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NEW YORK -- After all these years, Erica Jong, who turns 64 on Sunday, is still talking about sex.
Jong's racy debut novel, Fear of Flying, was the sensation of 1973. Now she has written a confessional memoir, Seducing the Demon (Tarcher/Penguin, $22.95).
It's her 20th book, a series of loosely related stories about her life and fiction, her poetry and sex life, her husbands (four) and lovers.
In Jong's spacious Manhattan apartment, decorated with a steel sculpture of a reclining nude, no question seems too intimate. After all, she coined the phrase "zipless f---," which had less to do with zippers than sexual fantasies.
Her memoir deals in part with Jong's "catalogue of lovers," which prompts a question: How many have there been? "Not as many as people would think," she says with a smile. "I look for love, not hook-ups, alas. I hate to admit it."
Jong's memoir describes a one-night stand more than 20 years ago at the Frankfurt Book Fair in Germany, publishing's largest trade show. "Nothing said or done there should morally count," Jong writes. "Everyone is exhausted."
At least that's her explanation of how she spent a night in the hotel room of publisher Andy Stewart, who was then married to Jong's college classmate from Barnard, Martha Stewart. This was before Stewart "was a convicted felon or had sprouted synthetic wings from going to jail for a few months," as Jong puts it.
Her book names Andy Stewart "only because Martha hasn't stopped talking about it for 26 years, telling everyone I ruined her marriage."
Jong wishes she "had the sexual power (Martha) attributes to me. Actually, I believe I had very little to do with the problems in her marriage. I was just a pawn in a power struggle, a spear-carrier in her opera." Jong also writes, "Sleeping with married men is always trouble, I have forsworn it."
That doesn't stop her from dreaming. In Demon, Jong imagines having an affair with Bill Clinton "with my husband's knowledge and approval. ... Hillary is our only worry." Jong wonders "if I'm trashy enough for him," saying thongs "tend to give me diaper rash." Jong says she told her psychiatrist about the fantasy. "My shrink said, 'Stand in line.'"
In person, Jong is not profane. In a 90-minute interview, she utters the f-word once, to quote the famous line from Fear of Flying. But as noun or verb, it appears 15 times in her Demon. "It's how people talk," she says. "It's an intimate book."
After three divorces, Jong says she has been happily married for 17 years to lawyer Ken Burrows. Their apartment is filled with books (shelved alphabetically; memoirs by Bill and Hillary Clinton leaning against novels by Collette), original artwork and toy trains for visits by their 2-year-old grandson.
She's writing a novel featuring Isadora Wing, the heroine of Fear of Flying, who's approaching "the big 6-0; her husband has nearly died, and she's confronting morality."
She notes American fiction lacks female characters in their 50s or 60s who are "attractive, sexy and alive. I'd like to claim that territory."
If she were an actress, Jong knows she'd have trouble landing leading roles. But a writer "can go on writing until they carry you out," which is what she plans. "I wouldn't know what else to do.''
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