Seducing the Demon: Writing for My Life

by Erica Jong

book data

93 ratings, 3.56 average rating, 19 reviews (more data...)

rating	frequency	%
5		19%
4		35%
3		28%
2		14%
1		1%

edit

published

March 15th 2007 (first published 2006) by Tarcher

binding

Paperback, 304 pages

isbn

1585425141 (isbn13: 9781585425143)

description

Erica Jong's memoir-a national bestseller-was probably the most wildly reviewed book of 2006. Critics called it everything from "brutally funny,&...more

find at: Amazon | Half.com | Barnes & Noble | Abebooks | compare prices…

new topic
discuss this book

There are no discussion topics on this book yet. Be the first to start one »

friend reviews

To see what your friends thought of this book, please sign up.

lists with this book

This book is currently not featured on any Listopia lists. Add this book to your favorite list »

other reviews (showing 1-20 of 163)

all | this edition

Katie rated it:

01/10/08

Read in January, 2008

I discovered Jong's 1973 debut FEAR OF FLYING in my basement at 14, and it was the most thrilling overnight-read of my life. I spied it on a forgotten shelf on a private quest for a “sex book,” which was any book in which sex was implied, discussed, or— please, lord— described. The front cover featured a woman's full hips and the curve and shadow of the underneath of her breasts; the rest of her body, and her face, obscured by what looked to me like a cream satin body bag, unzipped.
...more I discovered Jong's 1973 debut FEAR OF FLYING in my basement at 14, and it was the most thrilling overnight-read of my life. I spied it on a forgotten shelf on a private quest for a “sex book,” which was any book in which sex was implied, discussed, or— please, lord— described. The front cover featured a woman's full hips and the curve and shadow of the underneath of her breasts; the rest of her body, and her face, obscured by what looked to me like a cream satin body bag, unzipped.

The book, (and its heroine, Isadora Wing,) was rapid-fire hilarious, packed with a million offhand insights that made me shake my teenage fists and say "yeah!" It presented a view of feminism I hadn't considered (I was brought up to believe that girls were just as good as boys, that I could be whatever I wanted to be, and all that Mr. Rogers bullshit, but of course, being Catholic, love and sex and relationships were never part of the dialog. And they're the most important parts, when you get down to it.)

The book swelled with the ideas that fascinated me. Ideas of foreign travel, misfit girls who become brilliant women, the writing life, cracked families, New York, academia, marital failure, lots of drinking and talking and poetry, and loads of exciting, sexy men. And ultra-hot fantasies. The actual sex, the actual men, were never as fulfilling as the fantasies. I remember that disappointing me. The brilliant symphony conductor had poor hygiene. The mad poet was actually homicidally insane. The charming, badassed Brit was impotent. Of course, the disconnect between fantasy and reality was not a failure of the book. It was kind of the point. I kind of missed it. I was 14. I also missed a sort of bratty narcissism, which SEDUCING makes plain.

SEDUCING would only be of interest if you have read Jong's fiction, and even then, if you have read her Isadora Wing books, you know all you need to know about Jong. I like this memoir best when she is talking about writers and writing-- she makes fascinating speculations about what modern public life would make of Sylvia Plath, Anne Sexton, etc., and she writes honestly about how she goes about seeking a state of creativity (the "demon" of the title is something like a muse.) She takes on alcohol, Hollywood, Washington, the perversion of language. And she is still pretty fucking funny. (On skinny women: "In life, she reminds you of Auschwitz. In bed, she feels like a bicycle. But in photos, she looks like a goddess.")

She still writes endlessly about sex. I don't know if this makes me a prude, or simply a slut for fiction, but as much as I love reading Isadora Wing's fantasy-fucks, I don't love reading about Erica Jong's real-life fucks; and I'm equally as bothered by real-life infidelity as I am intrigued by infidelity in fiction. That she slept with Martha Stewart's husband is not one bit interesting to me. Her analysis of it is-- but that's the point: I'd rather read her work that analysis into a novel than read her claiming her name-dropping place in pop culture.

More than anything, SEDUCING invites me to revisit FEAR OF FLYING, to reclaim my age 14 memory of the brave, hungry, motormouthed Isadora. But I know I cannot recapture that experience, after high school, after college, after studying literature, after my own travels and debauchery and failures at love and writing. I keep thinking of a scene in FEAR, when everything has fallen apart for Isadora, when her husband has left, and she realizes the man for whom she gave up everything was just playing with her, and she is desperate and lost in a seedy hotel room in Paris with nothing, nothing, nothing but her notebooks, and she begins to write herself out.

It is this, the power of writing, that is Jong's real revolution. Not Isadora Wing's fantasy of the Zipless Fuck, not Erica Jong's legacy as a trailblazing author and good lay, but the idea that writing can actually save your life. ...less

Like this review? yes (3 people liked it)

title link
avg rating
small image
med image
large image

Seducing the Demon: Writing for My Life

book data

new topic discuss this book

friend reviews

lists with this book

other reviews (showing 1-20 of 163)

blog this book

combine other editions (1)

view this book

view this book

popular shelves

new topic
discuss this book

combine
other editions (1)