Erica Jong and Molly Jong-Fast

Published Jan 2, 2012, 5:00 AM

Alec talks with writer Erica Jong and her daughter Molly Jong-Fast about sex, divorce, and the impact of sexuality on young women today.

Erica has been through 3 divorces – she’s on her fourth marriage.  She says “Divorce was the hardest thing [she] ever went through … Divorce is terrible. Divorce is difficult. We have no rules for it. It's so incredibly painful. Molly – still on her first marriage – says she’s learned “marriage is incredibly hard work.” Molly and Erica spar about the legacy of the feminist movement – but Molly concludes that her mother’s own legacy is about being honest.

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I'm Alec Baldwin, and here's the thing. The impact of divorce on children is something I think about a lot. I'm divorced and have a daughter. Erica Jong knows a lot about divorce. She's been married four times. That's why I wanted to sit down with Erica and her daughter, Molly Joan Fast. Both mother and daughter are writers. Erica is best known for her nineteen seventy three book Fear of Flying, of feminist classic about liberation in many forms. Molly, a mother of three kids herself, published her second novel, The Social Climber's Handbook earlier this year. Molly's father is Jonathan Fast, Erica's third husband. I lived with Jonathan for two years before we got married. But how long between John, Allan John and Jonathan About two years between them? You were there, You were with Allan John, when you met my dad. When these two good going, you step back and get out of their way. What did you learn about marriage from your parents? Mom? Can I answer the question honestly? Honestly is the only way? Well? I would say, have you seen Kramer versus Kramer? That was my general impression of marriage for my upbringing. But you know my mom had some good, useful suggestions, but ultimately I sort of had to find my own way, though she did eventually marry a really great guy and they've been married for twenty one years, and he's a divorce lawyer. He's a practicing divorce Yeah, he is. And Molly used to say, when I married him and then she married the one, you can never divorce the divorce is he a good guy. He's a really good guy. He's a totally menchi person and I like him better than when I married him, which was easier for you to write about sex or divorce. Sex divorce was the hardest thing I ever went through. I have a friend who said to me once when he was getting divorced from his wife, who could believe that after we were in the delivering room together, after I watched that baby come out, who could believe we'd ever be apart? Divorce is terrible. Divorce is difficult. We have it's a chaos, we have no rules for it. It's so incredibly painful. What was it like for you to deal with your parents divorce? Your parents divorce as an only child? Who did you talk to? Who did you do? Obese nanny from Trumbull, Connecticut, and she was my confidie. Like crumpets, those tasty cake everything. Um, I think I mean Cramer Versus Kramer was a great movie because that was my story, and it was a lot of kids stories. It was just a really gruesome seventies divorce and that's what they had. During that time. Divorce wasn't set up the way it is now now. If you have a divorce, there's no way that a mother is going to lose custody. Certain things are known. Back then, it was a totally unknown world of divorce. Let me just I don't want to get carried away by divorce being different in different decades, because I'm not sure that's true. I think it may look that way to you, Molly, but I think divorce is a catastrophic event for children, for women from men. It's very, very difficult to go through. It is traumatic. When you come to the other side of it, you say, I will never do that again, which is why I was single for nearly a decade between Molly's dad and Ken, because I wanted to make sure I would never make that miss. But after you have three divorces, Yeah, you were divorced, Yes, what made you believe success was awaiting you with your current husband? What gave you the We stamped on our wedding invitation a triumph of hope over experience, which came as the result of what how did you triumph? Ken have been married three times? I had been married three times. We were very cautious about tying the non You were not that cautious because you've only been together for three months. When you go both, that's right? Am I right? Is she right? We married after we knew each other three months. But this isn't an amazing and it's been most successful with him. Yeah, but there are certain things about me and Ken. We grew up in similar circumstances. Our parents were depression era people. We knew that you couldn't be married and fool around. You couldn't be married. Two secrets to their marriage. They have different bathrooms right there, each of their own bath and they're tired. They're too tired to do new curtains and bookshelves. The reason why we got married rather than lived together was because he said to me, if we just lived together, one day, we'll have a fight and you'll say I'm leaving, or I will We have a bad record. If we get married, we know we're going to make it work. Marvin Worth, Marvin Great, Marvin Worth. He was Lenny Bruce's manager, then went on to become a famous movie producer. Produced Malcolm X, the movie with Spike Lee, famous movie producer. He was from Brooklyn. He had the heaviest New York accent of any man I've ever heard him. And I said to him, how did you and Joan do it? How have you and John been married for for forty years? Like it was that you don't fight? And he said to me, uh do Joan? Then I fight? We fight every day, We fight all day. What we do is fight, he said, But then we after we're done fighting. I say, Joan, I'm not going anywhere, and you're not going anywhere, So what are we gonna do about this problem? I'm not going anywhere. That's what Kennan I wanted, like leaving is not an option. And actually this is very funny because he says I'm not going anywhere, just what Marvin said, and I say, I couldn't stand anyone else. And part of it is we really make each other laugh all the time. When we have a disagreement, we always get it out there. We don't hold it in. Now that I have kids, I feel like what they don't tell you about marriage is that marriage? I mean, what don't they tell you? The marriage is incredibly hard work. Molly got married at but Molly's hole childhood and upbringing had been different from mine. I married my first lover, my college sweetheart. I had no experience with anybody else when I married him. That was very much my generation. Molly sewed her wild though it's during college and when she met Matt, she knew this was the man she wanted to be with. It was a totally different pattern. But I think much wild. Did you travel with the stones? I think I um, I really grew up because I got sober when I was nineteen. So I went to rehab when I was a teenager, so that I was until I went to we have very crazy. But then once that happened, I then started to focus on, you know, what was important. So by the time I got married, I was already, you know, sober a long time. My grandmother was very Bohemian, and my mother was very bohemian. Yeah, and they all my grandparents had open marriages, you know. And I asked my dad about that, and my dad said, actually, was just that your grandfather cheated on your grandmother, and that was what they called it in the fifties. I also wanted a bourgeois life, Like I didn't want to be bohemian. I don't want to be single and have a boyfriend who had a motorcycle and cowboy But it's none of that appealed to me. What effect, if any, didn't have on you that your mother was viewed as and I'll let you put in the words, you know, your mother's expertise and female sexuality. What impact did that have on you when you were growing up? Um? I think more having a mother who was very successful in working a lot at more of an effect on growing up because she just traveled a lot and worked a lot and felt very stressed a lot. I think that had more of an effect on me. Then. I didn't particularly know what she did until when I was in sixth grade. I went to this very progressive school and a little boy was like, your mom writes dirty books. I went to science sure, and I was like, he's not allowed to say that to me, and she was like, but she does. And I was like, oh my god. She does. But the fact that we grew up in a townhouse with a hot pink door and then it was purple. It was right. We had paintings of naked lesbians having sex on the walls. Yes, why because no, they're not famous ladder Slader. I have a schlatterer and I keep it under my bed. When I want to get things going, I want to I want to pick it up. Relating to the erotic art I had lived in house guests. They had lived with Shirley McClain. Shirley finally threw them out. I've met them on the beach at now. They were about a hundred years old at that point when Shirley threw them out. They came to live with me and they gave me erotic artists. Thank you can't imagine that they were really old fashioned bohemians like Henry Miller. In the sixties, they had lived in Paris on the Boulevard rest Spy and had orgies that was all over. In the seventies, they went to India with Shirley and wrote about past life regression. In the eighties they got into antioxidants before anybody knew about it. They were at the head of every curve. They were not just about and they invented the iPad. They did not. I admire them because they were true bohemian. This is Alec Baldwin and you're listening to Here's the Thing. More from my conversation with Erica Jong and Molly Young Fast coming up in a minute. I'm Alec Baldwin and you're listening to Here's the Thing. I'm talking with writer Erica Jong and her daughter Molly Young Fast. Do me if I ever, don't comment on this until she finishes. Describe your relationship with your mother, don't snicker. Pleasant. She's very supportive, are you? What are you talking about? She's very supportive. She's talking about you like like she's your husband's ex pat. Julie and I have a very pleasant relationship, affable chart. No, my mother has always been phenomenal with me, so supportive. I don't give her things to read because she says to me, she calls me if it says, how much of a genius are you? She's very supportive. How would you describe your relationship with Molly? I absolutely adore her. Beyond that. Beyond that, I think she's I think she's smart. I think she's funny. I think she has incredibly good judgment. I've watched her grow and emotionally, and she has bearded some dragons that were very hard. What do you disagree about everything? Everything? Something? Give me something primary consistent. I think of her is very reactionary liberal, and I'm much more conservative in certain ways. I go more towards the libertarian side politically. Yeah, do you think that some of your conservatism and this is a long shot, maybe, but do you think some of your you know, even mild case of of being more conservative in your stems from your reaction to her kind of the kind of sexual drums she was beating throughout her I was not beating a sexual what were you doing. I was trying to write honestly about the way a young woman thinks and feels. And because our society is so curiously puritanical, people took that honest book, which got inside a woman's fantasy life, her marital life, and so and they took it as a horny book. And I am truly disappointed that the closest person in the world to me has bought into that view. I was trying to write honestly about how a young woman thinks and feels. Because of our puritanism, it was construed as a horny book. I it devastates me that my daughter buys that image. But okay, she doesn't have to be my literary critic. She's my daughter and I love her and she can do no wrong. I hope that someday she will read my work and see that that was not what I was doing. Daughters do torture you in a way that I mean that sons are not capable of, in my opinion. But I also think that my mom's legacy to me was about being honest and how important it is to be honest. And I do really hate you know, that kind of pretension or falseness, and that is something that really has been your legacy. Um, this is obviously an important subject for me because I have a daughter, and that is What do you think of the state of female sexuality in the culture today. I think they're overwhelmed with a false image of sexuality before before they're emotionally ready to deal with it. I think they um they're told that giving blow jobs in class is not sex, which is not true. They use their manipulation and of boy's sexuality as a power trip to get even with men for the other power men have. But I think to be a young woman today of the of your daughter's age is a very sticky wicket, and I think that you really need a parent who can guide you. How would they guide them to tell them that what they see around them in the media is not true, because I try to do that. If I were dealing with your daughter, I would try to reassure her that this is a very confusing time of life. I don't and that what she sees around her as incredibly confusing. Most of the women, the young women are as confused as she and are showing off by pretending to not be confused. And I would try to convey to her how difficult adolescence is, how many messages are coming at her at once, and how hard it is to make sense of it. That's what I would do. I planned to do that with my granddaughter, who I'm sure we'll say something cynical to me. But I also think some of it is you just as you can't hear that kind of thing from a parent at I mean, maybe there are some kids who can. I never could, you know, I'm not entirely sure. I had a beloved child psychiatrist growing up, who I really liked a lot, and I think maybe that's possible, or a teacher or a school, so maybe the parent can't really say those things. I think it's right, and I also think we don't automatically know how to behave. It's primarily different from when you wrote your earlier books. What's changed for the media is more all pervasive, and the image of women is even more confusing than it's ever been. And on the one hand, you're supposed to look like a fashion model retouched, and on the other hand, you're supposed to claim to a sophistication you don't and count i'd have at that age. And I think that women who are fourteen fifteen are in the most difficult position they have ever been in modern society. What do you think about that? I mean, I agree, I think there's a lot of sexuality. I think it's not explained to young girls in a way, very confusing, Molly. But I think that's a legacy of the feminist movement. I mean, we said we want a legacy of the feminist movement. It is a legacy, and here I really feel fierce. It is the legacy of a distortion of women's desire for equal rights. Equal rights are not platform shoes and naked clothes. But you can't blow up an atom bomb and then choose how it's going to go. But just saying we did not blow up that atom bomb. The media took our legitimate desire for equality and turned it into garbage. But they turned it into what the people wanted. First of all, I don't think they wouldn't exist. It wouldn't exist. People don't buy the media the people want. We'll be back in a moment. After word from sponsored Victoria's secret. I disagree. I also think, first of all, this is what the people want. People buy Britney spears because they want them. No, no, no, no, did he? This is what I disagree. I blame the media, and I blame the entertainment industry, and I blame that whole matrix for all of it. I think of the most absurd person from the past. If you took content Floss and put him on Glee, he'd become a gay icon today. You are so right, content Flass. I think it's brilliant. If the Internet had existed when content Flass was here, everybody would be worshiping Canton Floss. You can't and it has nothing to do with fear, I love. You can't control what people are going to do, what people want, This is what is thrust upon them, and it has nothing to do with First of all, you are the media, and you are the media, and I am and so affected the media. So I disagree with you, and I don't want to get off on media. That's subject. I mean, I take a paycheck from media companies to do what they pay me to do, but I'm not responsible for everything else they do. Let's just say this. You take the top women in entertainment, and I'm gonna be generous. I'll say half one half of them really have talent. Mariah Carey really can sing, Beyonce Knowles really can sing. But then there's the other half. They have no talent. It's all electronically enhanced. It's all about many people who are talentlest But I think the interpretation of of our of sexuality and our culture is so twisted. Sexuality is actually is true intimacy with another person that sometimes results and genitals getting together and sometimes does not. Why are you so cynical awful? I'm no she doesn't. You're the one saying lubricants and dolls and ben wabbles. I don't even think that's sex. I think that if you have real intimacy with somebody, he can touch you here and you get excited. He can touch you on your neck, he can hold your hand in the movies. Later on, I'll show you the spot I touch. People have no idea what sexuality really is. I can talk with you about sex for a couple more hours. Well, let's do it next time, okay. Erica Young and Molly gen Fast. They say they have toyed with the idea of writing something together many times, but both agree they probably never will. It would be just the end of our relationship. This is Alec Baldwin and you're listening to here's the thing.

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