Rona Jaffe (1931–2005)
Author of The Best of Everything
About the Author
Rona Jaffe was born in Brooklyn, New York on June 12, 1931. She graduated from Radcliffe College in 1951 and began her writing career as an assistant editor at Fawcett Gold Medal Books in 1952. Her first novel, The Best of Everything, was published in 1958 and was later adapted into a film starring show more Joan Crawford. Her works include Class Reunion, The Room-Mating Season, The Last Chance, Family Secrets, The Cousins, Five Women, and Mazes and Monsters. During the late 1960s, she was hired to write cultural pieces for Cosmopolitan. She founded The Rona Jaffe Foundation, which presents annual awards to promising women writers of literary fiction, poetry, and creative nonfiction including the Rona Jaffe Prizes in Creative Writing at Radcliffe and the Rona Jaffe Foundation Writers' Awards. She died from cancer on December 30, 2005 at the age of 74. (Bowker Author Biography) show less
Series
Works by Rona Jaffe
Associated Works
The Best from Cosmopolitan — Contributor — 4 copies
Tagged
Common Knowledge
- Canonical name
- Jaffe, Rona
- Birthdate
- 1931-06-12
- Date of death
- 2005-12-30
- Gender
- female
- Nationality
- USA
- Birthplace
- Brooklyn, New York, USA
- Place of death
- London, England, UK
- Cause of death
- cancer
- Places of residence
- New York, New York, USA
- Education
- Radcliffe College
- Occupations
- editor
novelist - Organizations
- Fawcett Publications
- Short biography
- Rona Jaffe, a lifelong New Yorker, grew up on the Upper East Side of Manhattan. She was working as an editor with Fawcett Publications in 1958 when she published her first novel, The Best of Everything, which became a bestseller and was later adapted into a film. The novel electrified readers and reviewers with its authentic description of the struggles of ambitious, intelligent women in the working world and in their relationships with men. She was the author of 16 books, many of which also became bestsellers. She founded The Rona Jaffe Foundation, which presents annual awards to promising women writers of literary fiction, poetry, and creative nonfiction.
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Awards
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Statistics
- Works
- 23
- Also by
- 4
- Members
- 1,855
- Popularity
- #13,874
- Rating
- 3.4
- Reviews
- 63
- ISBNs
- 152
- Languages
- 10
- Favorited
- 3
Most of the men in the book are lecherous, cheating, abusive, and utterly oblivious to the emotional needs of the young women they wine and dine and bed (if at all possible), and the women, unfortunately, seem to have the collective savvy one might expect of a reasonably bright 16-year-old today.
Characterization, of the women at least, is rich and detailed, and Jaffe creates a picture of the energy, the possibilities, and the power of the city her characters have set out to conquer. There’s an awful lot of boozing here, and all the characters smoke constantly – again, a reflection of the times and the social milieu of the setting. The outrageous sexual discrimination and harassment of the workplace is presented as perfectly normal and something one simply must learn to manage in order to survive. Still, for all the depth and quality of the writing itself, many of the situations are now sad clichés – the dissolute playboy, the philandering husband, the unwanted pregnancy, the emotionally abusive artiste. Contemporary reader may be forgiven for occasionally thinking (or even saying) “Oh, for godsake, girl, dump this loser and get on with your life.”
For all that, the book is worth a read, if only as a measure of how far the feminist movement has come, and – given the immediate recognizability of many of the situations – of how far it still has to go.… (more)