Fear of Fifty by Erica Jong Page A

business just when you were about to make it?
    I wrote some songs that got published, but I knew I was no Cole Porter or Lorenz Hart. No Irving Berlin. No Gershwin. Those were my gods. Look—I would have sold my soul to write “Mountain Greenery” or “Isn’t It Romantic?” but all that came out was “The Lonely Little Music Box.”
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    Where did you get the confidence to go to auditions, or to be a salesman?
    I always hid my fear when I went out to sell myself. I expected to feel fear, but I knew never to let that control me. Everyone feels fear. In Jubilee, the biggest stars would drink out of silver hip flasks before the curtain went up. They were a mess. Fear was expected, predictable. You never expected not to feel fear. But you went on anyway. When I left show business and became a salesman, I never expected not to succeed. And when I started this business and figured out how you make money, I never expected not to make it.
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    So what are you most proud of in your life?
    I gave you what my parents couldn’t give me—an education.
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    But what are you most proud of for yourself?
    That. You can’t win against powerful daughters who have their own opinion and you can’t tell them who to marry—but you can make them get an education. At least that. If you wanted to go to medical school now—I’d still send you.
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    Thanks, Dad. But I remember the fetal pig from Barnard. I was a menace with a scalpel and the formaldehyde nearly knocked me out.
    Maybe you’d feel differently about it now.
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    You’d still like me to be a doctor, wouldn’t you?
    Look, you’re a terrific writer, but you need a PR agent. It’s all in the PR. And you got lousy PR. Look at Madonna. She’s got no talent, but great PR. Why don’t you call that Della Femina guy? He’ll advise you. He’s an ad man, Dad, not a PR agent. He’s an old friend of mine, but PR is not his line of work.
    PR is everybody’s line of work today. And somebody ought to handle you. What about the movie rights? How come they never made that movie? Books are fine, but who reads anymore? You need more than books to make a career.
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    I don’t seem to be very lucky in show business. Every time someone wants to make a movie or play of my work, I waste years of my life and wind up in some legal mess. I can’t communicate with Hollywood people. They don’t speak my language. Or maybe I don’t speak theirs. They can’t understand why I’m attached to small details in my books — like the story or the characters — and I can’t understand how they make so much money for being on the telephone. It’s not a match.
    Nonsense, you just have the wrong PR.
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    So we have made the same trip we always make: from him to me. Since I am the part of him that was meant to go out and conquer show business, he is critical of me, as he would be critical of himself. I bear the burden of his dreams and so he pushes and prods, never dreaming that I feel it as criticism. Once, when one of my books seemed not to be performing as predicted, I screamed at him on the phone: “You’ll just have to love me whether or not I’m on the bestseller list!” I think the message got through. Never before had my father understood that when he tried to push me, I felt criticized. But parents can’t help themselves. They see so clearly what their children can be, and they are so invested. I probably do the same thing with my daughter—pushing, prodding, seeming to be discontented with her, when in truth she is everything I wanted her to be and more: outspoken where I was shy, tough where I was timid, full of my dreams and ambitions, but with her own special spin. In short, she is my arrow into eternity—but she cannot see it that way.
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    Dad, every time I ask about you, you wind up talking about me.
    I do? Well, I always thought you