Sugar in My Bowl (30 page)

Authors: Erica Jong

Tags: #Health & Fitness, #Sexuality, #Literary Collections, #Essays

BOOK: Sugar in My Bowl

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Liz is amused when dubbed “too nice.” Says she, “If this is true, why did Frank Sinatra denounce me on world stages? Why did Donald Trump try to buy my newspaper so he could fire me? Why did P.R. flack Bobby Zarem say I’d had a woman killed? Why did Sean Connery want to stick my column where the sun don’t shine? Why did Sean Penn run out of a building when we were introduced?”

Jann Turner
is a writer and filmmaker. She is the author of the novels
Heartland
and
Southern Cross,
and the children’s book
Home Is Where You Find It
. She’s an award-winning filmmaker who has written and directed hundreds of hours of television, and she is the director of the feature films
White Wedding
and
Paradise Stop
.

Barbara Victor
is a journalist who has covered the Middle East for most of her career. Based in Paris, she has worked for a variety of international magazines, newspapers, and television programs. She scored the first interview of Muammar Gaddafi after the November 1986 American bombardment of Libya and her interview was a cover story for
US News & World Report
. She is also the author of five novels, which have been translated into more than twenty-five languages, and nine nonfiction books, one of which, a biography of Hanan Ashrawi, was nominated for the 1995 Pulitzer Prize.

After living in Paris for twenty-two years, Barbara finally came home and married the man of her dreams. She lives in New York with her husband and three dogs, but still writes books, lectures on women’s issues, and writes a blog entitled Mecca (see barbaravictor.com).

Rebecca Walker
is the author of the bestselling, award-winning memoirs
Black, White, and Jewish
and
Baby Love;
and editor of the anthologies
To Be Real,
What Makes a Man,
and
One Big Happy Family
. She parents avidly, writes constantly, lectures widely, and teaches seminars on creative nonfiction and the art of memoir around the world.

Jennifer Weiner
was born in 1970 on an army base in Louisiana. She grew up in Connecticut, graduated with a degree in English literature from Princeton University, and worked as a newspaper reporter until the publication of her first book. She is the author of the novels
Good in Bed;
In Her Shoes,
which was turned into a major motion picture;
Little Earthquakes; Goodnight Nobody;
the short story collection
The Guy Not Taken; Certain Girls,
the sequel to
Good in Bed;
Best
Friends
Forever;
and
Fly
Away
Home
. There are more than eleven million copies of her books in print in thirty-six countries. She can be found on Facebook, on Twitter, and, in real life, in Philadelphia, where she lives with her family.

Fay Weldon
has been writing novels, stories, stage and screen plays for a good forty years and shows no sign of stopping. In Britain she is known as a national treasure, which she supposes to be better than being a national disgrace. She has been married three times and has four sons, three stepsons and one stepdaughter.

Jessica Winter
is a senior editor at
TIME
. Her writing has appeared in
Slate,
the
Boston Globe,
the
Los Angeles Times,
the
Believer,
and many other publications. She lives in Brooklyn.

About the Editor

Erica Jong
is a poet, novelist, and essayist, best known for her eight
New York Times
bestselling novels:
Fear of Flying
(which has sold twenty-six million copies in more than forty languages);
How to Save Your Own Life; Fanny: Being the True History of the Adventures of Fanny Hackabout-Jones;
Parachutes & Kisses;
Shylock’s Daughter (previously called Serenissima);
Any Woman’s Blues;
Inventing Memory;
and
Sappho’s Leap
.

Her midlife memoir,
Fear of Fifty,
remains a major international bestseller.

Ms. Jong is also the author of seven award-winning collections of poetry. Her latest,
Love Comes First,
was released by Tarcher-Penguin in January 2009.

Ms. Jong is also the author of several nonfiction books. Her work has appeared all over the world.

Known for her commitment to women’s rights, copyright, and free expression, Ms. Jong is a frequent lecturer in the United States and abroad. She was president of the Authors Guild and now serves on its board.

She has established a program for young writers at her alma mater, Barnard College.

Columbia University (where she received her M.A. in eighteenth-century English literature) acquired her literary archive in 2008.

Ms. Jong has been honored with the United Nations Award for Excellence in Literature,
Poetry
magazine’s Bess Hokin Prize, and the Deauville Award in France. In Italy, she has received the Sigmund Freud Award and the first Fernanda Pivano Prize, named for the woman who introduced Ernest Hemingway, Allen Ginsberg, and Erica Jong to Italy.

Ms. Jong is working on a novel featuring “a woman of a certain age.”

Fear of Flying
is in preparation as a BBC miniseries.

Sugar in My Bowl
is her first anthology.

For more information, please visit her websites:
www.ericajong.com
and
www.sugarinmybowl.com.

Visit
www.AuthorTracker.com
for exclusive information on your favorite HarperCollins authors.

Notes

Best Sex Ever: A Systematic Review with Meta-Analysis

1
. See data collected by the subjects in the woodlands of Bures, Suffolk, England, reviewed in
The Incident at Arger Fen
(2003).

2
. See subjects’ data reviewed in
The Diagnostics of the Diagonal
;
or
,
Meditations on the Gräfenberg Spot
(2002–present).

3
. See data collected by the subjects in Amsterdam, the Netherlands, reviewed in
They Came in through the Bathroom Window
(2003).

4
. It should be noted that sound privacy is generally accepted to have a weaker correlation with optimized relations than visual privacy. See
Inadequate Hotel Soundproofing as Deterrent to Intimate Activities
:
An Opposing Viewpoint
(2003; updated 2004, 2006, 2008) and
When the Bedroom Overlooks a Courtyard
:
An Etiquette Guide for Couples
(2006; editions updated annually).

5
. It should be noted that studies have found a direct, perhaps paradoxical, correlation between the aphrodisiac qualities of seclusion and the precariousness thereof. For further discussion, see
The Incident at Arger Fen
.

6
. The original German term for this phenomenon, coined by playwright Bertolt Brecht, is
Verfremdungseffekt
, which is as sexy as it sounds.

7
. The British popular rock band Pulp memorably dramatized the
Verfremdungseffekt
of what may be termed “pornographied” sex in its 1998 long-play album
This Is Hardcore
: “I’ve seen this storyline / Played out so many times before / That goes in there / Then that goes in there / Then that goes in there / Then that goes in there / And then it’s over.” Perhaps surprisingly, subjects do not find
This Is Hardcore
itself to exhibit an alienating effect on relations.

8
. For further discussion, see
The Incident at Arger Fen
.

9
. Elisabeth Wilson,
52 Brilliant Ideas—Great Sex
:
Bigger
,
Better
,
Faster
,
More
(Perigree, 2008).

10
. Tracey Cox,
Supersex
(Dorling Kindersley, 2009).

11
. Christine Evans and David Usher,
101 Chocolate Sex Positions
:
With an Ul-timate Safe Sex Guide for Guaranteed Satisfaction at Any Age and Shape
(Self-Help Publishers, 2008).

12
. An anonymous “coregasm” researcher quoted on MensHealth.com: “
Bam
—it hit me like a ton of bricks. I just stopped right then and there, got all pale in the face, and then busted out laughing. Everyone in the place was looking at me.”

13
.
Viz.
, “I need you more than want you, and I want you for all time.” Jimmy Webb, quoted in Glen Campbell, “Wichita Lineman” (1968).

Also by Erica Jong

FICTION

Fear of Flying: A Novel
(1973)

How to Save Your Own Life: A Novel
(1977)

Fanny: Being the True History of the Adventures of Fanny Hackabout-Jones
(1980)

Parachutes & Kisses
(1984)

Shylock’s Daughter: A Novel of Love in Venice
or
Serenissima
(1987)

Any Woman’s Blues: A Novel of Obsession
(1990)

Inventing Memory: A Novel of Mothers and Daughters
or
Of Blessed Memory
(UK) (1997)

Sappho’s Leap: A Novel
(2003)

POETRY

Fruits & Vegetables
(1971, 1997)

Half-Lives
(1973)

Loveroot
(1975)

At the Edge of the Body
(1979)

Ordinary Miracles: New Poems
(1983)

Becoming Light: Poems—New and Selected
(1991)

Love Comes First
(2009)

OTHER WORKS

Witches
(1981, 1997, 1999)

Megan’s Book of Divorce
or
Megan’s Two Houses
(1984, 1996)

The Devil at Large: Erica Jong on Henry Miller
(1993)

Fear of Fifty: A Midlife Memoir
(1994)

What Do Women Want? Power, Sex, Bread, Roses
(1998)

Seducing the Demon: Writing for My Life
(2006)

Credits

SUGAR IN MY BOWL.
Introduction and compilation copyright © 2011 by Erica Mann Jong. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the nonexclusive, nontransferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse-engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.

FIRST EDITION

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data