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MOLLY: I feel like my mom was for many years a sex symbol--she wore the miniskirts and the long, blond hair and was so sexy. I never was really like that. I may have worn a fabulous outfit, but I just never had that persona of the great beauty that I think my mom does. In a lot of ways, I see the world as an overweight 13-year-old.
How did having a mother who wrote racy books affect you?
MOLLY: I wonder if I was less sexy because of that. I definitely wasn't, unfortunately, less promiscuous. I was stupidly promiscuous--not more than any of my peers, probably, but not less, which would be the hope. But I definitely hesitate to write about sex.
You're both big believers in therapy, aren't you?
ERICA: I'm committed, in a way, to knowing myself, and I think Molly has got that too. She's interested in understanding herself.
MOLLY: I haven't had drugs or alcohol in seven years. So being clean shaped much of my formative experience. The thing with that is, you can't really let anything go. If you don't deal with an issue, you'll just end up starting drugs again. Everything has to be dealt with.
Are you more bohemian than Molly?
ERICA: In a way. I'm more unconventional.
MOLLY: A lot.
ERICA: Molly always knew that she wanted to marry a nice man who would be responsible and a good father, and she did. I seem to have married people because they would make good material, which is a very bad way of marrying people. Which is why I have so many marriages [four] in my history. Don't get married for good material, that's all I can tell you.
Is early success, such as yours, hard to live with?
ERICA: I think having a book that becomes a voice of its generation and is a kind of icon and drowns out all your other work is not such a lucky thing. In fact, I was thinking, when Hunter Thompson committed suicide, he was in that situation. He probably had the feeling of being obsolete and over it. And I know that feeling. So I fight it, I resist it, but it's tough to be typecast in a certain way when you're in your 20s and to have to live with that ever after.
And what's it like to have your child read about your sex life?
ERICA: Molly has always taken very good care of that by not reading my books.
MOLLY: We find abstinence is the best method.
ERICA: She once started when she was about 13 to read Fear of Flying and found it disturbing and got about 30 pages into it and started questioning me. She started [asking] how much is real and how much wasn't and stuff like that. Then she made a decision not to read my books.
You haven't read Fear of Flying?
MOLLY: What happens at the end? No. I'm fairly laid back. I would rather not know.