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Beautifully gifted artist writer with a wry yet good humored, worldview and a penchant for adventure!
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Inventing Memory
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"A sexy tale celebrating the strength and creativity we inherit from our mothers" (Glamour), Inventing Memory is Erica Jong's mesmerizing, beautifully written saga of modern womanhood and the struggle for freedom, vividly brought to life through four generations of remarkable mothers and daughters.With more than 22 million copies of her blockbuster books sold worldwide, novelist, poet, and essayist Erica Jong has been stirring the passions of readers for 25 years, giving voice to contemporary women and the issues that define their lives. From her controversial classic Fear of Flying to her acclaimed Fear of Fifty, legions of fans trust her for witty, innovative, gutsy writing. Now comes her most ambitious and satisfying novel yet.
Spanning a hundred years, Inventing Memory captures the whole of the twentieth century through four unforgettable women whose stories come alive through Sara, the youngest. A single mother working on an extraordinary research project, Sara carefully excavates the lives of her mother, grandmother, and great-grandmother to understand the roots of her own identity. Drawn to these women, she discovers the power and passion that is her matriarchal birthright, and learns the meaning and substance of her exceptional family and the legacy she will pass to her daughter.
Rich ... brimming with trenchant observations about the eternal man -- woman thing". -- New York Times Book Review
Spanning a hundred years, Inventing Memory captures the whole of the twentieth century through four unforgettable women whose stories come alive through Sara, the youngest. A single mother working on an extraordinary research project, Sara carefully excavates the lives of her mother, grandmother, and great-grandmother to understand the roots of her own identity. Drawn to these women, she discovers the power and passion that is her matriarchal birthright, and learns the meaning and substance of her exceptional family and the legacy she will pass to her daughter.
Rich ... brimming with trenchant observations about the eternal man -- woman thing". -- New York Times Book Review
384 pages, Mass Market Paperback
First published January 1,1997
This edition
- Format
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384 pages, Mass Market Paperback
- Published
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January 1, 1998 by HarperCollins
- ISBN
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9780061091803
- ASIN
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0061091804
- Language
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English
About the author
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Erica Jong—novelist, poet, and essayist—has consistently used her craft to help provide women with a powerful and rational voice in forging a feminist consciousness. She has published 21 books, including eight novels, six volumes of poetry, six books of non-fiction and numerous articles in magazines and newspapers such as the New York Times, the Sunday Times of London, Elle, Vogue, and the New York Times Book Review.
In her groundbreaking first novel, Fear of Flying (which has sold twenty-six million copies in more than forty languages), she introduced Isadora Wing, who also plays a central part in three subsequent novels—How to Save Your Own Life, Parachutes and Kisses, and Any Woman's Blues. In her three historical novels—Fanny, Shylock's Daughter, and Sappho's Leap—she demonstrates her mastery of eighteenth-century British literature, the verses of Shakespeare, and ancient Greek lyric, respectively. A memoir of her life as a writer, Seducing the Demon: Writing for My Life, came out in March 2006. It was a national bestseller in the US and many other countries. Erica's latest book, Sugar in My Bowl, is an anthology of women writing about sex, has been recently released in paperback.
Erica Jong was honored with the United Nations Award for Excellence in Literature. She has also received Poetry magazine's Bess Hokin Prize, also won by W.S. Merwin and Sylvia Plath. In France, she received the Deauville Award for Literary Excellence and in Italy, she received the Sigmund Freud Award for Literature. The City University of New York awarded Ms. Jong an honorary PhD at the College of Staten Island.
Her works have appeared all over the world and are as popular in Eastern Europe, Japan, China, and other Asian countries as they have been in the United States and Western Europe. She has lectured, taught and read her work all over the world.
A graduate of Barnard College and Columbia University's Graduate Faculties where she received her M.A. in 18th Century English Literature, Erica Jong also attended Columbia's graduate writing program where she studied poetry with Stanley Kunitz and Mark Strand. In 2007, continuing her long-standing relationship with the university, a large collection of Erica's archival material was acquired by Columbia University's Rare Book & Manuscript Library, where it will be available to graduate and undergraduate students. Ms. Jong plans to teach master classes at Columbia and also advise the Rare Book Library on the acquisition of other women writers' archives.
Calling herself “a defrocked academic,” Ms. Jong has partly returned to her roots as a scholar. She has taught at Ben Gurion University in Israel, Bennington College in the US, Breadloaf Writers' Conference in Vermont and many other distinguished writing programs and universities. She loves to teach and lecture, though her skill in these areas has sometimes crowded her writing projects. “As long as I am communicating the gift of literature, I'm happy,” Jong says. A poet at heart, Ms. Jong believes that words can save the world.
In her groundbreaking first novel, Fear of Flying (which has sold twenty-six million copies in more than forty languages), she introduced Isadora Wing, who also plays a central part in three subsequent novels—How to Save Your Own Life, Parachutes and Kisses, and Any Woman's Blues. In her three historical novels—Fanny, Shylock's Daughter, and Sappho's Leap—she demonstrates her mastery of eighteenth-century British literature, the verses of Shakespeare, and ancient Greek lyric, respectively. A memoir of her life as a writer, Seducing the Demon: Writing for My Life, came out in March 2006. It was a national bestseller in the US and many other countries. Erica's latest book, Sugar in My Bowl, is an anthology of women writing about sex, has been recently released in paperback.
Erica Jong was honored with the United Nations Award for Excellence in Literature. She has also received Poetry magazine's Bess Hokin Prize, also won by W.S. Merwin and Sylvia Plath. In France, she received the Deauville Award for Literary Excellence and in Italy, she received the Sigmund Freud Award for Literature. The City University of New York awarded Ms. Jong an honorary PhD at the College of Staten Island.
Her works have appeared all over the world and are as popular in Eastern Europe, Japan, China, and other Asian countries as they have been in the United States and Western Europe. She has lectured, taught and read her work all over the world.
A graduate of Barnard College and Columbia University's Graduate Faculties where she received her M.A. in 18th Century English Literature, Erica Jong also attended Columbia's graduate writing program where she studied poetry with Stanley Kunitz and Mark Strand. In 2007, continuing her long-standing relationship with the university, a large collection of Erica's archival material was acquired by Columbia University's Rare Book & Manuscript Library, where it will be available to graduate and undergraduate students. Ms. Jong plans to teach master classes at Columbia and also advise the Rare Book Library on the acquisition of other women writers' archives.
Calling herself “a defrocked academic,” Ms. Jong has partly returned to her roots as a scholar. She has taught at Ben Gurion University in Israel, Bennington College in the US, Breadloaf Writers' Conference in Vermont and many other distinguished writing programs and universities. She loves to teach and lecture, though her skill in these areas has sometimes crowded her writing projects. “As long as I am communicating the gift of literature, I'm happy,” Jong says. A poet at heart, Ms. Jong believes that words can save the world.
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Rating(4.3 / 5.0, 33 votes)
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33 reviews All reviews
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What I have liked most about the book are the memories of my parents who came from Europe. I remember my father of blessed memory recalled only speaking Yiddish at home. He was born in the US, but his parents came from Russia. My mother of blessed memory only could speak German and she was born in Germany (maybe Poland now).
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I ended up not reading this book, but flipping through it just so I knew what happened to each character. The first character was great, but it fell away after that.
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I'm a healthy chunk through the book (actually I am listening to it - read by Melissa Manchester) and I am enjoying every minute. Ms. Manchester is an excellent mimic of accents and that wonderful, rich voice of hers colors and adds so much dimension to the characters. I read in a review where the reviewer felt that each story became less with each Levitsky woman's retelling of her life and that the richness of her character diminishes with the compromises she makes. When I finish this novel, I will write more, but for now, having listened to Sarah's life and now on to Salome's life story, I am drinking in their experiences.
I remind myself that the first settlers in a new land seem so much more exciting than the subsequent generations only for the fact that the initial risk and challenges were so different from their previous life and where shared with family memories. As the ante is upped, so to speak, the sparkle of adventure and danger may be dimmed by an established family carving a place for themselves - even if they manage to go as did Salome to Europe. Socioeconomic strides have been made which alters what is ground breaking or even remarkable and more than likely they leave out of small details that are considered to be everyday occurrences so that doesn't get relayed to family members.
I remind myself that the first settlers in a new land seem so much more exciting than the subsequent generations only for the fact that the initial risk and challenges were so different from their previous life and where shared with family memories. As the ante is upped, so to speak, the sparkle of adventure and danger may be dimmed by an established family carving a place for themselves - even if they manage to go as did Salome to Europe. Socioeconomic strides have been made which alters what is ground breaking or even remarkable and more than likely they leave out of small details that are considered to be everyday occurrences so that doesn't get relayed to family members.
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A lot of good wisdom
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Enjoyable account of 4 generations of women and their influence on each other across the generations through their Jewish heritage, their strengths and weaknesses, as well as their chosen forms of artistic expression.
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A fictional Jewish family memoir (subtitled A Novel of Mothers and Daughters) begins with a gripping description of an infant’s death as he is pressed against his mother’s breast while she and others hide from Cossacks, and continues through the wrenching “differences” between mothers and daughters over the decades in America. So many quotables, I may purchase it just to pass along to Dana at some point , but I guess she’s too young right now. One favorite: “Mothers and daughters -- it’s a comedy, but also a tragedy. We fill our daughters with all the chutzpah we wish for ourselves. We want them to be free as we were not. And then we resent them for being so free. We resent them for being what we have made! With granddaughters, it’s so much easier. And great-granddaughters.”
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I miss Erica Jong. It has been too long since I was graced by her beautiful writing.
There were many familiar characters and settings in this book, many of them way
more career driven and political than I have in my lineage. The Yiddish was colorful
and after 50 plus years I now know what "kine hora " means and it is not at all what
I had guessed as a child.
There were many familiar characters and settings in this book, many of them way
more career driven and political than I have in my lineage. The Yiddish was colorful
and after 50 plus years I now know what "kine hora " means and it is not at all what
I had guessed as a child.
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