Quote of the Day (Molly Jong-Fast, on Her Mom in ‘The Era of Peak Book Tour’)

“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.)