Speaker 1: I'm Alec Baldwin, and here's the thing. The impact of
Speaker 1: divorce on children is something I think about a lot.
Speaker 1: I'm divorced and have a daughter. Erica Jong knows a
Speaker 1: lot about divorce. She's been married four times. That's why
Speaker 1: I wanted to sit down with Erica and her daughter,
Speaker 1: Molly Joan Fast. Both mother and daughter are writers. Erica
Speaker 1: is best known for her nineteen seventy three book Fear
Speaker 1: of Flying, of feminist classic about liberation in many forms. Molly,
Speaker 1: a mother of three kids herself, published her second novel,
Speaker 1: The Social Climber's Handbook earlier this year. Molly's father is
Speaker 1: Jonathan Fast, Erica's third husband. I lived with Jonathan for
Speaker 1: two years before we got married. But how long between John,
Speaker 1: Allan John and Jonathan About two years between them? You
Speaker 1: were there, You were with Allan John, when you met
Speaker 1: my dad. When these two good going, you step back
Speaker 1: and get out of their way. What did you learn
Speaker 1: about marriage from your parents? Mom? Can I answer the
Speaker 1: question honestly? Honestly is the only way? Well? I would say,
Speaker 1: have you seen Kramer versus Kramer? That was my general
Speaker 1: impression of marriage for my upbringing. But you know my
Speaker 1: mom had some good, useful suggestions, but ultimately I sort
Speaker 1: of had to find my own way, though she did
Speaker 1: eventually marry a really great guy and they've been married
Speaker 1: for twenty one years, and he's a divorce lawyer. He's
Speaker 1: a practicing divorce Yeah, he is. And Molly used to say,
Speaker 1: when I married him and then she married the one,
Speaker 1: you can never divorce the divorce is he a good guy.
Speaker 1: He's a really good guy. He's a totally menchi person
Speaker 1: and I like him better than when I married him,
Speaker 1: which was easier for you to write about sex or divorce.
Speaker 1: Sex divorce was the hardest thing I ever went through.
Speaker 1: I have a friend who said to me once when
Speaker 1: he was getting divorced from his wife, who could believe
Speaker 1: that after we were in the delivering room together, after
Speaker 1: I watched that baby come out, who could believe we'd
Speaker 1: ever be apart? Divorce is terrible. Divorce is difficult. We
Speaker 1: have it's a chaos, we have no rules for it.
Speaker 1: It's so incredibly painful. What was it like for you
Speaker 1: to deal with your parents divorce? Your parents divorce as
Speaker 1: an only child? Who did you talk to? Who did
Speaker 1: you do? Obese nanny from Trumbull, Connecticut, and she was
Speaker 1: my confidie. Like crumpets, those tasty cake everything. Um, I
Speaker 1: think I mean Cramer Versus Kramer was a great movie
Speaker 1: because that was my story, and it was a lot
Speaker 1: of kids stories. It was just a really gruesome seventies
Speaker 1: divorce and that's what they had. During that time. Divorce
Speaker 1: wasn't set up the way it is now now. If
Speaker 1: you have a divorce, there's no way that a mother
Speaker 1: is going to lose custody. Certain things are known. Back then,
Speaker 1: it was a totally unknown world of divorce. Let me
Speaker 1: just I don't want to get carried away by divorce
Speaker 1: being different in different decades, because I'm not sure that's true.
Speaker 1: I think it may look that way to you, Molly,
Speaker 1: but I think divorce is a catastrophic event for children,
Speaker 1: for women from men. It's very, very difficult to go through.
Speaker 1: It is traumatic. When you come to the other side
Speaker 1: of it, you say, I will never do that again,
Speaker 1: which is why I was single for nearly a decade
Speaker 1: between Molly's dad and Ken, because I wanted to make
Speaker 1: sure I would never make that miss. But after you
Speaker 1: have three divorces, Yeah, you were divorced, Yes, what made
Speaker 1: you believe success was awaiting you with your current husband?
Speaker 1: What gave you the We stamped on our wedding invitation
Speaker 1: a triumph of hope over experience, which came as the
Speaker 1: result of what how did you triumph? Ken have been
Speaker 1: married three times? I had been married three times. We
Speaker 1: were very cautious about tying the non You were not
Speaker 1: that cautious because you've only been together for three months.
Speaker 1: When you go both, that's right? Am I right? Is
Speaker 1: she right? We married after we knew each other three months.
Speaker 1: But this isn't an amazing and it's been most successful
Speaker 1: with him. Yeah, but there are certain things about me
Speaker 1: and Ken. We grew up in similar circumstances. Our parents
Speaker 1: were depression era people. We knew that you couldn't be
Speaker 1: married and fool around. You couldn't be married. Two secrets
Speaker 1: to their marriage. They have different bathrooms right there, each
Speaker 1: of their own bath and they're tired. They're too tired
Speaker 1: to do new curtains and bookshelves. The reason why we
Speaker 1: got married rather than lived together was because he said
Speaker 1: to me, if we just lived together, one day, we'll
Speaker 1: have a fight and you'll say I'm leaving, or I
Speaker 1: will We have a bad record. If we get married,
Speaker 1: we know we're going to make it work. Marvin Worth,
Speaker 1: Marvin Great, Marvin Worth. He was Lenny Bruce's manager, then
Speaker 1: went on to become a famous movie producer. Produced Malcolm X,
Speaker 1: the movie with Spike Lee, famous movie producer. He was
Speaker 1: from Brooklyn. He had the heaviest New York accent of
Speaker 1: any man I've ever heard him. And I said to him,
Speaker 1: how did you and Joan do it? How have you
Speaker 1: and John been married for for forty years? Like it
Speaker 1: was that you don't fight? And he said to me,
Speaker 1: uh do Joan? Then I fight? We fight every day,
Speaker 1: We fight all day. What we do is fight, he said,
Speaker 1: But then we after we're done fighting. I say, Joan,
Speaker 1: I'm not going anywhere, and you're not going anywhere, So
Speaker 1: what are we gonna do about this problem? I'm not
Speaker 1: going anywhere. That's what Kennan I wanted, like leaving is
Speaker 1: not an option. And actually this is very funny because
Speaker 1: he says I'm not going anywhere, just what Marvin said,
Speaker 1: and I say, I couldn't stand anyone else. And part
Speaker 1: of it is we really make each other laugh all
Speaker 1: the time. When we have a disagreement, we always get
Speaker 1: it out there. We don't hold it in. Now that
Speaker 1: I have kids, I feel like what they don't tell
Speaker 1: you about marriage is that marriage? I mean, what don't
Speaker 1: they tell you? The marriage is incredibly hard work. Molly
Speaker 1: got married at but Molly's hole childhood and upbringing had
Speaker 1: been different from mine. I married my first lover, my
Speaker 1: college sweetheart. I had no experience with anybody else when
Speaker 1: I married him. That was very much my generation. Molly
Speaker 1: sewed her wild though it's during college and when she
Speaker 1: met Matt, she knew this was the man she wanted
Speaker 1: to be with. It was a totally different pattern. But
Speaker 1: I think much wild. Did you travel with the stones?
Speaker 1: I think I um, I really grew up because I
Speaker 1: got sober when I was nineteen. So I went to
Speaker 1: rehab when I was a teenager, so that I was
Speaker 1: until I went to we have very crazy. But then
Speaker 1: once that happened, I then started to focus on, you know,
Speaker 1: what was important. So by the time I got married,
Speaker 1: I was already, you know, sober a long time. My
Speaker 1: grandmother was very Bohemian, and my mother was very bohemian. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and they all my grandparents had open marriages, you know.
Speaker 1: And I asked my dad about that, and my dad said, actually,
Speaker 1: was just that your grandfather cheated on your grandmother, and
Speaker 1: that was what they called it in the fifties. I
Speaker 1: also wanted a bourgeois life, Like I didn't want to
Speaker 1: be bohemian. I don't want to be single and have
Speaker 1: a boyfriend who had a motorcycle and cowboy But it's
Speaker 1: none of that appealed to me. What effect, if any,
Speaker 1: didn't have on you that your mother was viewed as
Speaker 1: and I'll let you put in the words, you know,
Speaker 1: your mother's expertise and female sexuality. What impact did that
Speaker 1: have on you when you were growing up? Um? I
Speaker 1: think more having a mother who was very successful in
Speaker 1: working a lot at more of an effect on growing
Speaker 1: up because she just traveled a lot and worked a
Speaker 1: lot and felt very stressed a lot. I think that
Speaker 1: had more of an effect on me. Then. I didn't
Speaker 1: particularly know what she did until when I was in
Speaker 1: sixth grade. I went to this very progressive school and
Speaker 1: a little boy was like, your mom writes dirty books.
Speaker 1: I went to science sure, and I was like, he's
Speaker 1: not allowed to say that to me, and she was like,
Speaker 1: but she does. And I was like, oh my god.
Speaker 1: She does. But the fact that we grew up in
Speaker 1: a townhouse with a hot pink door and then it
Speaker 1: was purple. It was right. We had paintings of naked
Speaker 1: lesbians having sex on the walls. Yes, why because no,
Speaker 1: they're not famous ladder Slader. I have a schlatterer and
Speaker 1: I keep it under my bed. When I want to
Speaker 1: get things going, I want to I want to pick
Speaker 1: it up. Relating to the erotic art I had lived
Speaker 1: in house guests. They had lived with Shirley McClain. Shirley
Speaker 1: finally threw them out. I've met them on the beach
Speaker 1: at now. They were about a hundred years old at
Speaker 1: that point when Shirley threw them out. They came to
Speaker 1: live with me and they gave me erotic artists. Thank
Speaker 1: you can't imagine that they were really old fashioned bohemians
Speaker 1: like Henry Miller. In the sixties, they had lived in
Speaker 1: Paris on the Boulevard rest Spy and had orgies that
Speaker 1: was all over. In the seventies, they went to India
Speaker 1: with Shirley and wrote about past life regression. In the
Speaker 1: eighties they got into antioxidants before anybody knew about it.
Speaker 1: They were at the head of every curve. They were
Speaker 1: not just about and they invented the iPad. They did not.
Speaker 1: I admire them because they were true bohemian. This is
Speaker 1: Alec Baldwin and you're listening to Here's the Thing. More
Speaker 1: from my conversation with Erica Jong and Molly Young Fast
Speaker 1: coming up in a minute. I'm Alec Baldwin and you're
Speaker 1: listening to Here's the Thing. I'm talking with writer Erica
Speaker 1: Jong and her daughter Molly Young Fast. Do me if
Speaker 1: I ever, don't comment on this until she finishes. Describe
Speaker 1: your relationship with your mother, don't snicker. Pleasant. She's very supportive,
Speaker 1: are you? What are you talking about? She's very supportive.
Speaker 1: She's talking about you like like she's your husband's ex pat.
Speaker 1: Julie and I have a very pleasant relationship, affable chart. No,
Speaker 1: my mother has always been phenomenal with me, so supportive.
Speaker 1: I don't give her things to read because she says
Speaker 1: to me, she calls me if it says, how much
Speaker 1: of a genius are you? She's very supportive. How would
Speaker 1: you describe your relationship with Molly? I absolutely adore her.
Speaker 1: Beyond that. Beyond that, I think she's I think she's smart.
Speaker 1: I think she's funny. I think she has incredibly good judgment.
Speaker 1: I've watched her grow and emotionally, and she has bearded
Speaker 1: some dragons that were very hard. What do you disagree
Speaker 1: about everything? Everything? Something? Give me something primary consistent. I
Speaker 1: think of her is very reactionary liberal, and I'm much
Speaker 1: more conservative in certain ways. I go more towards the
Speaker 1: libertarian side politically. Yeah, do you think that some of
Speaker 1: your conservatism and this is a long shot, maybe, but
Speaker 1: do you think some of your you know, even mild
Speaker 1: case of of being more conservative in your stems from
Speaker 1: your reaction to her kind of the kind of sexual
Speaker 1: drums she was beating throughout her I was not beating
Speaker 1: a sexual what were you doing. I was trying to
Speaker 1: write honestly about the way a young woman thinks and feels.
Speaker 1: And because our society is so curiously puritanical, people took
Speaker 1: that honest book, which got inside a woman's fantasy life,
Speaker 1: her marital life, and so and they took it as
Speaker 1: a horny book. And I am truly disappointed that the
Speaker 1: closest person in the world to me has bought into
Speaker 1: that view. I was trying to write honestly about how
Speaker 1: a young woman thinks and feels. Because of our puritanism,
Speaker 1: it was construed as a horny book. I it devastates
Speaker 1: me that my daughter buys that image. But okay, she
Speaker 1: doesn't have to be my literary critic. She's my daughter
Speaker 1: and I love her and she can do no wrong.
Speaker 1: I hope that someday she will read my work and
Speaker 1: see that that was not what I was doing. Daughters
Speaker 1: do torture you in a way that I mean that
Speaker 1: sons are not capable of, in my opinion. But I
Speaker 1: also think that my mom's legacy to me was about
Speaker 1: being honest and how important it is to be honest.
Speaker 1: And I do really hate you know, that kind of
Speaker 1: pretension or falseness, and that is something that really has
Speaker 1: been your legacy. Um, this is obviously an important subject
Speaker 1: for me because I have a daughter, and that is
Speaker 1: What do you think of the state of female sexuality
Speaker 1: in the culture today. I think they're overwhelmed with a
Speaker 1: false image of sexuality before before they're emotionally ready to
Speaker 1: deal with it. I think they um they're told that
Speaker 1: giving blow jobs in class is not sex, which is
Speaker 1: not true. They use their manipulation and of boy's sexuality
Speaker 1: as a power trip to get even with men for
Speaker 1: the other power men have. But I think to be
Speaker 1: a young woman today of the of your daughter's age
Speaker 1: is a very sticky wicket, and I think that you
Speaker 1: really need a parent who can guide you. How would
Speaker 1: they guide them to tell them that what they see
Speaker 1: around them in the media is not true, because I
Speaker 1: try to do that. If I were dealing with your daughter,
Speaker 1: I would try to reassure her that this is a
Speaker 1: very confusing time of life. I don't and that what
Speaker 1: she sees around her as incredibly confusing. Most of the women,
Speaker 1: the young women are as confused as she and are
Speaker 1: showing off by pretending to not be confused. And I
Speaker 1: would try to convey to her how difficult adolescence is,
Speaker 1: how many messages are coming at her at once, and
Speaker 1: how hard it is to make sense of it. That's
Speaker 1: what I would do. I planned to do that with
Speaker 1: my granddaughter, who I'm sure we'll say something cynical to me.
Speaker 1: But I also think some of it is you just
Speaker 1: as you can't hear that kind of thing from a
Speaker 1: parent at I mean, maybe there are some kids who can.
Speaker 1: I never could, you know, I'm not entirely sure. I
Speaker 1: had a beloved child psychiatrist growing up, who I really
Speaker 1: liked a lot, and I think maybe that's possible, or
Speaker 1: a teacher or a school, so maybe the parent can't
Speaker 1: really say those things. I think it's right, and I
Speaker 1: also think we don't automatically know how to behave. It's
Speaker 1: primarily different from when you wrote your earlier books. What's
Speaker 1: changed for the media is more all pervasive, and the
Speaker 1: image of women is even more confusing than it's ever been.
Speaker 1: And on the one hand, you're supposed to look like
Speaker 1: a fashion model retouched, and on the other hand, you're
Speaker 1: supposed to claim to a sophistication you don't and count
Speaker 1: i'd have at that age. And I think that women
Speaker 1: who are fourteen fifteen are in the most difficult position
Speaker 1: they have ever been in modern society. What do you
Speaker 1: think about that? I mean, I agree, I think there's
Speaker 1: a lot of sexuality. I think it's not explained to
Speaker 1: young girls in a way, very confusing, Molly. But I
Speaker 1: think that's a legacy of the feminist movement. I mean,
Speaker 1: we said we want a legacy of the feminist movement.
Speaker 1: It is a legacy, and here I really feel fierce.
Speaker 1: It is the legacy of a distortion of women's desire
Speaker 1: for equal rights. Equal rights are not platform shoes and
Speaker 1: naked clothes. But you can't blow up an atom bomb
Speaker 1: and then choose how it's going to go. But just
Speaker 1: saying we did not blow up that atom bomb. The
Speaker 1: media took our legitimate desire for equality and turned it
Speaker 1: into garbage. But they turned it into what the people wanted.
Speaker 1: First of all, I don't think they wouldn't exist. It
Speaker 1: wouldn't exist. People don't buy the media the people want.
Speaker 1: We'll be back in a moment. After word from sponsored
Speaker 1: Victoria's secret. I disagree. I also think, first of all,
Speaker 1: this is what the people want. People buy Britney spears
Speaker 1: because they want them. No, no, no, no, did he?
Speaker 1: This is what I disagree. I blame the media, and
Speaker 1: I blame the entertainment industry, and I blame that whole
Speaker 1: matrix for all of it. I think of the most
Speaker 1: absurd person from the past. If you took content Floss
Speaker 1: and put him on Glee, he'd become a gay icon today.
Speaker 1: You are so right, content Flass. I think it's brilliant.
Speaker 1: If the Internet had existed when content Flass was here,
Speaker 1: everybody would be worshiping Canton Floss. You can't and it
Speaker 1: has nothing to do with fear, I love. You can't
Speaker 1: control what people are going to do, what people want,
Speaker 1: This is what is thrust upon them, and it has
Speaker 1: nothing to do with First of all, you are the media,
Speaker 1: and you are the media, and I am and so
Speaker 1: affected the media. So I disagree with you, and I
Speaker 1: don't want to get off on media. That's subject. I mean,
Speaker 1: I take a paycheck from media companies to do what
Speaker 1: they pay me to do, but I'm not responsible for
Speaker 1: everything else they do. Let's just say this. You take
Speaker 1: the top women in entertainment, and I'm gonna be generous.
Speaker 1: I'll say half one half of them really have talent.
Speaker 1: Mariah Carey really can sing, Beyonce Knowles really can sing.
Speaker 1: But then there's the other half. They have no talent.
Speaker 1: It's all electronically enhanced. It's all about many people who
Speaker 1: are talentlest But I think the interpretation of of our
Speaker 1: of sexuality and our culture is so twisted. Sexuality is
Speaker 1: actually is true intimacy with another person that sometimes results
Speaker 1: and genitals getting together and sometimes does not. Why are
Speaker 1: you so cynical awful? I'm no she doesn't. You're the
Speaker 1: one saying lubricants and dolls and ben wabbles. I don't
Speaker 1: even think that's sex. I think that if you have
Speaker 1: real intimacy with somebody, he can touch you here and
Speaker 1: you get excited. He can touch you on your neck,
Speaker 1: he can hold your hand in the movies. Later on,
Speaker 1: I'll show you the spot I touch. People have no
Speaker 1: idea what sexuality really is. I can talk with you
Speaker 1: about sex for a couple more hours. Well, let's do
Speaker 1: it next time, okay. Erica Young and Molly gen Fast.
Speaker 1: They say they have toyed with the idea of writing
Speaker 1: something together many times, but both agree they probably never will.
Speaker 1: It would be just the end of our relationship. This
Speaker 1: is Alec Baldwin and you're listening to here's the thing.