Erica Jong is a feminist icon, but to her daughter she's ‘an alcoholic narcissist'
How to Lose Your Mother: A Daughter's Memoir
Molly Jong-Fast
Picador, $36.99
Molly Jong-Fast is the 'only child of an alcoholic narcissist'. As it turns out, that narcissist is a second-wave feminist icon: American author Erica Jong.
In 1973, Jong published Fear of Flying, a daring novel celebrating female desire and sexual pleasure through one woman's libertine search for herself. The freedom the protagonist finds in casual sex even led to the coinage of a term: the 'zipless f--k'. It would eventually sell more than 37 million copies.
But behind the self-possessed image Jong projected was a mother whose addiction to fame and alcohol – in equal measure – fractured her relationship to her only child. How to Lose Your Mother retraces Jong-Fast's annus horribilis, the year her husband was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer and her mother's mind was undone by dementia.
The political commentator recounts a childhood relegated to the sidelines as her mother tried vainly to keep the spotlight shining after her book fell off the bestsellers list. Taking inspiration from Fear of Flying 's heroine, Jong would disappear into a hazy world of fleeting relationships, alcohol abuse and a fickle search for public attention while her daughter was parented by others.
Jong would occasionally resurface to mine motherhood for writing material, often with comical and damning results. As a teenager, Jong-Fast is told by her mother to be careful driving on the icy roads as she doesn't want to have a dead daughter – at Christmas time. 'I would wonder if it was possible … my mother sort of wanted me to drive off the road,' Jong-Fast writes.
Years later, when Jong-Fast almost dies giving birth, her agonising experience is retold as a delusion in her mother's new novel: 'Imagine that the worst thing that's ever happened to you is portrayed as a figment of your own imagination. By your own mother.' It's unsurprising then to hear that the same woman called Jong-Fast 'overdramatic' for wanting to go to rehab as a teenager abusing alcohol. (Jong-Fast is now 26 years sober.)
With a loved one ravaged by dementia, levity is the relief-valve Jong-Fast must often pull to both blunt the torture of her new daily reality and the pain of thinking back to the years of neglect. When visiting her mother's New York apartment one day, it's the only comfort possible when she finds her sitting half-naked, reeking of urine and leafing happily through a newspaper.
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After five long years of COVID setbacks, development applications and construction delays, Mick Tyrrell's long-held dream of bringing his love of southern American barbecue cuisine, music and culture to the Hunter is "running wild." On Friday afternoon, the Hunter Valley businessman's Full Throttle Ranch opened its doors at the site of the old Buttai Barn. The new venue hosts up to 500 people but is expected to be fully booked on its opening weekend. "Tomorrow morning it'll probably hit home a little harder," Mr Tyrrell told the Newcastle Herald two hours before opening. "Right now, I suppose when you're busy, the pressure and the stress of it takes hold. It's exciting." The Lings Road property was home to the Buttai Barn for 38 years, hosting country dances, music, and other entertainment. 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Firepower plus people power plus the contact high of worldliness that comes from brushing shoulders with a world-famous hotel dynasty equals a compelling class of (West) Australian dining that feels very modern, very Perth and very essential.
