THE LONG GOODBYE

Erica Jong, feminist icon and literary celebrity, was a dominant force in the culture—and my life. Watching my mother slide into dementia is a reminder of the fleeting nature of fame.

- Molly Jong-Fast

My mother coined an expression for casual sex: the “zipless fuck.” Now think about being the offspring of the person who wrote that phrase. And pour one out for me.

I grew up with Erica Jong everywhere—on television, in the crossword puzzle, in the newspaper. She was a kind of second-wave feminist, a white feminist, and (a highly educated, wildly affluent, Jewish, and somewhat out-of-touch) Everywoman. But she wasn’t an actual Everywoman, of course; she was too famous for that. Too famous, and too special. She was famous for her book Fear of Flying, and then later she was famous for being famous, and then eventually she wasn’t famous anymore. Because fame, like youth, is fleeting; it deserts you when you least expect it. The wheel of fortune is always spinning.

My mother never got over being famous. Even years after people stopped coming up to us in stores, even years after she slipped from the public consciousness, the virus of fame had made her someone different. Becoming normal like the rest of us, the journey to unfamousness, was for her an event so strange and stressful, so damaging to her ego, that she was never able to process it.

My grandfather, the writer (and Communist) Howard Fast—his most famous novel was