For starters, Erica Jong’s new anthology ‘Sugar in My Bowl’ boosts a bevy of ‘good girl writers’ as Salon’s Tracy Clarke-Flory calls them.

It isn’t common for serious female writers — the sort who write about respectable issues like politics and poverty — to dip their toes into that piranha-infested lake of personal judgment and criticism. Just as good girls don’t talk about sex, good-girl writers don’t write about sex. Not only can it be devastating personally, but it can also earn you a professional reputation as a chick lit author or, worse, a sex writer.

Jong reports that at least half a dozen contributors to her book wouldn’t say ‘yes’ until their partners agreed. Luckily — or not, depending on your view of the writing — several well-known, serious-stuff women writers contributed. The focus changed, however, away from Erica Jong’s original intention which was a series of essays strictly focused on the ‘best sex I ever had’.

Ariel Levy, author of ‘Female Chauvinist Pigs’, a polemic against Paris Hilton and America’s Barbie doll culture that objectifies women even more today than in the 1970s, does write about the first time she had sex. But the topics run far afield, even into sexual anatomy talk for children.

Don’t buy the book looking for an erotic read.

In Jong’s introduction to the book she quotes contributor Daphne Merkin, a writer for the New York Times Magazine, who is no stranger to self-exposure: “The sexual arena is so often treated as laughable or minor when in truth it is often serious and major.”

This is now I see the subject, too. Reading more comments from daughter Molly Jong-Fast, I’m becoming more incredulous by the minute.

Salon earlier excerpted Molly Jong-Fast’s essay Being a prude in a family of libertines. I imagine it would be pretty crazy being Erica Jong’s daughter, but I have a great sense that positive sexuality and responsible pleasure is of little interest to Jong-Fast.  And that is a shame.

As an example, Erica Jong and daughter Molly are interviewed in New York Magazine.

E.J.: I married my first lover.

M.J.F.:Ugghhh. Lover? Lover is a disgusting word. It makes me want to throw up. It’s a Plato’s Retreat word. This idea of commitment, that was something I had to learn. It was not something my mother’s generation was aware of.

Wow! ‘Lover’ is a disgusting word. This girl sounds like the daughter of Phyllis Schlafly. I can imagine that it was very challenging to grow up as Erica Jong’s daughter. Perhaps even I would have found the lifestyle a bit over the top. But to say that ‘lover’ is a disgusting word. That’s sad and so very American.