You probably know Molly Jong-Fast from the slash of red in her blonde hair that stands out in appearances on MSNBC, or her snappy retorts in your social media feed where she comments constantly and fearlessly on the current political divide. Her new book has nothing to do with politics.
“How to Lose Your Mother,” on sale this week, explores her complex relationship with her famous mother, the novelist Erica Jong, and navigating her encroaching dementia. In a candid conversation with WaxWord, Jong-Fast reflects on her childhood, her mother’s alcoholism, the impact of her mother’s fame and her own teenaged addiction and subsequent sobriety.
“That’s the thing about parents that’s so hard — for me anyway,” she says. “As soon as you they start to go, you realize that it is over, right? … I had tried for years and years and years and she just couldn’t, for whatever reason. It was just too hard for her, to get clarity and apologize.”
The transcript below is edited for clarity and length:
Sharon Waxman: When did it occur to you to write a book about you and your mom and your relationship, since you’ve been living with this relationship your entire life? Did it feel like something that needed to come out at some point?
Molly Jong-Fast: Yes, I have this mother who is famous to some people, but mostly not anymore. It was more like I just wanted to tell the story of what I saw growing up and about people getting unfamous, and what that looked like. Also, I wanted to tell the story of, it’s OK to not be able to be everything you want for your parents.
I think if you’re a person looking for a celebrity memoir, you will be very disappointed, because no one involved in it is particularly famous. But if you’re a person that’s looking for a story about what it’s like to not be able to do it all in midlife and what it’s like when things don’t go the way you hoped, then that, I think, is the story of this book. It’s like how to survive an emergency.
I was very inspired by Joan Didion and “The Year of Magical Thinking.” And that was meant to be a foray into that. Is it a daughter’s memoir? I don’t know. I mean, like, I’m her daughter, but it’s really about trying to take care of your parents.
Well, sure, but there’s that extra layer that is very poignant. I think that’s also what makes the book special — ultimately, you grew up in your childhood with a really famous mother, and then that fame faded. So talk a little bit about what it was like growing up as the daughter of Erica Jong.
That was, yeah, that was exciting. My mother was not a great mother. But I don’t think of my childhood as being particularly hard. I mean, my mom was an alcoholic, and I’m sober since I was 19, so I’m not necessarily better than she is, but that’s certainly an element that’s — my kids are not going to [follow] my alcoholism.
One of the things my mother did, which was amazing, was she had just a deep belief in my talent for seemingly no reason. Like she would always say, “You are very brilliant.” And I’d be like, you know, I’m failing out of third grade so … And she’d be like, “I know you’re brilliant …”
So I do think one of the things my mother did was she really, really, really made me believe that I was talented. And you know, that is both good and bad.
So at what age would you say you were when you said, “I have to take what life’s given me and decide how I want the rest of my life to go.”
It’s I think in my 30s, because I was doing weird stuff, like sending my kids to the schools I went to, you know, just trying to play it out, trying to fix it. And at some point I was like, “They’re not me. I’m not them. There is no world in which we go back and make this right.” It just has to be over. And that’s the thing about parents that’s so hard — for me anyway. The idea that it would be over, and that there would be no other chance. And this is something people talk a lot about with dementia, as soon as they start to go, you realize that it is over, right?
And in some ways, we were never going to be able to, because I had tried for years and years and years and she just couldn’t, for whatever reason. It was just too hard for her, to get clarity and apologize. You know, I made amends to her, like a million times, but I never really got to —
Do you apologize to her?
Oh, endlessly, for the things I put her through. Because even if she was not perfect, you know, we all have a role in our [lives]. I certainly made her worry. I mean, I had my own part in that relationship. I just wanted to make my side of the street clean. I needed her to be able to hear me. One of the things that’s cool about being sober is I just need to be able to ask for forgiveness in these kind of fraught relationships.
As a writer I got very stuck on this idea that she is now in a groundhog day scenario where everything is kind of not real, but real. But, you know, she just is sort of running out her days in this place filled with other people who are also running out their days.
It really struck me the whole last section of the book where you’re talking about taking care of your mom after you’ve had to put her into an assisted living facility. You say many times: I am a bad daughter. You say it over and over again.
I think it’s more like we feel that way. I think a lot of us feel that way, and that was how I feel … That year I was so stuck in my head about, like, oh my God, half of my life is over. I mean, that did not even occur to me. You know, as someone who was a teenage alcoholic, I didn’t think I would get to midlife, let alone now be obsessed with aging.
I want to flip it on you, because now — guess what? — you’re famous. People come up to you on the street. Like I actually ran into you on the street last week, and people seek you out, in a way, not because you’re the daughter of Erica Jong at all, because of what you created. How do you relate to that?
Yeah, I mean, what’s nice about having some notoriety as you’re a little bit older is that you just — I know what it’s like to publish a book and have nobody give a f–k, right? Done that. And I know what it’s like to pitch 15 pieces, and I know what it’s like to pitch a piece, write the piece, have the editor be like, “Can you do this? Can you do that?” Change it all. And then being like, “We’re sorry.” I’ve just been through a lot of rejection. And I still go through a lot of rejection, which is fine. But I have a lot of good perspective on that.
Does that mean you appreciate having notoriety or fame, or does that mean that you have a different perspective? You know it’s going to go away someday, because you saw it go away with your mom.
I know it’ll go away, but I also really appreciate it. It’s funny because I did this interview with Jay McInerney for the book, for Interview, and he was saying he’s not as famous as he used to be. Isn’t that interesting? Like, not a judgment. So what I think will happen, what I hope will happen, because I’m sober, is that when I’m less … notable, notorious, notorious, notable, notable, or notorious, I guess you’re notable. I’ll hopefully spend more time with the dogs and the husband. That’s what I was going to say, with the dogs and the husband and I’ll watch more TV.
That’s a very positive spin, because, yes, all that’s true, but you’re also in the middle of really intense political discussions that make you a target of criticism.
That stuff is a little scary, and this is one of the gifts of my childhood. Growing up, my mother had this really scary stalker, and it made me very careful about safety, because we had had this guy who really was quite scary. Like, he would come physically to our house and he would sit in our driveway.
How are you feeling right now about the state of things? I mean, you know, this interview will be seen for, you know, weeks and months and maybe years to come. But right now, we are five months into the Trump presidency, eight zillion lawsuits back and forth every five minutes, something Trump does gets shut down by the courts, and three minutes after that, the Supreme Court says, “No, it’s OK.” Go ahead, throw everybody out of the country, or, you know, let the children starve in Africa — whatever. And also I am feeling it very much, being aware that the media is under attack in a very specific, sustained and focused way.
This a good question. So yes, and I have to say, like, for me, I’m very happy with having a book and getting to talk on television. But it is a really dark time in media and and, you know, just to watch the difference between what the business was like in 2016 where we had all these outlets and all this fulsome coverage. Now we have four or five outlets. People on the left are sometimes mad at mainstream newspapers. But if we did not have the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, The Washington Post, we would not know what this administration is doing, so I thank God every day.
So let me just say I was really surprised. I thought Harris was going to win. Actually, I’m most proud of the columns that I wrote about how I got stuff wrong during the election cycle, because I felt like I was one of the very few people who did that. I really do think like I owe my readers accountability and I owe myself that right.
And now there is this new phase of like, the Democratic Party all covered up for Biden. Do you have a position on this kind of self-flagellation over whether we were lied to, and all of that about Biden and his age. What’s your opinion?
So I think two things. One, I think that getting old is not a conspiracy. I think getting old — as someone who has just written a book about having an elderly parent — getting old is getting old. Sometimes they’re good, and sometimes they’re not so good. I mean, my dad does not have dementia, but he is old, and sometimes he is sharp as a tack, and sometimes he’s [out] of it. Do I think that Biden should have run again? No. Do I think that there was a conspiracy? No.
Voters were like, “He’s too old.” I mean, that’s the thing, it’s not a cover-up. If the polling is, you know, 60, 58% of all voters saying he’s too old, that’s not a cover-up. That’s just they thought he was too old. So what should have happened is that in the midterms, that Biden should have said, “We’re going to do a full primary process,” but the calculus he was making was that incumbency was worth more, being a shaky incumbent would work better than doing a primary process. And, you know, I think it was 50/50. It turned out going on — it’s a lot of the hindsight, perfect hindsight, great.
My readers do not want another 10 news cycles about whether or not Biden’s advisors made the wrong choice. They obviously made the wrong choice because he lost. So I personally am not involved in this. I don’t want to say anything bad, but it in my mind is not the number one most pressing problem, right? Because we are being disappeared by ICE. So that would be my top worry.
Molly, thank you so much for chatting about your new book, “How to Lose Your Mother,” which is out June 10. Can your mom read the book? Will she read the book?
I think she will read it — or she will think she’s read it, which is as good as reading it.
