Rona Jaffe (June 12, 1931 – December 30, 2005) was an American

novelist A novelist is an author or writer of novels, though often novelists also write in other genres of both fiction and non-fiction. Some novelists are professional novelists, thus make a living writing novels and other fiction, while others aspire to ...

who published numerous works from 1958 to 2003. During the 1960s, she also wrote cultural pieces for ''

Cosmopolitan Cosmopolitan may refer to: Food and drink * Cosmopolitan (cocktail), also known as a "Cosmo" History * Rootless cosmopolitan, a Soviet derogatory epithet during Joseph Stalin's anti-Semitic campaign of 1949–1953 Hotels and resorts * Cosmopoli ...

''.

Biography

Jaffe was born in

Brooklyn, New York Brooklyn () is a borough of New York City, coextensive with Kings County, in the U.S. state of New York. Kings County is the most populous county in the State of New York, and the second-most densely populated county in the United States, be ...

, in 1931, 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 The Carlyle Hotel, known formally as The Carlyle, A Rosewood Hotel, is a combination luxury apartment hotel located at 35 East 76th Street on the northeast corner of Madison Avenue and East 76th Street, on the Upper East Side of New York City. O ...

. Growing up in affluent circumstances on the

Upper East Side The Upper East Side, sometimes abbreviated UES, is a neighborhood in the borough of Manhattan in New York City, bounded by 96th Street to the north, the East River to the east, 59th Street to the south, and Central Park/Fifth Avenue to the wes ...

of Manhattan, she graduated from

Radcliffe College Radcliffe College was a women's liberal arts college in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and functioned as the female coordinate institution for the all-male Harvard College. Considered founded in 1879, it was one of the Seven Sisters colleges and he ...

in 1951. Jaffe wrote her first book, '' The Best of Everything'' (1958), while working as an

associate editor An editor-in-chief (EIC), also known as lead editor or chief editor, is a publication's editorial leader who has final responsibility for its operations and policies. The highest-ranking editor of a publication may also be titled editor, managing ...

Fawcett Publications Fawcett Publications was an American publishing company founded in 1919 in Robbinsdale, Minnesota by Wilford Hamilton "Captain Billy" Fawcett (1885–1940). It kicked off with the publication of the bawdy humor magazine ''Captain Billy's Whiz B ...

in the 1950s. It was quickly adapted into a film starring

Joan Crawford Joan Crawford (born Lucille Fay LeSueur; March 23, ncertain year from 1904 to 1908was an American actress. She started her career as a dancer in traveling theatrical companies before debuting on Broadway. Crawford was signed to a motion pict ...

, also called '' The Best of Everything'' (

1959 Events January * January 1 - Cuba: Fulgencio Batista flees Havana when the forces of Fidel Castro advance. * January 2 - Lunar probe Luna 1 was the first man-made object to attain escape velocity from Earth. It reached the vicinity of E ...

). The book has been described as distinctly "pre-

women's liberation The women's liberation movement (WLM) was a political alignment of women and feminist intellectualism that emerged in the late 1960s and continued into the 1980s primarily in the industrialized nations of the Western world, which effected great ...

" in the way it depicts women in the working world.

Camille Paglia Camille Anna Paglia (; born April 2, 1947) is an American feminist academic and social critic. Paglia has been a professor at the University of the Arts in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, since 1984. She is critical of many aspects of modern cultu ...

noted in 2004 that the book and popular

HBO Home Box Office (HBO) is an American premium television network, which is the flagship property of namesake parent subsidiary Home Box Office, Inc., itself a unit owned by Warner Bros. Discovery. The overall Home Box Office business unit is ba ...

series ''

Sex and the City ''Sex and the City'' is an American romantic comedy, romantic comedy-drama television series created by Darren Star for HBO. An adaptation of Candace Bushnell's Sex and the City (newspaper column), newspaper column and 1996 book anthology of the ...

'' had much in common in that the characters in both (who have similar lives) are "very much at the mercy of

cad Computer-aided design (CAD) is the use of computers (or ) to aid in the creation, modification, analysis, or optimization of a design. This software is used to increase the productivity of the designer, improve the quality of design, improve co ...

s". During the late 1960s,

Helen Gurley Brown Helen Gurley Brown ( Helen Marie Gurley; February 18, 1922 – August 13, 2012) was an American author, publisher, and businesswoman. She was the editor-in-chief of ''Cosmopolitan'' magazine for 32 years. Garner 2009. Early life Helen Mar ...

hired Jaffe to write

cultural Culture () is an umbrella term which encompasses the social behavior, institutions, and Social norm, norms found in human Society, societies, as well as the knowledge, beliefs, arts, laws, Social norm, customs, capabilities, and habits of the ...

pieces for ''

'', with a "Sex and the Single Girl" slant. In 1981, Jaffe published ''

Mazes and Monsters ''Mazes and Monsters'' (also known as ''Rona Jaffe's Mazes and Monsters'') is a 1982 American made-for-television film directed by Steven Hilliard Stern about a group of college students and their interest in a fictitious role-playing game (RPG ...

'', which depicted a ''

Dungeons & Dragons ''Dungeons & Dragons'' (commonly abbreviated as ''D&D'' or ''DnD'') is a fantasy tabletop role-playing game (RPG) originally designed by Gary Gygax and Dave Arneson. The game was first published in 1974 by TSR (company)#Tactical Studies Rules ...

''-like game that caused disorientation and hallucinations among its players and incited them to violence and attempted

suicide Suicide is the act of intentionally causing one's own death. Mental disorders (including depression, bipolar disorder, schizophrenia, personality disorders, anxiety disorders), physical disorders (such as chronic fatigue syndrome), and s ...

. Written at a time of emerging anxiety over the effects of

role-playing game A role-playing game (sometimes spelled roleplaying game, RPG) is a game in which players assume the roles of player character, characters in a fictional Setting (narrative), setting. Players take responsibility for acting out these roles within ...

s (RPGs), the book might 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 James Dallas Egbert III (October 29, 1962 – August 16, 1980) was a student at Michigan State University who disappeared from his dormitory room on August 15, 1979. The disappearance was widely reported in the press, and his participation in t ...

.Veugen, Connie (2006). ''Here Be Dragons: Advent and History of Adventure Games''. Retrieved on 2018-05-18 from https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Connie_Veugen/publication/316299839_Here_Be_Dragons_Advent_and_Hisory_of_Adventure_Games/links/58fa0d284585152edece8d90/Here-Be-Dragons-Advent-and-Hisory-of-Adventure-Games.pdf.Nexus, Jonny (2010). ''Dungeons & Dragons: A History & Overview''. Retrieved on 2018-05-18 from http://www.jonnynexus.com/NonWP/DungeonsAndDragons-HistoryAndOverview.pdf. With both concerns over and interest in role-playing games further stoked by the efforts of anti-RPG campaigners such as

Patricia Pulling Patricia A. Pulling (June 30, 1948 – September 18, 1997) was an anti-occult campaigner from Richmond, Virginia. She founded Bothered About Dungeons and Dragons (BADD), an advocacy group that was dedicated to the regulation of role-playing games s ...

, 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 CBS Broadcasting Inc., commonly shortened to CBS, the abbreviation of its former legal name Columbia Broadcasting System, is an American commercial broadcast television and radio network serving as the flagship property of the CBS Entertainm ...

into a

made-for-TV movie A television film, alternatively known as a television movie, made-for-TV film/movie or TV film/movie, is a feature-length film that is produced and originally distributed by or to a television network, in contrast to theatrical films made for ...

called ''

'' (

1982 Events January * January 1 – In Malaysia and Singapore, clocks are adjusted to the same time zone, UTC+8 (GMT+8.00). * January 13 – Air Florida Flight 90 crashes shortly after takeoff into the 14th Street bridges, 14th Street Bridge in ...

), featuring a 26-year-old

Tom Hanks Thomas Jeffrey Hanks (born July 9, 1956) is an American actor and filmmaker. Known for both his comedic and dramatic roles, he is one of the most popular and recognizable film stars worldwide, and is regarded as an American cultural icon. Ha ...

in one of his earliest appearances. In 2005, Jaffe died in

London London is the capital and largest city of England and the United Kingdom, with a population of just under 9 million. It stands on the River Thames in south-east England at the head of a estuary down to the North Sea, and has been a majo ...

from

cancer Cancer is a group of diseases involving abnormal cell growth with the potential to invade or spread to other parts of the body. These contrast with benign tumors, which do not spread. Possible signs and symptoms include a lump, abnormal b ...

, aged 74.

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) *''

'' (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

External links

"Milestones" (obit)
''Time Magazine'', January 1, 2006. {{DEFAULTSORT:Jaffe, Rona 1931 births 2005 deaths 20th-century American novelists Deaths from cancer in England Jewish American novelists Jewish women writers Writers from Brooklyn People from the Upper East Side Radcliffe College alumni 21st-century American novelists American women novelists 20th-century American women writers 21st-century American women writers Novelists from New York (state) Fawcett Publications 20th-century American Jews 21st-century American Jews