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A zesty, savvy, freewheeling memoir of the writing life... If leaving the reader wanting more is... success, then Jong succeeds. Kirkus Reviews
Tarcher
March 2006
288 pages
ISBN: 1585424447
Hardcover
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Non-Fiction Memoir
Erica Jong began this book as a guide for aspiring
writers. It was to be a book full of practical advice,
inspiring examples, and sage wisdom ("Dare to dream," for
instance). But she quickly realized that writing such a book
would be dishonest, a way to veil the difficult nature of
the writer's life with platitudes and encouragement. A demon
out of an Isaac Singer story whispered in Jong's ear: "Tell
the truth!" She knew she had no choice but to obey.
Seducing the Demon is the sublime and salacious story
of one writer's long and successful career as a poet,
novelist, and feminist provocateur. Throughout, Jong is
refreshingly direct-whether writing sex scenes, evoking the
lure of alcohol and grass in the search for ecstasy, or
conforming to the rigid narrative of AA. She tells us
candidly about how she always lusted after Bill Clinton, and
how she discovered the joys of tantric sex. Equally candid
about the privileges of fame and the slaps of notoriety,
Jong is above all loyal to the importance of telling the
truth in an age of lies.
Jong tells us she writes
"to get my life down on paper so it can never be
extinguished," and "to keep from going mad." She speaks of
the power of sexual desire to "transmute words into flesh,"
and reveals how a range of writers, from Kafka and Nabokov
to Henry Miller and Pablo Neruda, influenced and guided her.
Delivering trenchant observations on great writers, she
compares the ethereal Virginia Woolf to the earthy James
Joyce: "She is Ariel to James Joyce's Caliban." An uncanny
combination of bookish and bawdy, literary and libidinous,
Seducing the Demon is an invaluable glimpse into one
of the most provocative minds of our time.
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