known for her first novel, Fear of Flying (1973), which created a sensation with its frank treatment of a woman's sexual desires, through an account of Isadora Wing, a woman in her late twenties, searching for who she is and where she is going. Jong employed psychological and humorous descriptive elements, rich cultural and literary references, frank depictions of and ruminations on sex.

The book addresses some of the conflicts that were arising for women in late 1960s and early 1970s America-of womanhood, femininity, sex, and relationships, versus the quest for freedom and purpose. The saga of the thwarted fulfillment of Isadora Wing continues in two further novels, How to Save Your Own Life (1977) and Parachutes and Kisses (1984).

Personal life

After her first two marriages ended in divorce, Jong married novelist and educator Jonathan Fast in 1977, son of novelist Howard Fast. Their marriage was described in How to Save Your Own Life and Parachutes and Kisses. She and Jonathan Fast have a daughter, Molly Jong-Fast. Jong's third marriage also ended in divorce. Jong and Kenneth David Burrows, a New York litigator, were married until his death on December 14, 2023. Molly Jong-Fast wrote a memoir about her relationship with her mother, entitled How to Lose Your Mother. It was published in 2025.

Jong lived on an army base in Heidelberg, West Germany for three years (1966–69) with her second husband. She was a frequent visitor to Venice, Italy, and wrote about the city in her novel Shylock's Daughter. She lived in an apartment on the Upper East Side of Manhattan until 2023, and has also owned a house in Connecticut. In 2007, her literary archive was acquired by Columbia University in Manhattan.

Jong is mentioned in "Highlands", the closing song of Bob Dylan's Grammy Award-winning album Time Out of Mind (1997), as one of the "women authors" whose books the narrator reads. She is satirized on the MC Paul Barman track "N.O.W.", in which the rapper fantasizes about a young leftist carrying a fictitious Jong book titled America's Wrong. In 2008, Jong wrote in support of same-sex marriage, saying that "It certainly promotes stability and family... it's certainly good for kids."

In the early 2020s, Jong was diagnosed with dementia. , she lives in a nursing home in Manhattan.

Bibliography

Fiction

• {{cite book |title-link=Fear of Flying (novel)

• {{cite book

• {{cite book

• {{cite book

• {{cite book USA

• Parachutes & Kisses. New York: New American Library (1984) (UK ed. as Parachutes and Kisses: London: Granada, 1984.)

• Shylock's Daughter (1987): formerly titled Serenissima

• Any Woman's Blues (1990)

• Inventing Memory (1997)

• Sappho's Leap (2003)

• Fear of Dying (September 8, 2015)

Non-fiction

• Witches; illustrated by Joseph A. Smith. New York: Harry A. Abrams (1981)
• 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)
• Essay, "My Dirty Secret". Bad Girls: 26 Writers Misbehave (2007)
• Essay, "It Was Eight Years Ago Today (But It Seems Like Eighty)" (2008)

Anthology

• Sugar in My Bowl: Real Women Write About Real Sex Ed; Erica Jong (2011)

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)
• Love Comes First (2009)
• The World Began with Yes (Red Hen Press, 2019)

Awards

• Poetry Magazine's Bess Hokin Prize (1971)
• Sigmund Freud Award For Literature (1975)
• United Nations Award For Excellence In Literature (1998)
• Deauville Award For Literary Excellence In France
• Fernanda Pivano Award For American Literature In Italy

Documentary

• 2023 Erica Jong - Breaking the Wall by Kaspar Kasics

References

References

1. "Erica Jong papers, 1955–2018 bulk 1965–2004". [[Columbia University]].
2. Kamensky, Jane. (November 12, 2023). "50 Years of 'Fear of Flying'". [[The New York Times Book Review]].
3. "Eda Mirsky Mann, painter, mother of novelist Erica Jong - The Boston Globe". [[The Boston Globe]].
4. "Seymour Mann Passes Away - 2004-03-01 05:00:00". Gifts and Dec.
5. (December 31, 2006). "Paid Notice: Deaths OBERWEGER, GIDEON S". [[The New York Times]].
6. Nichols, Alex. (September 26, 2017). "The Strange Life of Peter Daou".
7. (October 11, 1996). "Erica Jong Helps Barnard's Budding Writers". [[Columbia University Record]].
8. Loh, Sandra Tsing. (September 2015). "The Fearless Erica Jong".
9. Tucker, Neely. (October 7, 2013). "'Fear of Flying' author Jong zips along 40 years after dropping her literary bombshell". [[The Washington Post]].
10. "Jong, Erica" in ''Current Biography Yearbook 1997''. New York / Dublin: The H.W. Wilson Company, 1997. p. 248
11. (August 6, 1989). "Erica Jong Marries Kenneth Burrows". [[The New York Times]].
12. Alter, Alexandra. (May 31, 2025). "The Devastating Book Erica Jong Always Knew Her Daughter Would Write". [[The New York Times]].
13. Bozzone, Julia. (September 25, 2022). "Writing, Family and 'Coffee After Coffee'". [[The New York Times]].
14. ""N.O.W." [annotated lyrics]". Genius.
15. Jong, Erica. (May 18, 2008). "Hurrah for Gay Marriage". The Huffington Post.
16. "''Parachutes & Kisses''". Copac.
17. Pitlor, Heide. (September 11, 2015). "Review of ''Fear of Dying'' by Erica Jong". The New York Times.
18. Jong, Erica. (March 28, 2008). "It Was Eight Years Ago Today (But It Seems Like Eighty)". The Huffington Post.
19. (March 18, 2023). "Erica Jong - Breaking the Wall". IMDB.
20. Haemmerli, Thomas. (March 21, 2023). "Kaspar Kasics on his film on Erica Jong".