“Some of
my earliest memories were sitting in small, stuffy greenrooms in cities that
were barely cities. I grew up in the 1980s and ’90s, the era of peak book tour,
when successful American writers went from bookshop to bookshop, from local
television station to local television station, hawking their tomes. From
Chicago to Miami, my mother would travel with a hardcover under her arm and a
pen in her pocket. My mother, Erica Jong, was addicted to wine and airplanes. She
did write Fear of Flying, so she had some very mixed feelings about
airplanes, but Mom loved to travel. She was one of those people who get
restless every two weeks and decided she needed to go somewhere to fix her
problems. Luckily for her, the years she was famous were the years American
publishers loved to send their authors on planes to cities to appear on local
television.”— American
writer, journalist, author, political commentator, and podcaster Molly
Jong-Fast, “Greenroom With a View,” Vanity Fair, June 2023
Finally reading
this article a couple of years after its appearance, I found myself intrigued by it
for two reasons: its reminiscences of an era of book promotions that we are not
likely to see again, and its cheeky view of Molly Jong-Fast’s mom, the
novelist Erica Jong.
TV
stations were not the only places where Ms. Jong would fly to. Some years ago,
I heard through the grapevine that she had appeared at a trade association
convention, during the "era of peak book tour" described by her daughter. Many attendees, shocked by her risque talk, complained to the event
organizers.
I just
couldn’t help shaking my head at the whole thing. Maybe the event’s organizers
had hoped, not unreasonably, that Jong would lure people to this show. But they
also shouldn’t have been surprised that the author of Fear of Flying might
turn the air blue.
The busy
schedule described above might have appealed to Ms. Jong, but perhaps not so
much to her daughter, I suspect.
After all,
Ms. Jong-Fast’s first book, the ironically named novel Normal Girl,
is about the MAM (Madison Avenue Mafia), which she says "operates under
one of the basic principles of Zen Buddhism: mindfulness. They may not be
mindful of you or me but they make up for it with a self-obsession so blinding
that the sun looks tame."
With
considerable tongue in cheek, the narrator-heroine of this roman a clef
notes that she is “further proof that children of famous people are like
communism: better in concept than in practice."
I love
that phrase, “the era of peak book tour,” even with its implication that such
strenuous promotional swings are waning. I can’t imagine that even for
bestselling authors like Ms. Jong at her commercial peak, publishers are
willing to foot the bill for first-class hotels and air travel.
Additionally,
COVID-19 heightened fears of contracting disease in closed environments like
airplanes while providing digital alternatives: Zoom calls, podcasts, and the
like. With fewer print outlets nowadays, markets are more micro than macro,
increasing the necessity for more narrowly based promotions—even for authors with
prior perches on the bestseller list, like Ms. Jong, never mind the rest of us.
(The image
that accompanies this post, showing Erica Jong at a Barnes and Noble event in
New York, was taken on Sept. 16, 2013, by Wes Washington.)