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 Author(s): Jong, Erica
Title: WHAT DO WOMEN WANT?
Binding:: Hardcover
Book Condition: As New
Approximate Size: 24 cm.
Publisher: New York HarperCollins Publishers 1998
ISBN Number: 0-06-018376-4 / 9780060183769
Seller ID: 30903
ABOUT THE BOOK What Do Women Want? FROM THE PUBLISHER What do women want? is a book of inspiration, humor, and provocation--an intimate conversation between the reader and Erica Jong. In these personal statements Jong addresses many of the questions that concern women and men today: Are women better off today than they were twenty-five years ago? What was Princess Diana's importance to women? Has Hillary Clinton prepared us for a woman president? Why do powerful women evoke ambivalence? Why do mothers continue to be blamed for working outside the home? How does the mother-daughter dialectic influence cycles of feminism and backlash? What is the relationship of pornography to the creative spirit? Who is the perfect man? What constitutes sex appeal? With her characteristic wit and her refreshing refusal to bow down before political correctness, Erica Jong tackles these and other issues. She also celebrates Nabokov's Lolita and relates it to the history of censorship; analyzes Anans Nin's importance to contemporary writers; captures the seductive charm of Italy, her second home; and honors the necessity for poetry in our lives. What Do Women Want? is at once an informal memoir and a book of inspiration for all women and the men in their lives. What Do Women Want? is both funny and serious, full of Jong's delight in language and her passion for ideas. It grapples with the writers she loves and the hypocrisy she hates, and reveals her own original, quirky take on the world we live in. FROM THE CRITICS Wall Street Journal The eclecticism of the collection is its real pleasure...nutty nuggets of politics, soft-centered personal reflections, melting confections of fantasy...meditations on literary themes and tributes to favorite authors. Edwina Currie Unfortunately, when [Jong] is being academic she is worthy but dull, and when the writing screams out as polemic — much more fun — she is frequently silly....I can put up with any sort of tosh if it is well written. So much of this book, however, falls in the you've-got-to-be-kidding category. -- Literary Review Publishers Weekly Jong is sometimes a lot of fun to read. The "sometimes" is the problem with this random collection of essays, some of which bounce off the news headlines and some of which sound like presentations to eager undergraduates. Jong is snippy and funny on the subject of the impotence drug Viagra--would we have expected less from the author of the famously raunchy Fear of Flying? But she can't resist pointing out that she was ahead of her time in 1973 when her heroine Isadora Wing opined on the subject of male limpness. Jong is interesting and trenchant on why we have such mixed feelings toward Hillary Rodham Clinton. She is academic on the subject of Charlotte Bronte and less than discreet about Henry Miller and his seemingly unalloyed admiration of her. She likes Virginia Woolf and Vladimir Nabokov, but it is hard not to balk a little when she describes herself as a "celebrated writer" in such company. Judging by her frequent references to her own notorious frankness, the celebration may be more sexual than literary. Complain, complain as ruffled critics have done since Isadora made her noisy debut 25 years ago, but at the end of it all Erica Jong is an original. One may flinch at a writer who can't leave the subject of sex for more than a paragraph or two but at the same time be seduced by one who believes in the power of poetry and introduces her miscellany with the words "Poetry has saved my life. I think it can save yours." (Sept.) Library Journal Jong (Inventing Memory, LJ 6/1/97) should stick to fiction writing. Her latest effort, essays on women, contemporary culture, and travel, is embarrassingly unsophisticated, full of the kind of gossip found in People magazine.
Women, Women -- United States
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