GUIDElines Entertainment The Social Climber’s Handbook By Dorri olDs

Jong-Fast is the daughter Aileen Wuornos was a lesbian of (Fear of Flying) so that’s why she was a serial and Jong’s third husband, killer’ but I totally believe that a Jonathan Fast (Ceremonial Violence: hetero woman could be a serial Understanding Columbine and Other killer too.” Social Climber’s genre School Rampage Shootings). Her is edgy-chicklet, hilarious, with father’s father, , some jaded meanness was a blacklisted member of thrown in for fun. Fans of The the Communist Party who Nanny Diaries will gobble this wrote Spartacus while in jail book up in a day. for contempt. Her maternal “I’m really self-conscious grandmother was “a poor about reviews. I don’t think Russian Jew with Rockefeller- anybody else gets as much venom like pretensions” and a wannabe on the Internet. People say things painter who “took her clothes off like, ‘She is a horrible person at least once on a crosstown bus.” who should just die.’” Yet Jong- When asked if she’s been to Fast never considered opting out therapy Jong-Fast said, “Yeah, of public life. “I thought because most of life minus 3 years. I had I was born into a family I love, the usual [issues] and a mean fear who are all crazy and famous of flying. Now my self-esteem is writers, that it was like being in like medium. I don’t think I’ll a witness protection program— look back 10 years from now and you can’t ever get out.” be embarrassed.” In a Wall Street Journal essay She summed up childhood she wrote, “I was born during the as “fatness, frizzy hair and era of bell bottoms. The year was sweatpants with rhinestones.” 1978.” That was the same year When asked if it was weird her mother met and married her being the daughter of a famous father. “To say they were hippies writer who evoked love/hate greatly understates the facts.” reactions from people she said, “It was because of my Molly Jong-Fast “Yes, but most of the time no one mother’s hard work that I have noticed. Famous writers are not the life I do now. She worked Photo by that famous.” hard so that the women of Jerry Bauer “It’s not as bad as people my generation could have the might think to be Erica Jong’s choice to work or stay home. ublisher’s Weekly refers to Daisy daughter. Some people love She slept in hotel rooms in San Greenbaum in Molly Jong-Fast’s new to hate my Mom. She was Diego so I could cuddle with incredibly self-absorbed. But she my children. She spoke to large P novel, The Social Climber’s Handbook raised me alone and worked hard groups of women in Toledo so (Villard/Random House), as the “Upper to support us.” I could work at the school book East Side’s most unlikely murderess…. [It’s] “I write books, then I throw fair. We can devote ourselves to a campy bloodbath à la Patrick Bateman in them out and rewrite the whole work, or we can decide to be Jimmy Choos.” book. Every book has been like 1950s June Cleaver types. And that.” Normal Girl, her debut that’s because of the sacrifices olly Jong-Fast’s satire of Upper East Side elitists novel, was about a poor little that my mom and her feminist takes place during the Wall Street crash of 2008 and rich girl, Miranda, who was 19 comrades made. M centers on socialite Daisy Greenbaum’s devotion to and addicted to cocaine, Valium My mother made sacrifices her husband’s paycheck. Though murder starts out as a means to and heroin. Jong-Fast’s only so I could have choices, and protect her lifestyle, it soon becomes an effective stress reliever. comment on her own teen years perhaps that makes her a better Think female Dexter in Prada on Park Avenue. was, “Rehab at 19.” mother than I will ever be.” Jong-Fast, 32, is married to CUNY professor Matthew One of Jong-Fast’s favorite Greenfield, 46, and they live with their three children, Max, 7, and writers is Patricia Highsmith, To learn more and twins Darwin and Bette, 3, in a four bedroom East 86th Street the author of Strangers on a Train order the book visit co-op that overlooks Madison Avenue and cost $5 million in 2007. and The Talented Mr. Ripley. “She’s mollyjongfast.com She and her husband met on Salon.com personals. “My handle obsessed with serial killers. I was brontesister. Anybody who didn’t know who Bronte was, they really like the idea of female Dorri Olds (DorriOlds.com) is a were out.” serial killers. People said, ‘Oh freelance writer and web designer.

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