Molly Jong-Fast on the '90s Feminist Classic She Thinks ‘Really Holds Up'
In 2023, author
'I wanted my story to be in the vein of Joan Didion's
The Manhattan-born, -raised, and -based MSNBC political analyst is the host of the podcast
Fast Politics with Molly Jong-Fast
, as well as a
Vanity Fair
special correspondent; went to Barnard College and earned her MFA from Bennington College; has talked extensively about getting sober at 19 (when she wrote her first book,
not
a
Good at:
.
Bad at:
Likes:
.
Peruse her book recommendations below.
The book that:
…helped me through loss:
…kept me up way too late:
…made me weep uncontrollably:
…I recommend over and over again:
...shaped my worldview:
…I swear I'll finish one day:
...has the best opening line:
'It was a bright cold day in April, and the clocks were striking thirteen.' —
...has the greatest ending:
'So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past.' —
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Now, I would say the majority of them are still very much indoor creatures, but we are seeing this definitive will see hotels that say pet friendly and you have to see if they take cats specifically but a lot more have started to. Hyatt, Sheraton, case by case, they're starting to accept cats, because we are seeing this uptick in people taking their cats with them when they travel. The adventure cats that come to CatCon are like Hollywood child stars. They've been doing this since they were little, so they're used to this sort of thing, the crowds and the attention. We have all these kitties this year who did meet and greets, and they average 100 meet and greets per hour. We had two cats, Sponge Cake and Buttercream. They travel with their owners all over the world in a backpack. They just got back from Venice and they've got 2 million followers. What I know about Hollywood and sort of the way we live now is you can do a phenomenal job, but every year you've got to up the ante. And I welcome that challenge, because I want to keep it fresh. And that's why I work on CatCon all year round, because I'm looking for what's going to make this audience come back. What's going to make them happy, and what's going to help them make a better life for them and their pets. I spoke at South by Southwest in 2019, and I really loved it. And I would really love to do a TED Talk eventually. I love public speaking. And I thought, you know, there's really nothing out there for cat people in—I mean, sure you can watch TikTok videos, you can watch a YouTube video, but how do I continue to bring the community together in person? So what I decided to do was to create this sort of salon environment called The Meow Factor. We did something about my—basically, my cat's a celebrity, and how I'm dealing with that. We did something on cat portraiture. And then we did something with Nathan the Cat Lady and Sterling the Trap King about trap neuter return. I'm creating more of a salon setting. It's not 300 people, it's 50 people so there's better engagement and opportunity to ask more questions. I've already done it at Annenberg Pet Space, and it's something that I'm looking at branching out across the country. Once I get a little bit of rest after CatCon, I'm definitely going to continue on my kitty trajectory. It's going to be sometime next year. January 2024 was 10 years, and I do it every two, so at some point next year. I don't know where it'll be or precisely when, but stay tuned!
