"I was wild. My fantasies were wild. She remembered having dinner with her agent, Claire Smith, and Smith's husband in Brooklyn, after both the Smiths had read a draft of Wifey. Everyone was so scandalized by it. But [Claire] was not so scandalized so that she wouldn't sell it. A lot of people wanted me to change my name, warning me I would ruin my lovely career if I published this under my own name."
"In an early draft, Judy had written a scene in which Sandy uses her dog to pleasure herself. The dog did a little licking of Sandy, and that was very satisfying. A little oral sex. The scene was pure fiction—as an adult, Judy never even owned a dog—but it felt true to Sandy's character. It seemed like a good thing to do, [for] somebody who was unfulfilled."
Judy, living unhappily in New Mexico with Tom, found herself in another failed marriage lacking the freedom she sought. Unable to achieve liberation in her personal life, she invested her aspirations into writing Wifey, a novel featuring protagonist Sandy Pressman who engages in scandalous behavior including affairs, public intoxication, and infidelity. Judy's agent and others warned her that publishing under her own name would damage her career, but she refused to use a pseudonym. She obtained her ex-husband John's permission before publication. During editing, she removed a sexually explicit scene involving her character and a dog, though she considered it authentic to Sandy's unfulfilled nature.
#literary-censorship #womens-sexuality-in-fiction #autobiographical-writing #publishing-industry-standards
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