Becoming Light (21 page)

Erica Jong followed Isadora Wing through three additional novels,
How to Save Your Own Life, Parachutes & Kisses
, and
Any Woman’s Blues
. She has also published eight award-winning volumes of poetry and written brilliant historical fiction, like
Fanny
:
Being the True History of the Adventures of Fanny Hackabout-Jones
, a fantasy about what would have happened if Fielding’s Tom Jones had been a woman. She has written a glittering novel about sixteenth-century Venice (where she has spent many summers),
Shylock’s Daughter
or
Serenissima,
and an amazing recreation of ancient Greece, entitled
Sappho’s Leap
. Her moving memoir,
Fear of Fifty,
and her writer’s meditation on the craft,
Seducing the Demon
, have also been bestsellers in the United States and abroad. Her most recent publication is an anthology of women writing about the best sex they’ve ever had,
Sugar in my Bowl
.

Dividing her time between New York City and Weston, Connecticut, Jong lives with her husband, famed divorce attorney Ken Burrows, and a standard poodle named Belinda Barkowitz. Jong’s daughter, Molly Jong-Fast, is also a writer, and the mother of Jong’s three grandchildren, an eight-year-old and four-year-old twins.

Jong posing in her grandfather’s portrait studio at a young age. Jong grew up in Manhattan’s Upper West Side and enjoyed a childhood of music lessons, skating lessons, summer camps, and art school.

Jong at age eleven or twelve, meditating on her future as a writer—and perhaps which nail polish to try next.

Jong in her early teens at her parents’ twenty-fifth anniversary party. Looking back at the photograph, Jong surmises that her mellow expression means she was likely drunk for the first time.

Jong, age sixteen, in her high school graduation picture. She attended New York’s prestigious High School of Music & Art. A progressive school, it was full of passionate, talented kids and known for being racially integrated in a time when many schools were not.

A page from the first completed manuscript of
Fear of Flying
. Jong worked on the novel throughout her twenties, going through many drafts before she arrived at the framing device of a trip through Europe, and the story of Isadora’s past told through flashbacks.

The publicity photo used for
Fear of Flying
. The photograph defined Jong to millions of readers worldwide, leading many to think of her as carefree when, in reality, she was a workaholic—always writing the next book!

Jong in the mid 1970s, photographed by science-fiction author and future husband Jonathan Fast, who had a matching hat. Fast took the photograph around the time the two fell madly in love.

Jong at her house in Connecticut in August 1978, just a few days before giving birth to her daughter, Molly Jong-Fast. Jong was in her thirties at the time, and ready to have a baby. She loved the way she looked in her Indian schmatta and never took it off. She remembers her pregnancy with Molly as a very happy time.

Jong and her daughter, Molly, in 1982, smiling with Emily Doggenson, Jong’s second Bichon Frisé. This picture was used as a holiday card, and then in magazines. Jong says she wondered if it was so beloved because mother, daughter, and dog all shared the same hair.

A promotional photograph of Jong taken in her writing studio. When really writing, she worked in solitude and pajamas—like most authors, she says.