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December 12, 1997 - Image 165

Resource type:
Text
Publication:
The Detroit Jewish News, 1997-12-12

Disclaimer: Computer generated plain text may have errors. Read more about this.

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Jong not only recalled her own
grandparents' stories (including one
about her grandfather escaping Russia
on a crowded train) to use in her
book, she asked her friends for their
favorite Yiddish sayings. There are so
many used in the book that she pro-
vides a glossary at the end.
Erica Jong, as a Jewish woman,
daughter and one-time single mother,
draws from many of her own experi-
ences to create the family in Inventing
Memory. Now in her mid-50s, the
blonde, sharply-but-simply dressed
writer would fit in with the savvy
Manhattanites of her books. She
injects her characters with her own
feminist zeal, but Inventing Memory
also shows the mother-daughter con-
flict in full flame.
"It's part of the maturing
process," Jong laughs. She has a teen-
age daughter, Molly. "We start out try-
ing to be as dif-
ferent from our
A mothers as
absolutely possi-
ble. And then we
§ discover that we
become our
mothers."

Inventing
Memory teaches
us how Jewish
Erica Jong: "We
women survived,
start out trying to
raised their chil-
be as different
dren, built
from our mothers
careers, and per-
as absolutely possi- petuated their
ble. And then we
heritage. From
discover that we
tough beginnings,
become our moth- some very
ers."
resilient women
emerged. "These women were heroic"
Jong says. "Look at the beginning of
the century, at any social movement.
The eight-hour day, or the settlement
house movement. Behind every great
movement there's been a Jewish
woman. Yet we've been made into this
sort of joke."
This bad joke stems from the "inter-
nalized anti-Semitism in the Jewish
man, his embarrassment for his roots,"
she says. "Think of Philip Roth. A bril-
liant writer, an interesting writer. Yet he
is so full of hatred, self-hatred."
Jong sees herself as a very different
kind of writer.
"I'm funny, but my satire is not
hateful toward my people. I celebrate
being Jewish in most of my books.
And my characters celebrate it, think
of it as something valuable, not some-
thing horrible. It's surprising to me
how few books like that there are." ❑

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