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Article: She's Gotta Have It.(Erica Jong's feminist works)
- Article from:
- The Nation
- Article date:
- October 6, 2003
- Author:
CopyrightCOPYRIGHT 2003 The Nation Company L.P. This material is published under license from the publisher through the Gale Group, Farmington Hills, Michigan. All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Gale Group. (Hide copyright information)
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Sappho's Leap. By Erica Jong. Norton. 316 pp. $24.95.
In his 1997 song "Highlands," Bob Dylan reports a conversation between himself and a waitress. "She says, You don't read women authors, do you?/ ... I said, you're way wrong./She says, which ones have you read, then?/I say, I read Erica Jong."
Erica Jong. The name closes the lyric like a punch line. There is perhaps no more woman-y woman author. Those four jouncing syllables connote a kind of vast female sexuality that seems almost ridiculously overwhelming. Paul Theroux has referred to a Jong heroine as a "mammoth pudenda," and while that's an awful thing to call someone, Theroux has hit upon just ...