Rona Jaffe

Rona Jaffe
Born (1931-06-12)June 12, 1931
Brooklyn, New York, U.S.
Died December 30, 2005(2005-12-30) (aged 74)
London, England, U.K.
Occupation Novelist

Rona Jaffe (June 12, 1931 – December 30, 2005) was an American novelist who published numerous works from 1958 to 2003. She may have been best known for her controversial novel Mazes and Monsters (1981). During the 1960s, she also wrote cultural pieces for Cosmopolitan as the new editor, Helen Gurley Brown, markedly changed its character.

Biography

Born in Brooklyn, New York, Jaffe grew up in affluent circumstances on the Upper East Side of Manhattan, the only child of Samuel Jaffe, an elementary-school principal, and his first wife, Diana (née Ginsberg). Her grandfather was a construction magnate who built the Carlyle Hotel. She graduated from Radcliffe College in 1953.[1]

Jaffe wrote her first book, The Best of Everything (1958), while working as an associate editor at Fawcett Publications in the 1950s. It was later adapted as a movie by the same title, starring Joan Crawford, released in 1959.[1] The book has been described as distinctly "pre-women's liberation" in the way it depicts women in the working world.

Camille Paglia noted in 2004 that the book and popular HBO series Sex and the City had much in common in that the characters in both (who have similar lives) are "very much at the mercy of cads."[2]

During the late 1960s, Helen Gurley Brown hired Jaffe to write cultural pieces for Cosmopolitan, with a "Sex and the Single Girl" slant. In 1981, she published Mazes and Monsters, which depicted a Dungeons & Dragons-like game that caused disorientation and hallucinations among its players and incited them to violence and attempted suicide. Written at a time of emerging anxiety over the effects of role-playing games (RPGs), the book may have been loosely based on press accounts of the 1979 "steam tunnel incident" involving the disappearance of Michigan State University student and D&D aficionado James Dallas Egbert III.[3][4] With both concerns over and interest in role-playing games further stoked by the efforts of anti-RPG campaigners such as Patricia Pulling, founder of the advocacy group Bothered About Dungeons & Dragons (B.A.D.D.), within a year of publication Mazes and Monsters was adapted by CBS into a made-for-TV movie featuring a 26-year-old Tom Hanks in one of his earliest appearances.[5]

Death

Jaffe published seventeen novels during her career. She died in 2005 in London from cancer, aged 74.[1]

Bibliography

  • The Best of Everything (Simon & Schuster, 1958)
  • Away from Home (Simon & Schuster, 1960)
  • The Last of the Wizards ( juvenile) (Simon & Schuster, 1961)
  • Mr. Right Is Dead (novella and five short stories) (Simon & Schuster, 1965)
  • The Cherry in the Martini (Simon & Schuster, 1966)
  • The Fame Game (Random House, 1969)
  • The Other Woman (Morrow, 1972)
  • Family Secrets (Simon & Schuster, 1974)
  • The Last Chance (Simon & Schuster, 1976)
  • Class Reunion (Delacorte, 1979)
  • Mazes and Monsters (Delacorte, 1981)
  • After the Reunion (Delacorte, 1985)
  • An American Love Story (Delacorte, 1990)
  • The Cousins (Donald I. Fine, 1995) (Literary Guild and Doubleday Book Club selection)
  • Five Women (Donald I. Fine, 1997)
  • The Road Taken (Dutton, 2000)
  • The Room-Mating Season (Dutton, 2003)

References

  1. 1 2 3 Owens, Mitchell (December 31, 2005). "Rona Jaffe, Author of Popular Novels, Is Dead at 74". The New York Times. Retrieved May 22, 2010.
  2. ↑ Smith, Dinitia (February 1, 2004). "Real-Life Questions In an Upscale Fantasy". The New York Times. Retrieved July 15, 2014.
  3. ↑ Veugen, C. (2006). Here Be Dragons: Advent and History of Adventure Games. Retrieved May 18, 2018.
  4. ↑ Nexus, J. (2010). Dungeons & Dragons: A History & Overview. Retrieved May 18, 2018.
  5. ↑ "Internet Movie Database". Retrieved May 28, 2018.
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