Erica Jong with Ken Follett (left) at a book party for Follett in her Manhattan apartment

A New York Observer story by Jason Horowitz (which is getting a lot of pick-up on the right, such as here, at the Weekly Standard) reports that Fear of Flying author Erica Jong has predicted that “if Obama loses it will spark the second American Civil War. Blood will run in the streets, believe me. And it’s not a coincidence that President Bush recalled soldiers from Iraq for Dick Cheney to lead against American citizens in the streets.” The story originates in an interview Jong granted the Italian newspaper Corriere della Sera (hey! it’s in Italian!). Jong also notes she shares her “paralyzing terror” with other writers — “My friends Ken Follett and Susan Cheever are extremely worried. Naomi Wolf calls me every day” — although not all writers: “Tom Wolfe and John Updike are men of the right and Philip Roth is at this point a hermit who leads a monastic life in Connecticut, far from everything and everybody.” Not to despair, though — there’s still Jong herself and Michael Chabon, who, she says, have “taken the place of Susan Sontag and Norman Mailer respectively.”