Erica Jong’s home resembles her writing: The sheer number of riotous colors and patterns should compete for attention, yet somehow they blend harmoniously. The Upper East Side home is brimming with richly patterned furniture, drapes, and rugs, but a carefully edited collection of contemporary and modern art reigns supreme.

Ms. Jong has written 20 books of fiction, poetry, and memoir. She burst onto the literary scene in 1973 with “Fear of Flying,” which, depending on whom you ask, is either an empowering, disturbing, or titillating tale of her heroine, Isadora Wing’s “zipless” sexual encounters. Ms. Jong, 64, recently published the memoir “Seducing the Demon: Writing for My Life,” (Tarcher/Penguin), in which she explores her life as a writer and the perspective she has accrued through experiencing fame, four marriages, having a daughter, and now a grandchild. The story in the book that has perhaps garnered the most attention is her account of her one-night stand more than 20 years ago at the Frankfurt Book Fair with Martha Stewart’s then-husband, Andy Stewart.

“Nothing said or done there should morally count,” Ms. Jong declared in “Seducing the Demon.”

Ms. Jong and her husband, the divorce lawyer Ken Burrows, of Bender Burrows & Rosenthal, bought their co-op in a 1950s high-rise together about 15 years ago.They also have a home in Weston, Conn., that Ms. Jong bought before they married. Ms. Jong has a penchant for dogs, and, like many New Yorkers, couldn’t live in a building that didn’t welcome pets. Belinda Barkowitz, her 7-year-old black standard poodle, quietly pads around after Ms. Jong when she’s on the move and keeps a watchful eye on her when she’s still. “It’s a good building for dogs, and it’s a good building for people in show business,” Ms. Jong said.

“Early on, it was a place where a lot of movie stars had a pied-a-terre. Joan Crawford had a pied-a-terre, Joan Collins had a pied-a-terre, Liza still lives here. … There are a lot of co-ops in New York that originally didn’t want show people, so they flocked here. Now that’s changed. Anyone with money can buy a co-op in New York, but it used to be that show people were considered traif.”

She decorated the apartment herself and brought in architect Barry Goralnick to make a few structural changes. He added moldings and rounded out the square hallway that serves as the nucleus of the apartment and holds an eclectic array of art, including a Red Grooms sculpture of Charlie Chaplin, a Fernando Botero sculpture of Eve, paintings by George Grosz, Jules Pascin, Larry Rivers, and Robin Kahn, and two laser-cut nudes by Tom Wesselmann.

The couple’s latest acquisition was bought to celebrate their 17th anniversary, and it is a rather abstract painting by Mr. Rivers of his mother-in-law, Berdie Burger. A smaller, more figurative portrait of Mr. Rivers’s mother-in-law is on the opposite side of the hall.

The living room holds the couple’s rare books collection, an Alexander Calder mobile that hangs in the center of the room, a photograph of Mr. Rivers by Nigel Parry, and a large oil painting by Sam Francis.

A wall in the living room is dedicated to books. A number of years ago, Ms. Jong and her husband decided they needed to narrow the focus of their collection, so they now collect books that were banned. They have first editions of James Joyce’s “Ulysses,” D.H. Lawrence’s “Lady Chatterley’s Lover,” and Vladimir Nabokov’s “Lolita,” among many others.

Every room in the apartment is filled with works of art.A Milton Avery painting and two by Ben Shahn, one from his “Sacco and Vanzetti” series, hang in the dining room. “There’s never enough room on our walls for art,” Ms. Jong said.

The bedroom holds work by Avery and Grosz, as well as several pieces of erotic art including Japanese prints and Indian sculptures. It also boasts one of Ms. Jong’s favorite pieces, done by her grandfather, Samuel Mirsky. It is a framed series of drawings and gouaches depicting his memories of his life in Russia before he fled to Paris at 14.

Photographs of Ms. Jong’s daughter, the writer Molly Jong-Fast, a chandelier inherited from her in-laws, and other reminders of her family populate the apartment. Ms. Jong’s study is overflowing with books (there isn’t a banned volume in sight), the walls are dotted with Venetian masks, and a raised train set for her 2-year-old grandson, Max, in the middle of the room. It’s a haven of controlled chaos littered with papers, letters, and invitations. She said she prefers to write in her pajamas, so she often starts her work day in the study before heading over to her office, which is just across the street from her apartment in a post-war building in the East 60s.

Ms. Jong is currently working on a novel starring a familiar character: Isadora Wing.

“I have about 200 pages of a new book on Isadora, which is beginning with Isadora when she’s about 55 and going through all of the craziness of parents dying, children trying to kill themselves, and that moment in life when you feel like on both sides you’re being shoved and your own personality is submerged by all of the problems you’re dealing with,” Ms. Jong said.

Luckily, Ms. Jong’s enclosed terrace – on the 27th floor,with a 180-degree view of Manhattan, and bursting with ferns, sage, geraniums, boxwood hedges, and even a pine tree – is the perfect escape from the everyday.