Jaffe, Rona 1932-

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JAFFE, Rona 1932-

PERSONAL: Born June 12, 1932, in New York, NY; daughter of Samuel (an elementary school teacher and principal) and Diana (a teacher; maiden name, Ginsberg) Jaffe. Education: Radcliffe College, B.A., 1951.

ADDRESSES: Agent—Janklow and Nesbit Associates, 445 Park Ave., 13th Fl., New York, NY 10022.

CAREER: File clerk and secretary, New York, NY, 1952; Fawcett Publications, New York, associate editor, 1952–56; writer, 1956–. Associate producer of made-for-television movie Mazes and Monsters, CBS-TV, 1982. Founder of the Rona Jaffe Foundation; administrator of the Rona Jaffe Prizes in Creative Writing program at Radcliffe University, beginning 1987, and of the Rona Jaffe Foundation Writer's Awards, beginning 1995.

AWARDS, HONORS: The Cousins was a Literary Guild and Doubleday Book Club selection.

WRITINGS:

NOVELS

The Best of Everything, Simon & Schuster (New York, NY), 1958, new edition, Penguin Books (New York, NY), 2005.

Away from Home, Simon & Schuster (New York, NY), 1960.

The Cherry in the Martini, Simon & Schuster (New York, NY), 1966.

The Fame Game, Random House (New York, NY), 1969.

The Other Woman, William Morrow (New York, NY), 1972.

Family Secrets, Simon & Schuster (New York, NY), 1974.

The Last Chance, Simon & Schuster (New York, NY), 1976.

Class Reunion, Delacorte (New York, NY), 1979.

Mazes and Monsters, Delacorte (New York, NY), 1981.

After the Reunion, Delacorte (New York, NY), 1985.

An American Love Story, Delacorte (New York, NY), 1990.

The Cousins, D.I. Fine (New York, NY), 1995.

Five Women, D.I. Fine (New York, NY), 1997.

The Road Taken, Dutton (New York, NY), 2000.

The Room-Mating Season, Dutton (New York, NY), 2003.

OTHER

The Last of the Wizards (for children), illustrated by Mike Peterkin, Simon & Schuster (New York, NY), 1961, revised edition, Golden Books (New York, NY), 2001.

Mr. Right Is Dead (novella and five short stories), Simon & Schuster (New York, NY), 1965.

Contributor of stories, essays, and articles to various magazines.

ADAPTATIONS: The Best of Everything was filmed in 1959 by Jerry Wald; Mazes and Monsters was adapted as a 1982 CBS-TV movie starring Tom Hanks.

SIDELIGHTS: Rona Jaffe has written numerous bestsellers, beginning with her first novel, The Best of Everything. The book, described by Judy Klemesrud in the Chicago Tribune as a "novel about New York career girls trying to sleep and claw their way out of the steno pool," brought the author both fame and fortune while she was still in her twenties. In several ways The Best of Everything is like many of Jaffe's later novels. The book deals with life in New York City, focuses on conflicts in male/female relationships, and follows the stories of several main characters, a formula she would later use again. In one of Jaffe's most ambitious novels, Family Secrets, for example, some thirty-two characters appear over the course of the story. Reviewers commenting on Jaffe's later novels often compared the work being reviewed to Jaffe's first novel, thereby continuing interest in it. Written in the late fifties, The Best of Everything has a distinctly pre-women's liberation movement slant that places it firmly in that decade. Although the women in the novel all have jobs, they are not career women; men and the possibility of marrying one of them are far more important pursuits than work.

The 1950s also play an important role in Jaffe's Class Reunion, a novel that has been described as an updated version of Mary McCarthy's story about coming of age in the 1930s, The Group. Alluding to McCarthy's title, a Time reviewer observed, "Change Vassar to Radcliffe, the '30s to the '50s, take away the wry tone, and you have Rona Jaffe's readable reworking, Class Reunion." In her Washington Post review of the book, Lynn Darling noted that in the novel Jaffe "follows the trials and tribulations of eight members of the Class of '57 … as they try to crawl out from under the mind-numbing conformity of the '50s." Darling saw Jaffe's novels as a sort of exorcism of unpleasant memories. "Her observations," Darling commented, "are edged in irony, but like any veteran of a vicious war, past skirmishes are with her still, and she is still in the trenches."

In Class Reunion and other novels written since The Best of Everything, Jaffe deals with married as well as single women and how they cope with more significant dilemmas than how to catch a man. Divorce, cocaine addiction, teenage suicide, and other contemporary problems are addressed in detail. While these stories have drawn interest from audiences, some of Jaffe's novels have drawn criticism. An American Love Story, for example, took some particularly harsh blows from reviewers. "Rarely has a novel depressed me more, or made me feel older," declared Joyce Slater in the Atlanta Journal-Constitution. "One expects more of Ms. Jaffe, a pioneer in the genre we now call 'glitz.'" The novel's central character is Clay Bowen, a charismatic television producer, and the plot relates the unhappy fates of four women in his life: Laura, a ballerina who becomes his wife; Susan, a writer, who becomes his mistress; Bambi, an agent who supplants Susan; and Nina, Clay's daughter. All four "ooze talent and beauty," according to Slater, yet all nearly ruin their lives trying to hold onto Clay—even though, in Slater's opinion, "It's hard to understand why any sane woman would cross the street to spit on his shoes." Boston Globe reviewer Richard Dyer similarly felt that Clay's character is not well-realized; in his words, the producer "seems to be a neutral screen onto which [the female characters] project their fantasies…. The effect of this … is disastrous," making the women in the story difficult to understand and, therefore, unsympathetic. Still, Dyer noted that An American Love Story "springs to momentary life when Jaffe writes about something she has actually experienced," citing "an amusing sequence depicting egos in conflict during the filming of a television miniseries."

Jaffe's next novel, The Cousins, was more favorably reviewed. In it, the author focuses closely on one character, Olivia Okrent. A large cast of relatives provides a backdrop for Olivia's struggle to resolve a life crisis. The crisis is brought on by the infidelity of the man she loves and has lived with for ten years—Roger Hawkwood, her partner in a Manhattan veterinary practice. A Publishers Weekly contributor noticed that many elements of the story may be familiar to Jaffe's fans, but went on to say: "Fictional familiarity can breed contentment…. Jaffe has not lost her wit, her keen eye for human frailties and her ear for the small but telling remark."

With 1997's Five Women and 2003's The Room-Mating Season Jaffe returns to her tried-and-true formula of young women living and working in New York City. As Booklist writer Donna Seaman noted in a review of the former novel, by this time the author "has got it down to a science." In an interview with Publishers Weekly writer Tracy Cochran, Jaffe explained that she wrote books similar to her debut because she saw it as a way to describe the present state of American society: "I recently realized that approximately every 20 years, I look at life again and see where we are." The characters in Five Women include an actress who likes to bind her lovers; a lawyer with a troubled marriage and an affair on the side; a divorced psychologist; and a woman from a rich family with a murderous past. Although, as Seaman pointed out, there "are no small moments here, no ordinary events," critics have observed that one of the most dramatic parts of Five Women is how one of Jaffe's characters endures breast cancer. "Jaffe's detailed, unsentimental description of Gara's illness makes up the most powerful chapters in the book," wrote Cochran.

The Room-Mating Season was described by Meredith Parets in Booklist as "another gentle, knowing, and compulsively readable coming-of-age story." Here, four women—Vanessa, Susan, Cady, and Leigh—room together in New York City to spread their meager paychecks more efficiently. Jaffe explores their lives and how they are all profoundly affected when one of their number takes her own life. Explaining that the author based her novel "on a premise from a newspaper article she wrote in 1963," a Kirkus Reviews critic nonetheless found the plot to be "very stock stuff." Similarly, a Publishers Weekly contributor complained that the novel reads as if Jaffe was "working on autopilot" and that "her portraits of the women as adults are hurried and superficial." On the other hand, Parets thought that "Jaffe is wise and witty and ever" in The Room-Mating Season.

An even more ambitious project came with The Road Taken, a multigenerational saga that begins in 1900, tracing the changes in American society as the narrative follows members of one family through the twentieth century. Covering so much ground in one book runs the risk of paying short shrift to the monumental historical events of that century, some reviewers warned; however, Seaman commented in her Booklist assessment that "Jaffe's fictionalized primer to the last century is rescued from utter superficiality by vibrant descriptions, good intentions, and a comforting aura of compassion." A Publishers Weekly contributor concluded that the author "convincingly depicts a century of social change," while the Library Journal critic Sheila M. Riley declared the novel an "ambitious, engaging" work.

Although Jaffe's more recent novels have not been the blockbusters of her early works, she continues to enjoy a very successful writing career. In 1995, in an attempt to help other women writers like herself, she established the Rona Jaffe Foundation Writer's Awards. These awards provide 7,500 dollar grants to women writers so that they can afford to pay for such necessities as child care as they pursue their dreams of becoming authors. "I grew up feeling that many people had helped me become a writer," she told Cochran in Publishers Weekly, "and I wanted to give that back."

BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL SOURCES:

BOOKS

Bestsellers 90, Issue 3, Gale (Detroit, MI), 1990.

PERIODICALS

Atlanta Journal-Constitution, May 6, 1990, Joyce Slater, review of An American Love Story, p. L9.

Booklist, July, 1995, Denise Perry Donavin, review of The Cousins, p. 1836; May 15, 1997, Donna Seaman, review of Five Women, p. 1541; March 15, 2000, Donna Seaman, review of The Road Taken, p. 1291; January 1, 2003, Meredith Parets, review of The Room-Mating Season, p. 808; October 15, 2003, Candace Smith, review of The Room-Mating Season, p. 443.

Boston Globe, May 9, 1990, Richard Dyer, review of An American Love Story, p. 92.

Chicago Tribune, May 27, 1968, Judy Klemesrud, review of The Best of Everything.

Cosmopolitan, September, 1985, Carol E. Rinzler, review of After the Reunion, p. 34.

English Journal, January, 1983, review of Mazes and Monsters, p. 77.

Entertainment Weekly, September 22, 1995, Kate Wilson, review of The Cousins, p. 75; June 27, 1997, Megan Harlan, review of Five Women, p. 114.

50 Plus, August, 1980, Maggie Paley, review of Class Reunion, p. 36.

Harper's Bazaar, September, 1981, review of Mazes and Monsters, p. 252.

Kirkus Reviews, January 1, 2003, review of The Room-Mating Season, p. 13.

Library Journal, August, 1985, review of After the Reunion, p. 116; August, 1995, Jan Blodgett, review of The Cousins, p. 117; June 15, 1997, Sheila M. Riley, review of Five Women, p. 98; April 15, 2000, Sheila M. Riley, review of The Road Taken, p. 123.

Los Angeles Magazine, September, 1981, Mark Wheeler, review of Mazes and Monsters, p. 259.

Los Angeles Times, December 28, 1982, Clarke Taylor, "Rona Jaffe Gets Respect—At Last," p. 1.

McCall's, February, 1983, Robert Morley, "Caught in the Nude and Other Mortifying Moments," p. 119.

Ms., November, 1974, Leslie Garis, review of Family Secrets.

New Statesman, February 5, 1982, Bill Greenwell, review of Mazes and Monsters, p. 26.

New York Times, December 28, 1982, John J. O'Connor, review of Mazes and Monsters, p. 24; April 13, 2003, Trish Hall, "How Rona Jaffe Found The Best of Everything," p. 2.

New York Times Book Review, May 4, 1980, review of Class Reunion, p. 47; November 8, 1981, Annie Gottlieb, review of Mazes and Monsters, p. 12; September 22, 1985, Nora Peck, review of After the Reunion, p. 23.

People, October 21, 1985, Carol Wallace, review of After the Reunion, p. 15; October 1, 1990, Joanne Kaufman, review of An American Love Story, p. 34; August 4, 1997, Joanne Kaufman, review of Five Women, p. 31.

Publishers Weekly, March 21, 1980, review of Class Reunion, p. 67; July 3, 1981, Barbara A. Bannon, review of Mazes and Monsters, p. 142; June 18, 1982, review of Mazes and Monsters, p. 73; June 28, 1985, review of After the Reunion, p. 62; March 2, 1990, Sybil Steinberg, review of An American Love Story, p. 76; July 31, 1995, review of The Cousins, pp. 70-71; June 2, 1997, review of Five Women, p. 50; June 16, 1997, Tracy Cochran, "Rona Jaffe: The Gift of Time," interview with Jaffe, p. 41; May 29, 2000, review of The Road Taken, p. 48; March 24, 2003, review of The Room-Mating Season, p. 59.

School Library Journal, September, 1981, Kate Waters, review of Mazes and Monsters, p. 144.

Seventeen, June, 1982, review of Mazes and Monsters, p. 56.

Time, July 2, 1979, review of Class Reunion.

Tribune Books (Chicago, IL), April 20, 2003, review of The Room-Mating Season, p. 6.

TV Guide, December 25, 1982, Rona Jaffe, "Because the Cafeteria Looked Like Westminster Abbey and the Actress Started Changing Her Lines," p. 6.

Vanity Fair, March, 2004, Laura Jacobs, "The Lipstick Jungle; The Ultimate Three-Girls-in-the-City Movie, The Best of Everything," p. 400.

Variety, January 5, 1983, "Rona Jaffe's Mazes and Monsters," p. 44.

Voice of Youth Advocates, December, 1981, review of Mazes and Monsters, p. 30.

Wall Street Journal, November 29, 1985, Monica Langley, review of After the Reunion, p. E11.

Washington Post, June 23, 1979, Lynn Darling, review of Class Reunion.

Washington Post Book World, August 25, 1985, Susan Dooley, review of After the Reunion, p. 5.