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Fear of Flying
The groundbreaking #1 New York Times Bestseller—updated for the 50th Anniversary with a New Foreword by Molly Jong-Fast and a New Introduction by Taffy Brodesser-Akner!
“The boundary-breaking novel that redefined sexuality.”—O Magazine
Isadora Wing is tired. Tired of being psychoanalyzed. Tired of grad school. Tired of fighting with her husband. Tired of having unfulfilled desires. She thinks she knows what she's searching for and how to achieve it. But her quest to engage in no-strings-attached sex quickly shifts into a journey of self-discovery that will leave her questioning her own mind, her ideals, and what she truly wants in life....
Originally published in 1973, the ground-breaking, uninhibited story of Isadora Wing and her desire to fly free caused a national sensation. It fueled fantasies, ignited debates, and introduced a notorious new phrase to the English language. Now, after fifty years, this revolutionary novel still stands as a timeless tale of self-discovery, liberation, and womanhood.
“Smart, bold, bracing and, importantly, extremely funny.”—Meg Wolitzer
“The boundary-breaking novel that redefined sexuality.”—O Magazine
Isadora Wing is tired. Tired of being psychoanalyzed. Tired of grad school. Tired of fighting with her husband. Tired of having unfulfilled desires. She thinks she knows what she's searching for and how to achieve it. But her quest to engage in no-strings-attached sex quickly shifts into a journey of self-discovery that will leave her questioning her own mind, her ideals, and what she truly wants in life....
Originally published in 1973, the ground-breaking, uninhibited story of Isadora Wing and her desire to fly free caused a national sensation. It fueled fantasies, ignited debates, and introduced a notorious new phrase to the English language. Now, after fifty years, this revolutionary novel still stands as a timeless tale of self-discovery, liberation, and womanhood.
“Smart, bold, bracing and, importantly, extremely funny.”—Meg Wolitzer
461 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1973
About the author
Erica Jong
124 books806 followersErica Jong—novelist, poet, and essayist—has consistently used her craft to help provide women with a powerful and rational voice in forging a feminist consciousness. She has published 21 books, including eight novels, six volumes of poetry, six books of non-fiction and numerous articles in magazines and newspapers such as the New York Times, the Sunday Times of London, Elle, Vogue, and the New York Times Book Review.
In her groundbreaking first novel, Fear of Flying (which has sold twenty-six million copies in more than forty languages), she introduced Isadora Wing, who also plays a central part in three subsequent novels—How to Save Your Own Life, Parachutes and Kisses, and Any Woman's Blues. In her three historical novels—Fanny, Shylock's Daughter, and Sappho's Leap—she demonstrates her mastery of eighteenth-century British literature, the verses of Shakespeare, and ancient Greek lyric, respectively. A memoir of her life as a writer, Seducing the Demon: Writing for My Life, came out in March 2006. It was a national bestseller in the US and many other countries. Erica’s latest book, Sugar in My Bowl, is an anthology of women writing about sex, has been recently released in paperback.
Erica Jong was honored with the United Nations Award for Excellence in Literature. She has also received Poetry magazine's Bess Hokin Prize, also won by W.S. Merwin and Sylvia Plath. In France, she received the Deauville Award for Literary Excellence and in Italy, she received the Sigmund Freud Award for Literature. The City University of New York awarded Ms. Jong an honorary PhD at the College of Staten Island.
Her works have appeared all over the world and are as popular in Eastern Europe, Japan, China, and other Asian countries as they have been in the United States and Western Europe. She has lectured, taught and read her work all over the world.
A graduate of Barnard College and Columbia University's Graduate Faculties where she received her M.A. in 18th Century English Literature, Erica Jong also attended Columbia's graduate writing program where she studied poetry with Stanley Kunitz and Mark Strand. In 2007, continuing her long-standing relationship with the university, a large collection of Erica’s archival material was acquired by Columbia University’s Rare Book & Manuscript Library, where it will be available to graduate and undergraduate students. Ms. Jong plans to teach master classes at Columbia and also advise the Rare Book Library on the acquisition of other women writers’ archives.
Calling herself “a defrocked academic,” Ms. Jong has partly returned to her roots as a scholar. She has taught at Ben Gurion University in Israel, Bennington College in the US, Breadloaf Writers’ Conference in Vermont and many other distinguished writing programs and universities. She loves to teach and lecture, though her skill in these areas has sometimes crowded her writing projects. “As long as I am communicating the gift of literature, I’m happy,” Jong says. A poet at heart, Ms. Jong believes that words can save the world.
In her groundbreaking first novel, Fear of Flying (which has sold twenty-six million copies in more than forty languages), she introduced Isadora Wing, who also plays a central part in three subsequent novels—How to Save Your Own Life, Parachutes and Kisses, and Any Woman's Blues. In her three historical novels—Fanny, Shylock's Daughter, and Sappho's Leap—she demonstrates her mastery of eighteenth-century British literature, the verses of Shakespeare, and ancient Greek lyric, respectively. A memoir of her life as a writer, Seducing the Demon: Writing for My Life, came out in March 2006. It was a national bestseller in the US and many other countries. Erica’s latest book, Sugar in My Bowl, is an anthology of women writing about sex, has been recently released in paperback.
Erica Jong was honored with the United Nations Award for Excellence in Literature. She has also received Poetry magazine's Bess Hokin Prize, also won by W.S. Merwin and Sylvia Plath. In France, she received the Deauville Award for Literary Excellence and in Italy, she received the Sigmund Freud Award for Literature. The City University of New York awarded Ms. Jong an honorary PhD at the College of Staten Island.
Her works have appeared all over the world and are as popular in Eastern Europe, Japan, China, and other Asian countries as they have been in the United States and Western Europe. She has lectured, taught and read her work all over the world.
A graduate of Barnard College and Columbia University's Graduate Faculties where she received her M.A. in 18th Century English Literature, Erica Jong also attended Columbia's graduate writing program where she studied poetry with Stanley Kunitz and Mark Strand. In 2007, continuing her long-standing relationship with the university, a large collection of Erica’s archival material was acquired by Columbia University’s Rare Book & Manuscript Library, where it will be available to graduate and undergraduate students. Ms. Jong plans to teach master classes at Columbia and also advise the Rare Book Library on the acquisition of other women writers’ archives.
Calling herself “a defrocked academic,” Ms. Jong has partly returned to her roots as a scholar. She has taught at Ben Gurion University in Israel, Bennington College in the US, Breadloaf Writers’ Conference in Vermont and many other distinguished writing programs and universities. She loves to teach and lecture, though her skill in these areas has sometimes crowded her writing projects. “As long as I am communicating the gift of literature, I’m happy,” Jong says. A poet at heart, Ms. Jong believes that words can save the world.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 1,952 reviews
June 4, 2019
I swear if I have to take another page of this rich, uppity bitch's incessant whinings and first world problems, I'll rip all my hair out.
Isadora Wing sooooo envies the fact that German streets are cleaner than those in the US. She won all her college poetry writing contests, edited the literary magazine, got published, kept receiving communication from publishers and yet remains soooo insecure about her writing prowess. Her equally rich, married and annoying sisters have procreated and produced cute little blue-eyed 'Aryan' cherubs who make the remaining population of American kids look like they belong in the third world. Oh the horror of white kids looking like kids in the third world! Oh how will she compete in the 'whose-baby-is-more-Aryan-looking' contest when she doesn't even want to use her womb? What a poor, little darling!
All she can think about is how she will screw the brains out of the next handsome stranger she meets while wallowing in self-pity and cribbing about ex-husbands, ex-boyfriends and therapists. She will cheat on her husband but expect him to treat her well despite being aware of her infidelities.
Stay away from this pseudo-feminist, offensive, crudely written autobiography masquerading as a novel.
Isadora Wing sooooo envies the fact that German streets are cleaner than those in the US. She won all her college poetry writing contests, edited the literary magazine, got published, kept receiving communication from publishers and yet remains soooo insecure about her writing prowess. Her equally rich, married and annoying sisters have procreated and produced cute little blue-eyed 'Aryan' cherubs who make the remaining population of American kids look like they belong in the third world. Oh the horror of white kids looking like kids in the third world! Oh how will she compete in the 'whose-baby-is-more-Aryan-looking' contest when she doesn't even want to use her womb? What a poor, little darling!
All she can think about is how she will screw the brains out of the next handsome stranger she meets while wallowing in self-pity and cribbing about ex-husbands, ex-boyfriends and therapists. She will cheat on her husband but expect him to treat her well despite being aware of her infidelities.
Stay away from this pseudo-feminist, offensive, crudely written autobiography masquerading as a novel.
November 4, 2014
For whatever reason (possibly because someone I recommended it to wasn't that thrilled by it), I feel a bit like I need to defend this book lately, and since I reviewed it when I first joined this site and most people were writing shorter reviews, I'd like to give it a better write-up.
The premise of Fear of Flying is fairly simple: Isadora White Wing is in a marriage she isn't exactly happy with. Her husband isn't especially warm to her, nor is he incredibly supportive of her career (like Jong, of course, she's a writer).
While on a trip in Vienna, Isadora fantasizes about being with another man, and this book is more or less about those fantasies - what they mean in the context of her marriage, her entire love life, what they mean for women in general.
It's true, the writing isn't exactly high brow. It's incredibly self-indulgent and narcissistic, and you will, from time to time, feel like you could have written it, and maybe even done a better job.
That, however is not the point of this book. It's not about the way she writes, but the fact that she wrote it in the first place.
You'd think, after books like The Awakening - which was written in motherfucking 1899, by the by - that society would've gradually accepted that women have sex drives. Sexuality is important to women, women want pleasure, women have fantasies, sometimes women, too, just want to get down and dirty and out the door.
But no! Even today, 109 years after Kate Chopin wrote The Awakening, people are still coping with feminine sexuality.
The importance of Fear of Flying is Jong opening up the female mind, showing people: this is what we think about, worry about, these are the problems we have, these are things on our minds where men, careers and lives are concerned. You may not always agree with her or have the exact same problems, but I would be astounded if any woman gets through this book without finding anything she can relate to.
As I see it, there are two major dilemmas going on here, which are both issues that many women I know - myself included - have faced.
The first is sort of what the two men she debates between represent to her and her life. There's comfort and stability, represented by Bennett, her (second) husband. Then there's passion and intensity represented by Adrian Goodlove (yeah, a real dumbdumb name, but I kind of love it because of that). A LOT of women often feel like they're forced to choose between these two extremes at one point or another. I definitely have, and most women I know have, too. I know someone sorting through a similar pair of men at this very moment in time.
The second is a dilemma that's just as applicable to men as it is to women, and that's the idea of freedom and independence, and struggling to maintain that within the framework of a relationship. She wants to be strong and able to do whatever she wants, whenever she wants, both in terms of love and her career, but at the same time, she wants support, companionship. Is there anyone who hasn't struggled with this - even if only on a small scale - at some point or another?
There are also other issues within the context of those issues - Do women have to get married? Why do we feel we have to? Etc.
Again, I have to stress that this book is more about what she says as opposed to how she says it. I imagine she had a hunch that this book would elicit a controversial response and was probably concerned a lot more with content than she was style. Honestly, I think that's allowable in these circumstances. She wanted to encourage women to go out and explore their sexuality and what it meant to them, and with such a noble cause, I can forgive her the rudimentary approach. She's not perfect, and I don't see why she has to be. I think that's also part of this book's charm. She isn't perfect, she knows it, and she learns to accept it - another conundrum plenty of people face in one way or another - and I'd say that's true of both the character and the author.
As for how it fits in modern times, I do think it's still applicable. It might seem a bit closeted to women who feel they've fully embraced their sexuality or have read more of the modern musings on female pleasure first. None-the-less, the issues I mention above that Isadora struggles with are still very much current.
Are there books that approach these issues that might be more modern? Sure. But I also think there's importance in knowing the kind of novel that shocked America in the '70s, a time when most of us from a younger generation think of free love and hippies and feminism and what not. For a modern woman, there isn't anything shocking about this. The fact that it was shocking is what's so damn upsetting. The '70s were not that long ago! And people were thrown back by the fact that women had dreams of random sexual encounters! It's appalling. Of course, at the same time, despite the fact that if this book was released today, it probably wouldn't be considered a revelation, I'm sure Isadora would still get labeled cruelly. Which is also kind of upsetting.
None-the-less, if you like the topic but not the writing style of Fear of Flying, I definitely suggest The Awakening, which is a little more high-brow.
Original review:
I kindofsortof hate it when people say things like "this book changed my life," but if I was going to say that about just one book, I would say it about this one.
Yes, it's neurotic, yes, it's self-obsessed. But I like it that way, and there's still plenty to take from this book even for those who don't especially enjoy writing like that. There are also plenty of modern writers who do the same thing and are praised for it (cough Dave Eggers cough).
In the simplest overview, there's nothing particularly revelatory about her observations and conclusions -- everyone goes through the struggle of wanting to be independent and wanting to be loved, and most of us learn this rather early on. But there's something about the way that she approaches this, the way that she handles it, that makes it hit you like a truck. I dare you to come away from reading this book without thinking about it for at least the next week.
Though this book is obviously marketed towards women, I think it's just as important reading for men.
The premise of Fear of Flying is fairly simple: Isadora White Wing is in a marriage she isn't exactly happy with. Her husband isn't especially warm to her, nor is he incredibly supportive of her career (like Jong, of course, she's a writer).
While on a trip in Vienna, Isadora fantasizes about being with another man, and this book is more or less about those fantasies - what they mean in the context of her marriage, her entire love life, what they mean for women in general.
It's true, the writing isn't exactly high brow. It's incredibly self-indulgent and narcissistic, and you will, from time to time, feel like you could have written it, and maybe even done a better job.
That, however is not the point of this book. It's not about the way she writes, but the fact that she wrote it in the first place.
You'd think, after books like The Awakening - which was written in motherfucking 1899, by the by - that society would've gradually accepted that women have sex drives. Sexuality is important to women, women want pleasure, women have fantasies, sometimes women, too, just want to get down and dirty and out the door.
But no! Even today, 109 years after Kate Chopin wrote The Awakening, people are still coping with feminine sexuality.
The importance of Fear of Flying is Jong opening up the female mind, showing people: this is what we think about, worry about, these are the problems we have, these are things on our minds where men, careers and lives are concerned. You may not always agree with her or have the exact same problems, but I would be astounded if any woman gets through this book without finding anything she can relate to.
As I see it, there are two major dilemmas going on here, which are both issues that many women I know - myself included - have faced.
The first is sort of what the two men she debates between represent to her and her life. There's comfort and stability, represented by Bennett, her (second) husband. Then there's passion and intensity represented by Adrian Goodlove (yeah, a real dumbdumb name, but I kind of love it because of that). A LOT of women often feel like they're forced to choose between these two extremes at one point or another. I definitely have, and most women I know have, too. I know someone sorting through a similar pair of men at this very moment in time.
The second is a dilemma that's just as applicable to men as it is to women, and that's the idea of freedom and independence, and struggling to maintain that within the framework of a relationship. She wants to be strong and able to do whatever she wants, whenever she wants, both in terms of love and her career, but at the same time, she wants support, companionship. Is there anyone who hasn't struggled with this - even if only on a small scale - at some point or another?
There are also other issues within the context of those issues - Do women have to get married? Why do we feel we have to? Etc.
Again, I have to stress that this book is more about what she says as opposed to how she says it. I imagine she had a hunch that this book would elicit a controversial response and was probably concerned a lot more with content than she was style. Honestly, I think that's allowable in these circumstances. She wanted to encourage women to go out and explore their sexuality and what it meant to them, and with such a noble cause, I can forgive her the rudimentary approach. She's not perfect, and I don't see why she has to be. I think that's also part of this book's charm. She isn't perfect, she knows it, and she learns to accept it - another conundrum plenty of people face in one way or another - and I'd say that's true of both the character and the author.
As for how it fits in modern times, I do think it's still applicable. It might seem a bit closeted to women who feel they've fully embraced their sexuality or have read more of the modern musings on female pleasure first. None-the-less, the issues I mention above that Isadora struggles with are still very much current.
Are there books that approach these issues that might be more modern? Sure. But I also think there's importance in knowing the kind of novel that shocked America in the '70s, a time when most of us from a younger generation think of free love and hippies and feminism and what not. For a modern woman, there isn't anything shocking about this. The fact that it was shocking is what's so damn upsetting. The '70s were not that long ago! And people were thrown back by the fact that women had dreams of random sexual encounters! It's appalling. Of course, at the same time, despite the fact that if this book was released today, it probably wouldn't be considered a revelation, I'm sure Isadora would still get labeled cruelly. Which is also kind of upsetting.
None-the-less, if you like the topic but not the writing style of Fear of Flying, I definitely suggest The Awakening, which is a little more high-brow.
Original review:
I kindofsortof hate it when people say things like "this book changed my life," but if I was going to say that about just one book, I would say it about this one.
Yes, it's neurotic, yes, it's self-obsessed. But I like it that way, and there's still plenty to take from this book even for those who don't especially enjoy writing like that. There are also plenty of modern writers who do the same thing and are praised for it (cough Dave Eggers cough).
In the simplest overview, there's nothing particularly revelatory about her observations and conclusions -- everyone goes through the struggle of wanting to be independent and wanting to be loved, and most of us learn this rather early on. But there's something about the way that she approaches this, the way that she handles it, that makes it hit you like a truck. I dare you to come away from reading this book without thinking about it for at least the next week.
Though this book is obviously marketed towards women, I think it's just as important reading for men.
October 10, 2014
iw69: hello. i want you now
mannyrayner: do we know each other?
iw69: not at all, that's the point. i thought we could just have a completely no-strings-attached sexual encounter for its own sake, and then say goodbye. wouldn't that be poetic and beautiful?
mannyrayner: um, well, maybe. i'm sorry, i guess i should just be doing this and not analyzing it. can i at least have a name or will that ruin everything?
iw69: i'm isadora
mannyrayner: that's a pretty name. pardon me for being so old-fashioned
iw69: it's ok. so now can we fuck?
mannyrayner: i'm not quite sure how that would work, but
iw69: i want you to put your hard cock in my cunt and make me come. i hope you aren't threatened by the way i frankly express my female desires or by my use of the word "cunt"?
mannyrayner: ah, no, not really, in fact i
iw69: it didn't used to be regarded as obscene. in the miller's tale, chaucer writes "pryvely he caught hir by the queynte." In 1380 "queynte" was pronounced "cunt"
mannyrayner: how interesting! i knew the line but wasn't aware of the pronunciation
iw69: and in swedish the root has mutated into the word "qvinna" which is the normal word for woman. so swedish women are all unashamedly cunts
mannyrayner: actually the word is normally spelled with a "k" in modern swedish, and the polite word for cunt is "sköte". you are not advised to use the vulgar "fitta"
iw69: you are remarkably knowledgeable. i already feel i understand you. you remind me of my first husband. i guess you're some kind of erratic genius type who's insecure about his sexuality and his ability to satisfy a woman, which is eventually going to destroy you?
mannyrayner: well, thanks for the first bit, but i hope you're not entirely
iw69: no wait, i think you're really more like my second husband. you're powerful and oversexed, but simultaneously cold and distant, so that while you satisfy my body you're unable to reach me emotionally?
mannyrayner: actually, i'm not sure i quite
iw69: you said "actually" again. you must be english, right? in fact, i see you're most like my lover adrian. you pretend to live in the moment, but all the time you have a plan you're hiding from me, which i'll be bitterly disappointed to discover in due course?
mannyrayner: i suppose i can't completely
iw69: hey, now i get it. you're like all of them at the same time. god you turn me on. i'm so wet from talking to you that i've had to change my panties twice already since the start of our conversation
mannyrayner: isadora, i admit i'm flattered, but
iw69: stay right where you are. i'll be with you faster than you would believe possible and then we're going to fuck like you've never fucked before in your whole life. you'll break my heart, but after i've dried my tears i'll put you and your cock in my next best-selling novel and you'll be immortal
mannyrayner: i guess i like some parts of the plan but we'll have to change a few details
iw69: why?
mannyrayner: to start with, i'm sitting in an airport lobby. i need to be at my gate within the next twenty minutes
mannyrayner: isadora?
mannyrayner: hello, are you still there?
mannyrayner: did i say something wrong?
mannyrayner: well, if it was zipless enough for you, then it was zipless enough for me
mannyrayner: bye!
mannyrayner: do we know each other?
iw69: not at all, that's the point. i thought we could just have a completely no-strings-attached sexual encounter for its own sake, and then say goodbye. wouldn't that be poetic and beautiful?
mannyrayner: um, well, maybe. i'm sorry, i guess i should just be doing this and not analyzing it. can i at least have a name or will that ruin everything?
iw69: i'm isadora
mannyrayner: that's a pretty name. pardon me for being so old-fashioned
iw69: it's ok. so now can we fuck?
mannyrayner: i'm not quite sure how that would work, but
iw69: i want you to put your hard cock in my cunt and make me come. i hope you aren't threatened by the way i frankly express my female desires or by my use of the word "cunt"?
mannyrayner: ah, no, not really, in fact i
iw69: it didn't used to be regarded as obscene. in the miller's tale, chaucer writes "pryvely he caught hir by the queynte." In 1380 "queynte" was pronounced "cunt"
mannyrayner: how interesting! i knew the line but wasn't aware of the pronunciation
iw69: and in swedish the root has mutated into the word "qvinna" which is the normal word for woman. so swedish women are all unashamedly cunts
mannyrayner: actually the word is normally spelled with a "k" in modern swedish, and the polite word for cunt is "sköte". you are not advised to use the vulgar "fitta"
iw69: you are remarkably knowledgeable. i already feel i understand you. you remind me of my first husband. i guess you're some kind of erratic genius type who's insecure about his sexuality and his ability to satisfy a woman, which is eventually going to destroy you?
mannyrayner: well, thanks for the first bit, but i hope you're not entirely
iw69: no wait, i think you're really more like my second husband. you're powerful and oversexed, but simultaneously cold and distant, so that while you satisfy my body you're unable to reach me emotionally?
mannyrayner: actually, i'm not sure i quite
iw69: you said "actually" again. you must be english, right? in fact, i see you're most like my lover adrian. you pretend to live in the moment, but all the time you have a plan you're hiding from me, which i'll be bitterly disappointed to discover in due course?
mannyrayner: i suppose i can't completely
iw69: hey, now i get it. you're like all of them at the same time. god you turn me on. i'm so wet from talking to you that i've had to change my panties twice already since the start of our conversation
mannyrayner: isadora, i admit i'm flattered, but
iw69: stay right where you are. i'll be with you faster than you would believe possible and then we're going to fuck like you've never fucked before in your whole life. you'll break my heart, but after i've dried my tears i'll put you and your cock in my next best-selling novel and you'll be immortal
mannyrayner: i guess i like some parts of the plan but we'll have to change a few details
iw69: why?
mannyrayner: to start with, i'm sitting in an airport lobby. i need to be at my gate within the next twenty minutes
mannyrayner: isadora?
mannyrayner: hello, are you still there?
mannyrayner: did i say something wrong?
mannyrayner: well, if it was zipless enough for you, then it was zipless enough for me
mannyrayner: bye!
April 11, 2018
Summer, 1972
A top editor at a publishing firm in NYC pokes his head into a break room and says to a young, male intern who is pouring coffee, “Hey, kid, come into my office for a minute, will you?”
The “kid” is a recent lit grad from Columbia University with a penchant for Joyce and Hardy and an innate distrust for this particular editor. He starts to sweat immediately at the man's request, but stays outwardly calm as he puts down the coffee cup and follows the editor into his office.
The editor makes a big show of inviting the young man in, closing the door behind him and seating him comfortably on a small sofa. He chooses to lean conspiratorially against his large desk.
The intern battles the urge to bite his lower lip.
“How fast can you read, kid?” the editor asks, smiling.
“Fast, sir.”
“Well, son, I'm happy to hear it! You see that sweet piece of ass out there in the lobby? The one with the cotton candy hair and those sweet, braless tits?”
The intern slowly turns his head to look out the office windows and sees a nervous looking blonde, seated on a sofa, staring at him. He nods.
The editor leans in closer, “That there is a Miss Erica Jong. She's a friend of a friend. Some kind of poet, too. She's real appreciative that we're going to take a little look-see at her manuscript. Well, that you're going to take a little look-see, while I take those tits out to an air-conditioned lunch. I've pretty much promised her we'll give her feminist lit a little whirl, so don't break a sweat, kid. Just scribble some basic notes and advise her to knock off about fifty pages.”
He takes a manuscript off his desk and hands it to the intern.
The young man looks down at the manuscript, then up at the editor to ask, “Is it feminist lit, sir?”
The editor stands, and indicates that the other man should do the same. Right before opening the door, he slaps the intern hard on the back and says loudly in his ear, “I don't give a fuck, son!”
Two hours later. . .
The editor returns, his entrance announced by his boisterous laughter. He has an arm hooked under Ms. Jong's arm and he ushers her in to an available office as he summons the intern with a quick flick of his hand. He doesn't know the intern's name, and this doesn't embarrass him in the least, but he rubs the top of Ms. Jong's back as he announces he's leaving her in the hands of “one of the best” (with slightly slurred speech). He shuts the door behind him as he leaves.
After a few polite exchanges, the intern and Ms. Jong sit down across from each other and the intern offers, “I can't get over how much you physically resemble your protagonist, Isadora Wing.”
Ms. Jong laughs into her hand. “Yes. Of course. We are the same woman!”
Intern: Then, do you mind if I ask. . . Is this an autobiography?
EJ: Well, it all really happened, but, no, biographies don't sell.
The interns pulls at his collar. He's taken three aspirins since he started the manuscript and is sweating profusely now.
He coughs. “So, it's autobiographical, but you want us to promote it as fiction?”
EJ: Oh, yes.
Intern: And my editor. . . he led me to understand that you would classify this as feminist literature?
EJ: (nods vigorously) Oh, yes. Naturally.
Intern: But. . . why feminist? I mean, what exactly about it is feminist?
EJ: (flicks back her head and laughs) Well, I believe you've noticed I'm a woman?
The intern pulls at his tie as though imagining it's become a noose. “It's just that your. . . I mean Isadora's escapades are so. . . dark, so demeaning. It's almost as though you don't respect, I mean Isadora doesn't respect herself or ANY women. And that scene with the man who can't be bothered to wipe his bottom and smears feces all over your sheets during lovemaking. . .
Ms. Jong smiles, wraps her hair playfully around her finger. “Hot scene, wasn't it?”
The intern rubs his face with both hands. Tries to keep his cool. “And, no disrespect, Ms. Jong, but are you aware that you use three different tenses alone, just in the first chapter? I wonder if you could clarify your storytelling vision to me?”
EJ: My writing coach always says, “Write what you know!”
She leans back against the chair, exposing cleavage. She giggles. “Daddy always said that a girl as pretty as I am will always make a big splash in this world.”
An hour later. . .
The intern knocks loudly at the door of the editor and is invited in. The editor stays seated, a Parliament cigarette hangs from his mouth. “How'd we make out, kid?”
The mentally exhausted intern says, “Put a naked woman on the cover and market it as erotica,” and walks quickly out the door.
The book is published in 1973 and men with dirty asses and dirty toes the whole world over are shocked to discover their newfound love of feminist lit.
(***This review is a work of fiction and the reviewer feels that it was an appropriate, albeit snarky response to being trapped in a room for four consecutive evenings with this “novel.”)
A top editor at a publishing firm in NYC pokes his head into a break room and says to a young, male intern who is pouring coffee, “Hey, kid, come into my office for a minute, will you?”
The “kid” is a recent lit grad from Columbia University with a penchant for Joyce and Hardy and an innate distrust for this particular editor. He starts to sweat immediately at the man's request, but stays outwardly calm as he puts down the coffee cup and follows the editor into his office.
The editor makes a big show of inviting the young man in, closing the door behind him and seating him comfortably on a small sofa. He chooses to lean conspiratorially against his large desk.
The intern battles the urge to bite his lower lip.
“How fast can you read, kid?” the editor asks, smiling.
“Fast, sir.”
“Well, son, I'm happy to hear it! You see that sweet piece of ass out there in the lobby? The one with the cotton candy hair and those sweet, braless tits?”
The intern slowly turns his head to look out the office windows and sees a nervous looking blonde, seated on a sofa, staring at him. He nods.
The editor leans in closer, “That there is a Miss Erica Jong. She's a friend of a friend. Some kind of poet, too. She's real appreciative that we're going to take a little look-see at her manuscript. Well, that you're going to take a little look-see, while I take those tits out to an air-conditioned lunch. I've pretty much promised her we'll give her feminist lit a little whirl, so don't break a sweat, kid. Just scribble some basic notes and advise her to knock off about fifty pages.”
He takes a manuscript off his desk and hands it to the intern.
The young man looks down at the manuscript, then up at the editor to ask, “Is it feminist lit, sir?”
The editor stands, and indicates that the other man should do the same. Right before opening the door, he slaps the intern hard on the back and says loudly in his ear, “I don't give a fuck, son!”
Two hours later. . .
The editor returns, his entrance announced by his boisterous laughter. He has an arm hooked under Ms. Jong's arm and he ushers her in to an available office as he summons the intern with a quick flick of his hand. He doesn't know the intern's name, and this doesn't embarrass him in the least, but he rubs the top of Ms. Jong's back as he announces he's leaving her in the hands of “one of the best” (with slightly slurred speech). He shuts the door behind him as he leaves.
After a few polite exchanges, the intern and Ms. Jong sit down across from each other and the intern offers, “I can't get over how much you physically resemble your protagonist, Isadora Wing.”
Ms. Jong laughs into her hand. “Yes. Of course. We are the same woman!”
Intern: Then, do you mind if I ask. . . Is this an autobiography?
EJ: Well, it all really happened, but, no, biographies don't sell.
The interns pulls at his collar. He's taken three aspirins since he started the manuscript and is sweating profusely now.
He coughs. “So, it's autobiographical, but you want us to promote it as fiction?”
EJ: Oh, yes.
Intern: And my editor. . . he led me to understand that you would classify this as feminist literature?
EJ: (nods vigorously) Oh, yes. Naturally.
Intern: But. . . why feminist? I mean, what exactly about it is feminist?
EJ: (flicks back her head and laughs) Well, I believe you've noticed I'm a woman?
The intern pulls at his tie as though imagining it's become a noose. “It's just that your. . . I mean Isadora's escapades are so. . . dark, so demeaning. It's almost as though you don't respect, I mean Isadora doesn't respect herself or ANY women. And that scene with the man who can't be bothered to wipe his bottom and smears feces all over your sheets during lovemaking. . .
Ms. Jong smiles, wraps her hair playfully around her finger. “Hot scene, wasn't it?”
The intern rubs his face with both hands. Tries to keep his cool. “And, no disrespect, Ms. Jong, but are you aware that you use three different tenses alone, just in the first chapter? I wonder if you could clarify your storytelling vision to me?”
EJ: My writing coach always says, “Write what you know!”
She leans back against the chair, exposing cleavage. She giggles. “Daddy always said that a girl as pretty as I am will always make a big splash in this world.”
An hour later. . .
The intern knocks loudly at the door of the editor and is invited in. The editor stays seated, a Parliament cigarette hangs from his mouth. “How'd we make out, kid?”
The mentally exhausted intern says, “Put a naked woman on the cover and market it as erotica,” and walks quickly out the door.
The book is published in 1973 and men with dirty asses and dirty toes the whole world over are shocked to discover their newfound love of feminist lit.
(***This review is a work of fiction and the reviewer feels that it was an appropriate, albeit snarky response to being trapped in a room for four consecutive evenings with this “novel.”)
April 23, 2024
Jong's right on the money: zipless flings aren't worth the love that's lost on them. But we zipless hippies of the seventies thought we had life aced!
We were the First Wave of the Love that swept around the world in that decade... But love don't pay the bills, and we were all broke at the end of it.
Reaganomics put an end to all that and ushered in an unkind, brutal kinda practicality. But we had to face the noise the hallucinating music of Woodstock had sired, and I was no exception.
A crash test dummy on that wave, I wasn't wearing my helmet when I hit rock bottom. And my brain damage was intensified in the funny farm I went to next.
Free Love sired a Weird kinda Werewolf in the chemistry of my noggin, but being in that First Wave, it was sink or swim time...
I sank.
Liberal psychiatry held my head there and counted to ten. For by the 70's morals were toast everywhere.
Luckily a higher power saw the murderous act, and pulled me out. My deus ex machina was real: I kid you not.
Sputtering, I revived.
Erica Jong, on the contrary, is saved from the whole crazy shooting match - all nine yards of it - by plain, market garden common sense. She returns to the beauty of the bland and is once more glad of it!
You know, in the year of Woodstock according to one song all you needed was love:
What for - to wreck your life in a hurry?
For now that and a buck fifty might not even buy you a coffee...
But for a brain fulla common cents your Sun will Shine Again!
We were the First Wave of the Love that swept around the world in that decade... But love don't pay the bills, and we were all broke at the end of it.
Reaganomics put an end to all that and ushered in an unkind, brutal kinda practicality. But we had to face the noise the hallucinating music of Woodstock had sired, and I was no exception.
A crash test dummy on that wave, I wasn't wearing my helmet when I hit rock bottom. And my brain damage was intensified in the funny farm I went to next.
Free Love sired a Weird kinda Werewolf in the chemistry of my noggin, but being in that First Wave, it was sink or swim time...
I sank.
Liberal psychiatry held my head there and counted to ten. For by the 70's morals were toast everywhere.
Luckily a higher power saw the murderous act, and pulled me out. My deus ex machina was real: I kid you not.
Sputtering, I revived.
Erica Jong, on the contrary, is saved from the whole crazy shooting match - all nine yards of it - by plain, market garden common sense. She returns to the beauty of the bland and is once more glad of it!
You know, in the year of Woodstock according to one song all you needed was love:
What for - to wreck your life in a hurry?
For now that and a buck fifty might not even buy you a coffee...
But for a brain fulla common cents your Sun will Shine Again!
Shelved as 'abandoned'
July 19, 2018Speed dating with books 1/6
Since I am moving my books from one room to another and building a new bookcase I realized (again) that I have way too many unread books. I decided to choose 6 (for the beginning) of the ones waiting on my shelves for a long time or that I do not know if I would like, read 50 pages and decide if I want to continue with them or send them away. This week and the next I will share with you the results.
I bought this novel almost 10 years ago because, well, I was afraid of flying and I thought I might resonate with the character. I didn’t.
The Fear Of Flying goes. It was written in 1973 when women’s emancipation was not that accomplished .The book wants to be sexy and liberating, a sort of feminist erotic fiction with lots and lots of shrinks. Instead, for me, it was vulgar and only looking for the shocking factor. I can’t even count how many times I read cunt/pussy and fuck in the first 50 pages. I am not a prude but I felt the language was not sexy at all and it did not warm me to the characters.
Since I am moving my books from one room to another and building a new bookcase I realized (again) that I have way too many unread books. I decided to choose 6 (for the beginning) of the ones waiting on my shelves for a long time or that I do not know if I would like, read 50 pages and decide if I want to continue with them or send them away. This week and the next I will share with you the results.
I bought this novel almost 10 years ago because, well, I was afraid of flying and I thought I might resonate with the character. I didn’t.
The Fear Of Flying goes. It was written in 1973 when women’s emancipation was not that accomplished .The book wants to be sexy and liberating, a sort of feminist erotic fiction with lots and lots of shrinks. Instead, for me, it was vulgar and only looking for the shocking factor. I can’t even count how many times I read cunt/pussy and fuck in the first 50 pages. I am not a prude but I felt the language was not sexy at all and it did not warm me to the characters.
November 7, 2022
I read this shortly after it came out in paperback (probably 1974ish). I probably should reread it when I'm old and gray. Wait, I am old and gray. 😳
November 7, 2017
Eons ago, I'd heard this book consisted wholely of sex & zipless fucks.
Surprise! Jong writes insightfully about the between-a-rock-and-a-hard-place that women resided in during the early 1970s, and at times still do. The protagonist isn't what I consider terribly likable, yet her bold intelligence, self-awareness, and wit carry her through myriad messy bits.
Jong states in the author interview at the end that she'd like this book to be considered a modern classic - which it is! - so I've marked it as such my Goodreads bookshelf.
The audiobook narrator is stupendous!
Surprise! Jong writes insightfully about the between-a-rock-and-a-hard-place that women resided in during the early 1970s, and at times still do. The protagonist isn't what I consider terribly likable, yet her bold intelligence, self-awareness, and wit carry her through myriad messy bits.
Jong states in the author interview at the end that she'd like this book to be considered a modern classic - which it is! - so I've marked it as such my Goodreads bookshelf.
The audiobook narrator is stupendous!
June 10, 2017
I found myself walking round this book and poking it nervously instead of reading it. This went on for days. Fear of Flying - famously feisty, fearless, feminist and full of fucking. Also well known to be zipless. It was like having a landmine on the table, if I opened it I could lose a leg, or some other fleshly part. I’d have to learn to type with my ear.
When I did summon up the courage I was a little bit – well, deflated. As opposed to being flated, which I had been. It was like pages of stand up comedy of a very middling sort but with buckets of f words and c words. Let’s make fun of being f-word Jewish American and finding yourself in c-word Germany. Let’s make fun of being married. Let’s make fun of having sex with your husband but thinking about another man. Ah, look, a clitoris. What is this, a feminist version of The Lucille Ball Show? It’s all a bit obvious these days. Actually it sort of sounds like it was pretty obvious those days too - let’s see, what do you think of when I say the words Jewish American? Psychoanalysis! And complicated family history involving Nazis! And problematic religion! Jewish mothers! And kvetching. A whole lot of that. But there’s no doubt Fear of Flying was a sensation in 1973.
When it wasn’t mild stand up comedy it was that old boring thinly-disguised-autobiography so let me tell you about all my old boyfriends and former masturbation techniques and two really crap marriages and I must not forget to disgorge pages and pages about how I always wanted to be a writer of pages and pages about being a writer. Novels about novelists should all be deleted, removed from shelves, pulped, unpublished, unwritten, obliterated. Along with films about film-making, songs about songwriting, paintings of the painter painting and sculptures of the sculptor having sculpted. This arse-gazing must stop. Memo to artists : you are not alone in the universe. If you were, you wouldn’t be able to be despised, alienated and misunderstood, and what a horror would that be, not being despised, alienated and misunderstood.
“Every man, deep down, knows he's a worthless piece of shit” joked Valerie Solanis in The SCUM Manifesto in 1968. Ha ha, she was only joking, right….? No, wait, she wasn’t, she shot Andy Warhol! Now that’s what I call feminism. No mucking around. I know, it ill behooves me to make pronouncements on this stuff. But I think I can say that some books don’t really travel through time very well, you have to have been there, and this is one. I thought it was going to be plenty sexy stuff but nah, Erica just talks the talk, she doesn’t shag the shag. Not in any great absorbing detail. And the constant moaning and griping about Erica’s sorry her protagonist’s rich privileged highly educated upper middle class poetry writing and publishing psychoanalytical conference attending Europe a-travelling life becomes a bit grating after a while.
Also, many of the long conversations between Erica sorry Isadora and her boyfriend are like many conversations you may remember in your own tortured yet banal existence. Which is why some women jumped on this novel and said yes! This is what life is like! I’m not saying I don’t wanna read about what life is like, but I don’t wanna read about what my life was like especially. It wasn’t very interesting. (It also wasn’t Jewish or American but there were striking similarities, mainly in the rubbishness of the actual conversations.) But then, if your middle class privileged life and its vast angst has always heretofore been rigorously excluded from the pages of The Novel then maybe that is why F of F was a good thing and is now suffering from the Citizen Kane effect which is where the great originator in some art form or another now looks rather tacky and tedious and tiresome because everyone has stolen all its ideas blind and copied it for ever after it appeared.
A deeply unfair 2.5 stars
When I did summon up the courage I was a little bit – well, deflated. As opposed to being flated, which I had been. It was like pages of stand up comedy of a very middling sort but with buckets of f words and c words. Let’s make fun of being f-word Jewish American and finding yourself in c-word Germany. Let’s make fun of being married. Let’s make fun of having sex with your husband but thinking about another man. Ah, look, a clitoris. What is this, a feminist version of The Lucille Ball Show? It’s all a bit obvious these days. Actually it sort of sounds like it was pretty obvious those days too - let’s see, what do you think of when I say the words Jewish American? Psychoanalysis! And complicated family history involving Nazis! And problematic religion! Jewish mothers! And kvetching. A whole lot of that. But there’s no doubt Fear of Flying was a sensation in 1973.
When it wasn’t mild stand up comedy it was that old boring thinly-disguised-autobiography so let me tell you about all my old boyfriends and former masturbation techniques and two really crap marriages and I must not forget to disgorge pages and pages about how I always wanted to be a writer of pages and pages about being a writer. Novels about novelists should all be deleted, removed from shelves, pulped, unpublished, unwritten, obliterated. Along with films about film-making, songs about songwriting, paintings of the painter painting and sculptures of the sculptor having sculpted. This arse-gazing must stop. Memo to artists : you are not alone in the universe. If you were, you wouldn’t be able to be despised, alienated and misunderstood, and what a horror would that be, not being despised, alienated and misunderstood.
“Every man, deep down, knows he's a worthless piece of shit” joked Valerie Solanis in The SCUM Manifesto in 1968. Ha ha, she was only joking, right….? No, wait, she wasn’t, she shot Andy Warhol! Now that’s what I call feminism. No mucking around. I know, it ill behooves me to make pronouncements on this stuff. But I think I can say that some books don’t really travel through time very well, you have to have been there, and this is one. I thought it was going to be plenty sexy stuff but nah, Erica just talks the talk, she doesn’t shag the shag. Not in any great absorbing detail. And the constant moaning and griping about Erica’s sorry her protagonist’s rich privileged highly educated upper middle class poetry writing and publishing psychoanalytical conference attending Europe a-travelling life becomes a bit grating after a while.
Also, many of the long conversations between Erica sorry Isadora and her boyfriend are like many conversations you may remember in your own tortured yet banal existence. Which is why some women jumped on this novel and said yes! This is what life is like! I’m not saying I don’t wanna read about what life is like, but I don’t wanna read about what my life was like especially. It wasn’t very interesting. (It also wasn’t Jewish or American but there were striking similarities, mainly in the rubbishness of the actual conversations.) But then, if your middle class privileged life and its vast angst has always heretofore been rigorously excluded from the pages of The Novel then maybe that is why F of F was a good thing and is now suffering from the Citizen Kane effect which is where the great originator in some art form or another now looks rather tacky and tedious and tiresome because everyone has stolen all its ideas blind and copied it for ever after it appeared.
A deeply unfair 2.5 stars
April 18, 2017
Rather neglectful of reading duties (I shall admit to this very vulgar crime) for the lethargic days of summer, it was truly a rare treat to sporadically go back to this, a sly and sinful read. Yeah, it is DATED-- but, even in the late 90s, weren't the "Sex and the City" gals, too? That "50 Shades" is such a success should not be surprising-- it's just that the reminder that other people are having sex while you are (or are not) is.
I've been quoted before as saying that "sexual non-adventure is a sin..." & in that same spirit, Erica Jong has given a frank & incredibly enjoyable read. Her main character is not prone to saying no to the act, she rather bathes in the light of casual encounters, but she has intelligence and heart. She is aware of the "zipless f**k" as much as she traces her sexual history, weighing out past experiences with expectation-filled nows.
This is rightfully in the 1001 (or 1306?) List of Books to Read (Before Expiring)--in good company with Sade's 120 Days and Justine, as well as, perhaps the male counterpart to "Fear of Flying," the less thrilling but more pretentious "Rabbit Run" by Updike.
I've been quoted before as saying that "sexual non-adventure is a sin..." & in that same spirit, Erica Jong has given a frank & incredibly enjoyable read. Her main character is not prone to saying no to the act, she rather bathes in the light of casual encounters, but she has intelligence and heart. She is aware of the "zipless f**k" as much as she traces her sexual history, weighing out past experiences with expectation-filled nows.
This is rightfully in the 1001 (or 1306?) List of Books to Read (Before Expiring)--in good company with Sade's 120 Days and Justine, as well as, perhaps the male counterpart to "Fear of Flying," the less thrilling but more pretentious "Rabbit Run" by Updike.
March 19, 2011
20 million copies sold? A seminal feminist classic? I am nothing short of incredulous. I'd say it was the pseudo-intellectual self-absorbed ramblings of a spoilt 29-year-old 'poet' that does not stand the test of time.
But let me first say, I'm not one to dole out 1* reviews. This is my first, and as an author myself, I've wondered what can motivate a reader to such an action. But now, thank you Erica, I have seen the light! It's when the distance between the reader's expectations and what is delivered are such poles apart as to provoke a huge desire to redress the balance for the sake of anyone stumbling upon these reader reviews. Or that's my motivation anyway.
In summary: this is a racist not racy, self-absorbed not self-enlightened, memoir-thinly-masquerading-as-fiction. If I hadn't been reading it for my book group, there is NO WAY I'd have got through it, as I haven't met such an insufferable protagonist in as long as I can remember (if ever). Isadora Wing (aka Erica Jong) is spoilt beyond belief, has access to education, money and family support, name drops like a teenager desperate to impress with her literary knowledge, but despite her own ego, is a really rather rubbish writer.
Her style is repetitive and rambling, full or irritating asides and diversions, but what really irks is she has not a good word to say about anybody - not her long-suffering family, her countless shrinks (they had their work cut out there), her two ex husbands, no one. Everyone is dug at, put down, moaned about - even the poor folk sitting in the same carriage as her on a train are described as `a stuffy American professor, his dowdy wife, and their drooly baby'. Even if we aren't supposed to like her, to read several hundred pages in such negative, whiny tone of voice gets tiresome without anything positive to act as a contrast.
She may write refreshingly honestly about sex (but most of her encounters seem to be with impotent men and seemed tame indeed to my 21st century sensibilities) but THAT IS ALL. And given the book's reputation, I expected more emphasis on sexuality and fantasy and less on pseudo intellectualism and psychoanalysis.
If FoF was a classic at the time, it has not stood up to the forty odd years that have passed since. I consider myself a feminist, but even from that historical perspective, there are surely other books that are a lot more informative and interesting. The Second Sex, for example, which predates Jong by two decades still resonates today, and fiction-wise, Angela Carter's The Bloody Chamber was published only six years later but is far more erotic and subtle when it comes to exploring female sexuality and fantasies.
Finally, an aside, my parents were at the Viennese congress she writes of, and I gather this `novel' upset a fair few folk upon its publication after the event. I presume it's only because she didn't put her own name to the heroine that shrinks such as `Adrian' and `Bennett', or a member of her family - her poor sister `Randy' for instance - didn't sue her for defamation.
Shame, I'd have loved to have seen it.
But let me first say, I'm not one to dole out 1* reviews. This is my first, and as an author myself, I've wondered what can motivate a reader to such an action. But now, thank you Erica, I have seen the light! It's when the distance between the reader's expectations and what is delivered are such poles apart as to provoke a huge desire to redress the balance for the sake of anyone stumbling upon these reader reviews. Or that's my motivation anyway.
In summary: this is a racist not racy, self-absorbed not self-enlightened, memoir-thinly-masquerading-as-fiction. If I hadn't been reading it for my book group, there is NO WAY I'd have got through it, as I haven't met such an insufferable protagonist in as long as I can remember (if ever). Isadora Wing (aka Erica Jong) is spoilt beyond belief, has access to education, money and family support, name drops like a teenager desperate to impress with her literary knowledge, but despite her own ego, is a really rather rubbish writer.
Her style is repetitive and rambling, full or irritating asides and diversions, but what really irks is she has not a good word to say about anybody - not her long-suffering family, her countless shrinks (they had their work cut out there), her two ex husbands, no one. Everyone is dug at, put down, moaned about - even the poor folk sitting in the same carriage as her on a train are described as `a stuffy American professor, his dowdy wife, and their drooly baby'. Even if we aren't supposed to like her, to read several hundred pages in such negative, whiny tone of voice gets tiresome without anything positive to act as a contrast.
She may write refreshingly honestly about sex (but most of her encounters seem to be with impotent men and seemed tame indeed to my 21st century sensibilities) but THAT IS ALL. And given the book's reputation, I expected more emphasis on sexuality and fantasy and less on pseudo intellectualism and psychoanalysis.
If FoF was a classic at the time, it has not stood up to the forty odd years that have passed since. I consider myself a feminist, but even from that historical perspective, there are surely other books that are a lot more informative and interesting. The Second Sex, for example, which predates Jong by two decades still resonates today, and fiction-wise, Angela Carter's The Bloody Chamber was published only six years later but is far more erotic and subtle when it comes to exploring female sexuality and fantasies.
Finally, an aside, my parents were at the Viennese congress she writes of, and I gather this `novel' upset a fair few folk upon its publication after the event. I presume it's only because she didn't put her own name to the heroine that shrinks such as `Adrian' and `Bennett', or a member of her family - her poor sister `Randy' for instance - didn't sue her for defamation.
Shame, I'd have loved to have seen it.
December 17, 2017
من الضروري، قبل قراءة هذه الرواية ال��ي نُشرت عام ١٩٧٣، أن نفهم سياقها الزمني، أي طبيعة المرحلة التي كُتبت فيها. كما أنه من الضروري أن نفهم تاريخ الحركة النسوية في الغرب، التي تصنف إلى ثلاث موجات، وخصائص كل موجة.
هنا مقال ممتاز يقدم موجزًا عن كل موجة
http://www.alittihad.ae/mobile/detail...
على الرغم من أن إريكا يونغ غير معروفة على نطاق واسع عربيًا (المرة الأولى والوحيدة التي اصطدمت باسمها كانت أثناء قراءتي لكتاب سوبر مان عربي لجمانة حداد)، إلا أنها مشهورة جدًا خارج منطقتنا، خصوصًا في أمريكا وأوروبا. وتعد روايتها الأولى "الخوف من الطيران" من أهم سرديات الموجة النسوية الثانية، وهي الرواية التي قال عنها "هنري ميللر" أنها النسخة النسائية من "مدار السرطان"؛ فقد اكتسبت سمعة سيئة بسبب جرأة مؤلفتها التي فاقت جرأة تشارلز بوكوفسكي. صحيح أن الرواية، ومجمل أع��ال "يونغ" كما قرأت، تتسم بالإباحية والخوض في الأمور الجنسية بشكل قد يبدو مبالغًا فيه، إلا أنها ليس في الحقيقة سوى انعكاس للقضايا والموضوعات التي شكّلت الموجة النسوية الثانية مثل الزواج، الحرية الجنسية، الإجهاض .. إلخ إلخ
إذًا، تكمن أهمية هذه الرواية أن مؤلفتها فتحت رأس المرأة، رأسها في هذه الحالة، وأخرجت دماغها ووضعته على "بروجكتور"، ومن ثم عرضت على حائط أبيض وكبير كل ما يدور في داخله. قد يجد البعض من الذكور أن هذه الأمور خادشة للحياء، وأنها تناقض الصورة النمطية للأنثى، وهي صورة رسمتها العقلية الذكورية، وتبنتها النساء مرغمات عنهن. هي نفس العقلية التي تسمح لشاعر كنزار قباني بتوظيف أعضاء النساء الخاصة في قصائده، وتصفه بالشاعر المبدع، ولكنها تنظر في نفس الوقت بازدراء واحتقار للأديبة التي توظف أعضاء الذكور في رواياتها، وتصفها بالفاجرة
وفي هذا السياق تقول الكاتبة في أحد فصول الرواية "قبل أن تبدأ النساء بتأليف الكتب لم يكن هناك إلا جانب واحد للقصة. وعلى امتداد التاريخ كله، كانت الكتب تُكتب بالسائل المنوي، وليس بدم الحيض"
في المقابل، هنالك الكثير من التعميمات المتغطرسة والنرجسية في الكتاب، وخصوصًا في الفصل الذي عنونته الكاتبة ب"العرب وحيوانات أخرى"، وقد اعتذرت الكاتبة عن هذا العنوان لاحقًا واعترفت بأنها لم توفق فيه، ولكنها (من باب الإنصاف) كانت تتعامل مع كافة الأعراق بنفس الطريقة، أي أن موقفها من العرب نابع من الجهل لا العنصرية، فهي على الرغم من يهوديتها إلا أنها تسخر من اليهود على امتداد الكتاب، فتقول في أحد الفصول مثلاً على لسان إحدى شخصيات الرواية: "هذا ما أكره في اليهود. إنهم الوحيدون المسموح لهم بإلقاء نكات عن معاداة السامية. وهذا شيء غير منصف على الإطلاق. لماذا أحرم من متعة الفكاهة اليهودية الماسوشية لمجرّد أنني لست يهوديًا"
بعيدًا عن موضوع الكتاب، أعتقد بأن لغة الكاتبة وأسلوبها وثقافتها (هناك إشارات كثيرة لأعمال وأماكن وحوادث تاريخية وسياسية قد لا يفهمها القارئ غير المطلع، ولكن ذلك في رأيي لن يؤثر على متعة قراءتها إلا بمقدار بسيط) تستحق الإعجاب والثناء، وهو الإعجاب الذي جعلني أتجاوز الملل في بعض الفصول، والثناء الذي دفعني لمنحها ٤ نجمات
هنا مقال ممتاز يقدم موجزًا عن كل موجة
http://www.alittihad.ae/mobile/detail...
على الرغم من أن إريكا يونغ غير معروفة على نطاق واسع عربيًا (المرة الأولى والوحيدة التي اصطدمت باسمها كانت أثناء قراءتي لكتاب سوبر مان عربي لجمانة حداد)، إلا أنها مشهورة جدًا خارج منطقتنا، خصوصًا في أمريكا وأوروبا. وتعد روايتها الأولى "الخوف من الطيران" من أهم سرديات الموجة النسوية الثانية، وهي الرواية التي قال عنها "هنري ميللر" أنها النسخة النسائية من "مدار السرطان"؛ فقد اكتسبت سمعة سيئة بسبب جرأة مؤلفتها التي فاقت جرأة تشارلز بوكوفسكي. صحيح أن الرواية، ومجمل أع��ال "يونغ" كما قرأت، تتسم بالإباحية والخوض في الأمور الجنسية بشكل قد يبدو مبالغًا فيه، إلا أنها ليس في الحقيقة سوى انعكاس للقضايا والموضوعات التي شكّلت الموجة النسوية الثانية مثل الزواج، الحرية الجنسية، الإجهاض .. إلخ إلخ
إذًا، تكمن أهمية هذه الرواية أن مؤلفتها فتحت رأس المرأة، رأسها في هذه الحالة، وأخرجت دماغها ووضعته على "بروجكتور"، ومن ثم عرضت على حائط أبيض وكبير كل ما يدور في داخله. قد يجد البعض من الذكور أن هذه الأمور خادشة للحياء، وأنها تناقض الصورة النمطية للأنثى، وهي صورة رسمتها العقلية الذكورية، وتبنتها النساء مرغمات عنهن. هي نفس العقلية التي تسمح لشاعر كنزار قباني بتوظيف أعضاء النساء الخاصة في قصائده، وتصفه بالشاعر المبدع، ولكنها تنظر في نفس الوقت بازدراء واحتقار للأديبة التي توظف أعضاء الذكور في رواياتها، وتصفها بالفاجرة
وفي هذا السياق تقول الكاتبة في أحد فصول الرواية "قبل أن تبدأ النساء بتأليف الكتب لم يكن هناك إلا جانب واحد للقصة. وعلى امتداد التاريخ كله، كانت الكتب تُكتب بالسائل المنوي، وليس بدم الحيض"
في المقابل، هنالك الكثير من التعميمات المتغطرسة والنرجسية في الكتاب، وخصوصًا في الفصل الذي عنونته الكاتبة ب"العرب وحيوانات أخرى"، وقد اعتذرت الكاتبة عن هذا العنوان لاحقًا واعترفت بأنها لم توفق فيه، ولكنها (من باب الإنصاف) كانت تتعامل مع كافة الأعراق بنفس الطريقة، أي أن موقفها من العرب نابع من الجهل لا العنصرية، فهي على الرغم من يهوديتها إلا أنها تسخر من اليهود على امتداد الكتاب، فتقول في أحد الفصول مثلاً على لسان إحدى شخصيات الرواية: "هذا ما أكره في اليهود. إنهم الوحيدون المسموح لهم بإلقاء نكات عن معاداة السامية. وهذا شيء غير منصف على الإطلاق. لماذا أحرم من متعة الفكاهة اليهودية الماسوشية لمجرّد أنني لست يهوديًا"
بعيدًا عن موضوع الكتاب، أعتقد بأن لغة الكاتبة وأسلوبها وثقافتها (هناك إشارات كثيرة لأعمال وأماكن وحوادث تاريخية وسياسية قد لا يفهمها القارئ غير المطلع، ولكن ذلك في رأيي لن يؤثر على متعة قراءتها إلا بمقدار بسيط) تستحق الإعجاب والثناء، وهو الإعجاب الذي جعلني أتجاوز الملل في بعض الفصول، والثناء الذي دفعني لمنحها ٤ نجمات
Shelved as 'aborted-efforts'
August 2, 2008Earlier on this evening I was talking to my sainted mother on the telephone, and she noted that I seemed to be "reading a lot of intellectual books lately," to which I reacted with vehemently indignant daughterly rage: "I am NOT, Mom!"
Why my mother's comment should seem so thoroughly offensive is a fitting subject for my analyst (a mythical figure about whom I love to fantasize but probably wouldn't enjoy much if he actually existed), though not so much for the internet, but I've got poor boundaries and terrible judgment, so here goes....
Let's face it, folks: I've been having a lot of trouble reading books lately. Like, a lot a lot, and I haven't really been able to figure out why.... I bottomed out most of the way through the Proust, and the Caro's really interesting but I still keep putting it down and daydreaming on the subway. This is so terrible. What's going on??
Well, it's NINETY FRIKKIN' DEGREES OUT, and everyone's walking around practically NEKKID. How can I think about SERIOUS stuff at a time like this?? Crazy things are happening all around me! There's about eighty bared biceps between here and the train, and the ice cream truck blares by every night around midnight.... it's too HOT to sleep, not to mention too loud! Anyway, maybe my mom's right. Maybe I am reading stuff that's too "intellectual," or in any case, too unseasonal.... too smart for me! As I've been fond of observing lately, "Men don't make passes at girls who pass classes." (Note to family: pls write that on tombstone.) And this leads us to an overwhelming question, which is: where is summer 2008's John Travolta to my own excruciatingly irritating Olivia Newton John?!!
See?!! These are the kinds of burning questions on my mind these days: the thermostat's high, and it's melting my brain! It's definitely time to stop overheating the poor thing with all this talk about Senates and seascapes, so that I can preserve my scarce mental attentions for bikini wax maintenance and miniskirt coordination.
Did I mention there're about fifty bared biceps between here and the train?
The librarian girl thing might work in the winter when we're all bundled up, but baby, it's hot outside....
Anyway, all this ran through my mind earlier, and I really thought that Fear of Flying was the answer to my sweaty, stupid prayers. I've been meaning to read this book since forever! Not totally sure why, but I have, and my roommate has a real snazzy, skeezy looking cover with a naked lady and everything.
Naked lady!!!
Unfortunately, so far this is one of the most terribly written piece of crap I've started in a long time, which is why I just sat down here and wrote all this stuff. I'm procrastinating from my "fun," trashy read just eight pages in! Not a good sign....
Well, we'll see.
Stay tuned....
Why my mother's comment should seem so thoroughly offensive is a fitting subject for my analyst (a mythical figure about whom I love to fantasize but probably wouldn't enjoy much if he actually existed), though not so much for the internet, but I've got poor boundaries and terrible judgment, so here goes....
Let's face it, folks: I've been having a lot of trouble reading books lately. Like, a lot a lot, and I haven't really been able to figure out why.... I bottomed out most of the way through the Proust, and the Caro's really interesting but I still keep putting it down and daydreaming on the subway. This is so terrible. What's going on??
Well, it's NINETY FRIKKIN' DEGREES OUT, and everyone's walking around practically NEKKID. How can I think about SERIOUS stuff at a time like this?? Crazy things are happening all around me! There's about eighty bared biceps between here and the train, and the ice cream truck blares by every night around midnight.... it's too HOT to sleep, not to mention too loud! Anyway, maybe my mom's right. Maybe I am reading stuff that's too "intellectual," or in any case, too unseasonal.... too smart for me! As I've been fond of observing lately, "Men don't make passes at girls who pass classes." (Note to family: pls write that on tombstone.) And this leads us to an overwhelming question, which is: where is summer 2008's John Travolta to my own excruciatingly irritating Olivia Newton John?!!
See?!! These are the kinds of burning questions on my mind these days: the thermostat's high, and it's melting my brain! It's definitely time to stop overheating the poor thing with all this talk about Senates and seascapes, so that I can preserve my scarce mental attentions for bikini wax maintenance and miniskirt coordination.
Did I mention there're about fifty bared biceps between here and the train?
The librarian girl thing might work in the winter when we're all bundled up, but baby, it's hot outside....
Anyway, all this ran through my mind earlier, and I really thought that Fear of Flying was the answer to my sweaty, stupid prayers. I've been meaning to read this book since forever! Not totally sure why, but I have, and my roommate has a real snazzy, skeezy looking cover with a naked lady and everything.
Naked lady!!!
Unfortunately, so far this is one of the most terribly written piece of crap I've started in a long time, which is why I just sat down here and wrote all this stuff. I'm procrastinating from my "fun," trashy read just eight pages in! Not a good sign....
Well, we'll see.
Stay tuned....
June 30, 2008
Let me start off by saying that I liked this book - I really did. Isadora Wing (with a name like that, Erica Jong brings the concept of 'thinly veiled autobiography' to new heights) is an exuberant and lovable character. I thought the writing was very good in parts, even though other parts read as if a six-year-old Erica was sitting in her bedroom with a Barbie and two Ken dolls, mashing them together and transcribing the dialogue (she does say she fell in love with her husband because of his smooth, hard body and hairless balls - coincidence?).
I appreciate what this book must have meant to women in the '70s, when it was generally unacceptable for them to talk about their sex lives and fantasies - as thin and sad as many of Isadora's sexual experiences seem when you read about them today. It's also an interesting account of psychoanalysis, back when Freud's word was gospel, when a woman couldn't take a shit without being told that she was only doing so because she wanted to have sex with her father.
However, I think that as a work of literature, this book is average or less than - and I'm judging it as an attempted work of literature because that's how Isadora/Erica Jong seems to view it. She mentions several times that she doesn't want to be like those frivolous stereotypical 'lady writers', that she wants to create art. Why, then, does she insist on trapping herself in narcissistic autobiography, in writing as therapy? Why, instead of creating an original character and allowing us to experience things with her, does she pretty much just collate the transcripts of about 500 of her own psychoanalysis sessions, shove them in our faces and say, "Here, YOU figure out this nut case!"? Because the subject is so close to her own heart, she doesn't have enough distance to give us (or herself) any real insight into what's going on. So the end result is frustrating - Isadora talks about how liberated and independent she is now, how wonderful it is that she'll always have her art, etc. etc. - but you get the sense that despite her boisterous claims, she hasn't really achieved a thing.
I appreciate what this book must have meant to women in the '70s, when it was generally unacceptable for them to talk about their sex lives and fantasies - as thin and sad as many of Isadora's sexual experiences seem when you read about them today. It's also an interesting account of psychoanalysis, back when Freud's word was gospel, when a woman couldn't take a shit without being told that she was only doing so because she wanted to have sex with her father.
However, I think that as a work of literature, this book is average or less than - and I'm judging it as an attempted work of literature because that's how Isadora/Erica Jong seems to view it. She mentions several times that she doesn't want to be like those frivolous stereotypical 'lady writers', that she wants to create art. Why, then, does she insist on trapping herself in narcissistic autobiography, in writing as therapy? Why, instead of creating an original character and allowing us to experience things with her, does she pretty much just collate the transcripts of about 500 of her own psychoanalysis sessions, shove them in our faces and say, "Here, YOU figure out this nut case!"? Because the subject is so close to her own heart, she doesn't have enough distance to give us (or herself) any real insight into what's going on. So the end result is frustrating - Isadora talks about how liberated and independent she is now, how wonderful it is that she'll always have her art, etc. etc. - but you get the sense that despite her boisterous claims, she hasn't really achieved a thing.
May 6, 2015
Zipless Fuck
My one and only one-night stand.
A review
to come
in more ways than one.
My one and only one-night stand.
A review
to come
in more ways than one.
June 6, 2008
I remember that when I called my grandmother to tell her that I was going to be in the vagina monologues, I expected her to react to the name: I expected her to be unaware of Eve Ensler and what V-Day is about. She simply said, "You should read Fear of Flying- it's like the first vagina monologue."
As it happens, she was so right. It's the kind of book you really regret not reading years earlier, when you really needed some of this information. If I'd read it as a teenager, would I have felt so conspicuous about my own, relatively mild but rather interesting sexual misadventures? And wouldn't I have felt more, you know, proud of myself? If I'd read it in my early 20's, wouldn't the bits about Isadora's first husband, the secret scizophrenic, going off the deep end have helped me deal much better when my secretly scizophrenic best friend went off the deep end?
Perhaps, though, it really is better to have read it now, when Isadora and I are practically the same age. Going through the same things, other than the whole sexual orientation thing. She talks about aging; she talks about post-college stagnation (which I can understand, though I certainly haven't managed to graduate so far). She talks about the lure and repulsiveness of pregnancy and childrearing to a childless woman nearing the end of youth. She talks about youthful ambition, spirituality, the reality of monogamy and desire. The things she found important to discover for herself are, unsurprisingly, things I, myself, have longed to hear.
Thank you, Isadora, I'll see you again in a few years.
Side note: I read a large part of this book during two rather boring stripping shifts. It felt very appropriate, but it's true that Fear of Flying was very influential in second-wave feminism. Would second-wave feminism have approved of my choice of setting? I think not, though I also think the movement would be wrong in this. In any case, posing this question to a customer right before a Peggy Lee-laden set earned me a very sizable tip.
As it happens, she was so right. It's the kind of book you really regret not reading years earlier, when you really needed some of this information. If I'd read it as a teenager, would I have felt so conspicuous about my own, relatively mild but rather interesting sexual misadventures? And wouldn't I have felt more, you know, proud of myself? If I'd read it in my early 20's, wouldn't the bits about Isadora's first husband, the secret scizophrenic, going off the deep end have helped me deal much better when my secretly scizophrenic best friend went off the deep end?
Perhaps, though, it really is better to have read it now, when Isadora and I are practically the same age. Going through the same things, other than the whole sexual orientation thing. She talks about aging; she talks about post-college stagnation (which I can understand, though I certainly haven't managed to graduate so far). She talks about the lure and repulsiveness of pregnancy and childrearing to a childless woman nearing the end of youth. She talks about youthful ambition, spirituality, the reality of monogamy and desire. The things she found important to discover for herself are, unsurprisingly, things I, myself, have longed to hear.
Thank you, Isadora, I'll see you again in a few years.
Side note: I read a large part of this book during two rather boring stripping shifts. It felt very appropriate, but it's true that Fear of Flying was very influential in second-wave feminism. Would second-wave feminism have approved of my choice of setting? I think not, though I also think the movement would be wrong in this. In any case, posing this question to a customer right before a Peggy Lee-laden set earned me a very sizable tip.
March 26, 2012
Liberté, égalité, sexualité or Pteromerhanophobia
When this book was first published the general consensus was something along the lines of "ooh madam"! and a lot of raised eye brows. I imagine people covertly reading this wrapped in brown paper and hoping that no one was looking over their shoulders on the bus or on the tube. And of course it would be the sort of thing that one simply had to hide from ones husband. Of course nowadays you could just download it onto your Kindle and make the text extra tiny if you still thought it was to risque.
Unlikely though, as now it barely registers on the shocking scale. Yes, women have sex drives, yes women can get through men like water when the right level of dedication is applied and yes just because you get married it doesn't mean you have to stay married, or faithful. The idea of a zipless fuck is not a new one but up until this point it had never been classified in such direct manner. After all, libido is another human itch which needs to be scratched... the zipless fuck just means that you get someone else to do the scratching. Today's society is a lot more open and much of the stuff described in this book is fodder for even the tamest of day time TV shows, soap operas and talk radio (although I imagine it will be a cold day in hell before we see Phil Schofield and Holly Willoughby using the word c*nt on This Morning).
It is worth considering however, whether we're as open minded as we like to think, or if language has just gotten more vulgar and profanity more common in the mass media. This allows us to purvey the impression of liberal open mindedness while still secretly maintaining the same level of stultified sexual prudery beyond closed doors. In Liverpool I still see embarrassed looking men peering in the door of Ann Summers. Anyway well done Erica Jong for wowing the 1970's by being pretty, feminine, sexually liberated and a woman.
When this book was first published the general consensus was something along the lines of "ooh madam"! and a lot of raised eye brows. I imagine people covertly reading this wrapped in brown paper and hoping that no one was looking over their shoulders on the bus or on the tube. And of course it would be the sort of thing that one simply had to hide from ones husband. Of course nowadays you could just download it onto your Kindle and make the text extra tiny if you still thought it was to risque.
Unlikely though, as now it barely registers on the shocking scale. Yes, women have sex drives, yes women can get through men like water when the right level of dedication is applied and yes just because you get married it doesn't mean you have to stay married, or faithful. The idea of a zipless fuck is not a new one but up until this point it had never been classified in such direct manner. After all, libido is another human itch which needs to be scratched... the zipless fuck just means that you get someone else to do the scratching. Today's society is a lot more open and much of the stuff described in this book is fodder for even the tamest of day time TV shows, soap operas and talk radio (although I imagine it will be a cold day in hell before we see Phil Schofield and Holly Willoughby using the word c*nt on This Morning).
It is worth considering however, whether we're as open minded as we like to think, or if language has just gotten more vulgar and profanity more common in the mass media. This allows us to purvey the impression of liberal open mindedness while still secretly maintaining the same level of stultified sexual prudery beyond closed doors. In Liverpool I still see embarrassed looking men peering in the door of Ann Summers. Anyway well done Erica Jong for wowing the 1970's by being pretty, feminine, sexually liberated and a woman.
August 17, 2014
Isadora Wing, welcome to my shit list.
March 5, 2018
الخوف من الطيران.....إريكا يونغ
الجرأة في الرواية مربكة وفيها نغمة كره للعالم والواقع كبيرة، الكاتبة كتبت الرواية كأنها تبصق على كل شيء، على هرموناتها وحياتها الجنسية، وبتعيد ترتيب الحياة دي من جديد كأنها بتعمل قواعد لعالم جديد، عالم بلا تعقيدات ولا التزامات.
العمق النفسي اللي فيها وكلامها الكثير عن الدكاترة النفسيين كان ظريف جدا، وحس الدعابة بين ثنايا العمل له قيمته.
لو حضرتك فيمينزم فالرواية ممكن تعيد قناعاتك في حاجات كتير، ولو حضرتك عدو للمرأة فالرواية هتوضح لك حاجات كتير، ولو أنت شاب بسيط عنده ٢٦ سنة ومجرد قاريء هاو، هتقعد تضحك وتقول: يا سلام يا ولاد.
رواية مذهلة بترجمة جميلة من عمنا أسامة منزلجي.
الجرأة في الرواية مربكة وفيها نغمة كره للعالم والواقع كبيرة، الكاتبة كتبت الرواية كأنها تبصق على كل شيء، على هرموناتها وحياتها الجنسية، وبتعيد ترتيب الحياة دي من جديد كأنها بتعمل قواعد لعالم جديد، عالم بلا تعقيدات ولا التزامات.
العمق النفسي اللي فيها وكلامها الكثير عن الدكاترة النفسيين كان ظريف جدا، وحس الدعابة بين ثنايا العمل له قيمته.
لو حضرتك فيمينزم فالرواية ممكن تعيد قناعاتك في حاجات كتير، ولو حضرتك عدو للمرأة فالرواية هتوضح لك حاجات كتير، ولو أنت شاب بسيط عنده ٢٦ سنة ومجرد قاريء هاو، هتقعد تضحك وتقول: يا سلام يا ولاد.
رواية مذهلة بترجمة جميلة من عمنا أسامة منزلجي.
July 10, 2019
Poor storyline: the book consists of repulsive episodes of the life of a selfish, neurotic, hysterical woman. And I honestly don’t get why it is labelled as feminist prose.
May 10, 2016
Twenty-nine-year-old Isadora Wing (who’s recently published her first book, a volume of erotic poetry) is traveling with her Chinese American psychiatrist husband to a convention of psychoanalysts in Vienna. Emotionally frustrated and sexually bored in her marriage, Isadora is tormented, on the one hand, by her yearning for adventure, sexual rapture, freedom, and creativity, and on the other hand, by her need for the security and protection of a husband. She opts, at least temporarily, for adventure by taking off on a frenzied, buzzed-on-beer road trip through Western Europe in a sporty convertible with a “swinging” Jungian analyst whom she’s met at the convention. Two and a half weeks later, he dumps her in Paris in order to join his children and his current girlfriend for a long-planned vacation in Brittany. Completely unprepared for this, Isadora falls apart for a day but emerges from her panic with some of the confidence and strength she’s craved. She heads to London and the hotel where she and her husband had planned to meet before flying back to New York. He’s out, but she gets the key to his room. The book closes with her soaking in the bathtub, feeling contented, when her husband walks in. Will she stay with him or leave? She doesn’t know, but in either case, she’s convinced that she’ll be fine.
The facts of Erica Jong’s biography for her first twenty-nine years match those of Isadora Wing’s life almost exactly, but the novel was clearly intended as a satire. The author’s voice is breezy, mocking, and geared to exaggeration for comic effect. She knows who will win in the end. She’s not only survived the tale she’s telling and written it up as the novel we’re reading, she’s also cracking jokes about her journey nonstop. Jong wants the reader to laugh at Isadora, which means laughing along with Jong and enjoying the ride. It's amazing that the only thing most people seem to remember from the book is the provocative expression Ms. Jong invented to encapsulate Isadora’s fantasy, the proverbial "zipless fuck", while instead they kind of miss the fact that it’s a rare example of a bildungsroman in which a woman, not a man, struggles to define what she wants her life to look like, and to compel that image into being. The book is not a celebration of casual sex, it was completely misread as such. Isadora wants to own her body and her mind, but she cannot truly envision herself as what we would call an “independent woman” today.
“All my fantasies included marriage,” Ms. Jong wrote in one of her character’s rueful reveries. “No sooner did I imagine myself running away from one man than I envisioned myself tying up with another. I was like a boat that always had to have a port of call. I simply couldn’t imagine myself without a man.”
"I was not against marriage. I believed in it in fact. It was necessary to have one best friend in a hostile world, one person you’d be loyal to no matter what, one person who’d always be loyal to you. But what about all those other longings which after a while marriage did nothing much to appease? The restlessness, the hunger, the thump in the gut, the thump in the cunt, the longing to be filled up, to be fucked through every hole, the yearning for dry champagne and wet kisses, for the smell of peonies in a penthouse on a June night…all the romantic nonsense you yearned for with half your heart and mocked bitterly with the other half."
I don't know whether her novel belongs to the category "literary history". But I know that I could identify with Isadora who, amazingly enough, gave me the impression of a monogamous and moral person at heart, she just needed to work it out within herself. I believe that I, and many other women across the world, are grateful to Jong for the encouragement to get our own stories straight.
The facts of Erica Jong’s biography for her first twenty-nine years match those of Isadora Wing’s life almost exactly, but the novel was clearly intended as a satire. The author’s voice is breezy, mocking, and geared to exaggeration for comic effect. She knows who will win in the end. She’s not only survived the tale she’s telling and written it up as the novel we’re reading, she’s also cracking jokes about her journey nonstop. Jong wants the reader to laugh at Isadora, which means laughing along with Jong and enjoying the ride. It's amazing that the only thing most people seem to remember from the book is the provocative expression Ms. Jong invented to encapsulate Isadora’s fantasy, the proverbial "zipless fuck", while instead they kind of miss the fact that it’s a rare example of a bildungsroman in which a woman, not a man, struggles to define what she wants her life to look like, and to compel that image into being. The book is not a celebration of casual sex, it was completely misread as such. Isadora wants to own her body and her mind, but she cannot truly envision herself as what we would call an “independent woman” today.
“All my fantasies included marriage,” Ms. Jong wrote in one of her character’s rueful reveries. “No sooner did I imagine myself running away from one man than I envisioned myself tying up with another. I was like a boat that always had to have a port of call. I simply couldn’t imagine myself without a man.”
"I was not against marriage. I believed in it in fact. It was necessary to have one best friend in a hostile world, one person you’d be loyal to no matter what, one person who’d always be loyal to you. But what about all those other longings which after a while marriage did nothing much to appease? The restlessness, the hunger, the thump in the gut, the thump in the cunt, the longing to be filled up, to be fucked through every hole, the yearning for dry champagne and wet kisses, for the smell of peonies in a penthouse on a June night…all the romantic nonsense you yearned for with half your heart and mocked bitterly with the other half."
I don't know whether her novel belongs to the category "literary history". But I know that I could identify with Isadora who, amazingly enough, gave me the impression of a monogamous and moral person at heart, she just needed to work it out within herself. I believe that I, and many other women across the world, are grateful to Jong for the encouragement to get our own stories straight.
April 11, 2018
{Cue ominous narration guy}
In a world, a woman wrote a book about the literal fear of flying and a bunch more problems that was hailed as a classic of Second Wave Feminism. 45 years later, two women will read it. At least, they will try to read it.
Summary:Erica Jong "Isadora" is afraid to fly. Isadora is obsessed with analysts. Isadora is obsessed with analysis. Isadora is not obsessed with her analyst husband. Isadora is obsessed with the “zipless fuck” (a one-night stand, basically.) Isadora is obsessed with her new analyst boyfriend who is not a one-night stand. Isadora has terrible sex with her new analyst boyfriend (when he’s not impotent. Also, wash your feet, dude.) Isadora obsesses about terrible sex she’s had with boyfriends and husbands past. Vanessa considers Googling the symptoms of Narcissistic Personality Disorder.
Then, twist! Vanessa thinks about quitting book instead. Vanessa suddenly remembers what happiness feels like. The End.
{Hold for applause.}
Great googly moogly. I tried to read this, Julie tried to read this, but it’s impossible. If this spoke to women in the 70’s or today (like Lena Dunham apparently. Jesus, why am I NOT surprised?), then I’m glad they were given a voice. I, on the other hand, will search for my feminist inspirado pretty much anywhere else.
In a world, a woman wrote a book about the literal fear of flying and a bunch more problems that was hailed as a classic of Second Wave Feminism. 45 years later, two women will read it. At least, they will try to read it.
Summary:
Then, twist! Vanessa thinks about quitting book instead. Vanessa suddenly remembers what happiness feels like. The End.
{Hold for applause.}
Great googly moogly. I tried to read this, Julie tried to read this, but it’s impossible. If this spoke to women in the 70’s or today (like Lena Dunham apparently. Jesus, why am I NOT surprised?), then I’m glad they were given a voice. I, on the other hand, will search for my feminist inspirado pretty much anywhere else.
September 27, 2017
Lei e gli altri (tanti)
Paura di volare, di Erica Jong, è un romanzo semi autobiografico del 1973, apparentemente lettura obbligata per le donne negli anni settanta/ottanta.
Cos'è la paura di volare per la Jong?
E' la paura di mettersi in gioco. E' come quando durante una discussione continui a non prendere nulla sul serio, ti limiti a deridere, a prendere le distanze, a criticare, non prendi posizione. Perché se prendi posizione poi sei attaccabile e ti devi difendere. E' molto più facile stare a guardare.
Volare significa significa portare avanti una relazione perché ci si crede, nonostante i se e i ma, nonostante i difetti difetti dell'altro.
Paura di volare è paura di essere grandi, di imboccare una strada e tenerla.
La protagonista di questo libro, alter ego della scrittrice stessa, sa cosa non vuole. Non vuole una vita ingabbiata da marito e figli. Non vuole sacrificare tutta la sua una vita unicamente per il lavoro. Non vuole un uomo che la condizioni.
Cosa vuole? Non lo sa, lo cerca. Lo cerca disperatamente, in modo esagerato, in modo scomposto, in modo discutibile. Lo cerca non mettendosi in discussione, ma principalmente mettendo in discussione tutti gli altri. Difficile trovare un equilibrio però, in questo modo.
Il risultato è a mio avviso un romanzo poco divertente (ironia per me assente), poco interessante (una noia mortale), poco utile (soprattutto a distanza di tempo). Diciamo un libro decisamente datato.
La relazione uomo donna negli ultimi anni è in evoluzione e ciò che era vero cinquant'anni fa non è più vero ora. L'equilibrio può essere trovato solo congiuntamente con la voglia di costruire qualcosa di nuovo. Una voglia che, in questo romanzo, non ho trovato.
July 16, 2008
I wish I could have a more natural visceral reaction to this book but I read it from a state of being all too aware of it's controversy and place in feminism and time. I wish I had discovered a dusty copy in a grandmother's attic or untouched corner of a used bookstore because that is really how it should be read... a discovery filled with self discovery.... but I went out looking for it. It had been mentioned too many times as an example and I had to read it for myself. I did instantly feel a connection with Isadora, actually a pretty intense one, "damn someone already wrote the book I've always wanted to write," and it wasn't even all that stimulating sexual misadventure but rather what some critics would call Isadora's dime a dozen "neurotic tendencies." It's funny because the fact that Isadora's complexity, which she herself questions, is judged so harshly is a big part of what this book is commenting on. As I read it I too questioned myself, with all the context I knew about the book glaring back at me with a criticizing eye. Was this just an excuse to enjoy porn under the guise of being an intellectual? Was this feminism or were we attempting a "if we can't beat em' join em'" mentality? Was this self-empowerment or loss of self-respect? Was I just questioning myself because I wasn't as liberated sexually as I'd like to think? Then, with all these questions muddling Jong's pioneering work, I realized that this was the Fear she was talking about. As women, in a supposedly post-feminist world, we often spend so much time feeling guilty for feeling guilty or feeling guilty for not feeling guilty we forget that what we're fighting so hard for is to live our lives free of guilt... to fly without fear of falling or being despised for flying so well. I'm not sure if I should feel an empowering sense of solidarity with this discovery or feel guilty that we're not as far as Isadora hoped we could someday be... but then there's that guilt again. Maybe the Zipless Fuck is a fantasy.
February 22, 2016
http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b0713zf7Description: The radio premiere of Erica Jong's bold and bawdy novel about a young woman's quest for sexual liberation was a controversial best-seller in 1973.
1/5: Isadora Wing has been married to psycho-analyst Bennett for five years. But's she restless and yearns for the perfect, guiltless, zipless sexual encounter.
The sixties was spent doing, the seventies was spent writing and I'm sure that this was racy at the time and many women will have started to look at life differently. Felt a bit of a voyeur reading flisters star values on this yet I have absolutely no interest in venturing past this first episode. Bon voyage Isadora, have yourself a great trip.Isadora Wing Julianna Jennings
Bennett Wing Kevin Shen
Adrian Goodlove Max Bennett
Isadora's Mother Adie Allen
Marty Nick Underwood
Judy Nicola Ferguson
Dr Reuben Sargon Yelda
Dr Happe Brian Protheroe
May 9, 2012
I have tried to read this book over the years three or four separate times. Each time I was unable to get past the opening scene. Where’s the sex I wanted to know? What’s with all the shrinks, and God they are a dull bunch. This is supposed to be an erotic book right? Turns out the place I needed to be to get this book was a long time in coming.
Here’s what Marco Vassi--the most intelligent erotic writer of all time-- said about erotic writing and Fear of Flying in particular.
“Fear of Flying is an extraordinary erotic book, but it’s basically a literary novel. The eroticism is of the novel. Erotic literature is literature in which eroticism is the novel. It focuses on that. It also implies a certain degree of description, a certain hard core. And to find novels in which you have plot, character, literary quality, plus detailed and real moving descriptions of fucking is a rarity.”
Writing about sex and writing to arouse the reader are different things which too often get confused. I would like to see that change. Just because someone writes honestly about sex, or thinking about sex, does not make the book an erotic book, even if one or two passages really make your blood boil.*
What about those “detailed and real moving descriptions of fucking?” Almost all of the sex scenes presented in this book were disappointing at some level. When she is having sex there isn’t much emotional connection, when she is emotionally connected, or really turned on someone can’t get it up. This is a very different reading experience than something like the arcade scenes in Exit to Eden. What you will find in this book are honest discussions on the topic of sex: sexual freedom, sexual fantasy, sexual repression, sexual confusion.
Call me stunted, call me slow, but it has taken me a long time to say these things out loud so to find someone else who has already done it so well is a gift. Here’s a passage that I marked all to hell it was so relatable. For me it was liberating to see these words in print.
“Perhaps sex accounted for my fury. Perhaps sex was the real Pandora’s box. My mother believed in free love…Yet of course, she did not, or why did she say that boys wouldn’t respect me unless I played “hard to get” ? That boys wouldn’t chase me if I “wore my heart on my sleeve,” that boys wouldn’t call me if I “made myself cheap” ?
Sex, I was terrified of the tremendous power it had over me. The energy, the excitement, the power to make me feel totally crazy! What about that? How do you make that jibe with “playing hard to get”?”
Vassi says this is, “Basically a literary novel.” Thank you! This was my thought as I read though the passages that changed point of view, tense, and fell smoothly into profound or hilarious rumination. Isadora does lots of fantasizing, especially what I suspect both women and men can relate to--the zipless fuck. Intrigued? Read the book. I would say the purest version of this for me has always been found in books, alone with my authors and their words…After you read the book you can let me know what you think.
When I started raving on Facebook a family friend said she hated the book and sent me this review as she said it summed up why. http://regularrumination.com/2009/03/... Isadora comes off to some as whiny to some.
Fair enough. I can see this, but I would also argue that we hardly ever nail the guys for the same things when they are angsting about finding their place in the world, droning endlessly about their feelings of isolation, or how trapped they feel at the prospect of a new family or a career change. They aren’t whining, they are making sense out of important issues. We might even call them philosophers! (A wonderful book that centers on this quite a bit is Kenzeburo Oe’s A Personal Matter which I also reviewed. Wonderful book, the author eventually won a Nobel prize.)
I could agree with some of the reviewer’s comments about the plot, about the main character Isadora’s “problems.” She created a lot of them, and she is not always sympathetic. I could have cared less. What I will continue to recommend about this book are all the passages that sum up a particular situation or emotion, frustrations I had felt that someone else had finally legitimized. Erica Jong fictionalized several situations I had also found myself in, resenting the hell out whatever was going on and hating myself for smiling the whole time because that’s what good girls do. Can’t embarrass the man and his intellectual or physical failings, though he thinks he is being honest and helpful for pointing out yours.
What I find morbidly interesting is the fact that this book came out the year Roe v. Wade was passed. Could women in 1973 imagine that we would still have to listen to politicians make snide remarks about birth control in the year 2012? Maybe they could, maybe they were less optimistic than I am. For 2012, none of the situations or thoughts presented should be shocking. I’ve had much more graphic conversations with my friends over coffee at Starbucks, but I imagine in 1973 to see these thoughts in print, and to have people talking about zipless fucks, Tampax, and running away with that handsome stranger was something to see indeed.
To judge Fear of Flying, without benefit of the same social and political climate has got to be a mistake. To read this book now, I have to consider all the women who came before me, who divorced their husbands because they were not happy, who demanded to be taken care of in bed, who decided against having children so they could pursue their life’s goals. All of this surely could not have been as common and as acceptable as it is now. I would love to hear from any women who were adults at the time Fear of Flying came out and get a sense of what you think has changed if anything.
I can understand women who worked for a certain level of equality becoming impatient with Isadora and her angst, they were too busy making changes to stop and worry about anything else. Good for them, I send a sincere thank you and say God Bless. I would also would argue that being impatient with Isadora doesn’t make the angst any less relatable. Who hasn’t paid careful attention for half an hour while a male loved one spouted facts about a new civil war book he’s reading, only to have him put on an impatient face two minutes into your own explanation of something you find just as fascinating?
I would almost argue that the frustration the reader may feel with Isadora for making the decisions she does, staying with and listening to all her stupid male analysts, her infatuation with the infuriating Adrian, are part of what made me appreciate the book. My reactions to her behavior said a lot about me and I learned things about myself from having that experience. It is much easier to judge other women than to admit that we are often also mirrors of each other’s behavior. Sometimes I was ashamed to admit I had done some of the same things I was frustrated with Isadora for. She struggled with guilt for leaving a man who would in the end equal a lifetime of unhappiness and sacrifice. I know some women who say they don’t have time to write, to work on their art, to do any number of things that are important to them because hubby spends their after work time on his hobby. Someone after all has to look after the kids. At least they aren’t being bitchy and demanding like Isadora though. Where would we be if everyone were like her?
In the first few years of my marriage I am ashamed to admit I hardly read any of the books I loved so much because my husband, who doesn’t read, felt left out. Me, who came to that marriage with three full shelves of books and about ten different projects in mind! Fuck. Erica Jong has gone farther in identifying that bullshit female need to make everyone so goddam happy than anyone I have read before. She also did a beautiful job showing us how we force these ideas on our friends and our daughters. (Another reason I need to spend more time with the women.) In Isadora’s bitchiness, and refusal to just go along in many situations, I was reminded how easy it is to give up my own happiness, my own strength, my own ambition to take care of kids, hubby, friends who need me, whatever. Certainly they all matter to me, and certainly I cannot only live for me, or I would cease to be me, but does it have to be one or the other? Isadora Wing, though confused and clueless sometimes, stands up for herself, and when she doesn’t she stops to consider why. It was in these moments that I felt the most grateful.
What I did through most of the book was fold down pages and mark passages with my thumbnail until I was able to get ahold of a pencil. Don’t read this book for the story or for any kind of lesson about anything, unless of course you find something relevant in that. Read this book for what is relatable, good and bad. Here is one of my favorite passages:
“So I learned about women from men. I saw them through the eyes of male writers. Of course, I didn’t think of them as male writers. I thought of them as writers, as authorities, as gods who knew and were to be trusted completely.
Naturally I trusted everything they said, even when it implied my own inferiority.”
That last line almost made me ill it was so applicable to me. The passage goes on to give examples and when combined with all the men who keep telling her what is wrong with her and the fact that she listens to them makes the point yet again. Well what the fuck are you listening to them for? Makes you want to slap her and then hug her for finally coming to her senses. I challenge any woman to tell me she hasn’t ever done the same thing.
And guess who contributed a blurb…Henry Miller**!
“It is rare these days to come upon a book written by a woman which is so refreshing, so gay and sad at the same time, and so full of wisdom about the eternal man-woman problem.”
What I find interesting about the Miller quote is that he sees the problems Erica Jong shows us as “eternal.” Maybe they are when you consider that in some ways not much has changed about the dynamics between the sexes, we still routinely give up our dreams to support Him, nurture the family, while neglecting ourselves, and when we do finally stand up and take charge, we have to contend with a fair amount of guilt for doing so.
Maybe for me what is terrifying to admit is how easy it is to give up our best selves for some ideal that we can’t even identify in the real world. Ever since I read this book I have had even more reason to hate The Princesses.
Read this book. You may hate it, but I would hazard a guess that even then you will find some of yourself in this crazy woman’s thoughts and fantasies. This is an important book that I can’t believe more women haven’t read, and men for that matter. I also guess that everyone who reads it will take away something different and am eager to hear from anyone willing to discuss the book.
*Anyone read Outlander? My word, there were a few scenes in there that really worked for me, though the book is classified as a historical romance.
** See my review of Tropic of Cancer. I love Henry Miller, but I never found much of his writing all that erotic either.
Here’s what Marco Vassi--the most intelligent erotic writer of all time-- said about erotic writing and Fear of Flying in particular.
“Fear of Flying is an extraordinary erotic book, but it’s basically a literary novel. The eroticism is of the novel. Erotic literature is literature in which eroticism is the novel. It focuses on that. It also implies a certain degree of description, a certain hard core. And to find novels in which you have plot, character, literary quality, plus detailed and real moving descriptions of fucking is a rarity.”
Writing about sex and writing to arouse the reader are different things which too often get confused. I would like to see that change. Just because someone writes honestly about sex, or thinking about sex, does not make the book an erotic book, even if one or two passages really make your blood boil.*
What about those “detailed and real moving descriptions of fucking?” Almost all of the sex scenes presented in this book were disappointing at some level. When she is having sex there isn’t much emotional connection, when she is emotionally connected, or really turned on someone can’t get it up. This is a very different reading experience than something like the arcade scenes in Exit to Eden. What you will find in this book are honest discussions on the topic of sex: sexual freedom, sexual fantasy, sexual repression, sexual confusion.
Call me stunted, call me slow, but it has taken me a long time to say these things out loud so to find someone else who has already done it so well is a gift. Here’s a passage that I marked all to hell it was so relatable. For me it was liberating to see these words in print.
“Perhaps sex accounted for my fury. Perhaps sex was the real Pandora’s box. My mother believed in free love…Yet of course, she did not, or why did she say that boys wouldn’t respect me unless I played “hard to get” ? That boys wouldn’t chase me if I “wore my heart on my sleeve,” that boys wouldn’t call me if I “made myself cheap” ?
Sex, I was terrified of the tremendous power it had over me. The energy, the excitement, the power to make me feel totally crazy! What about that? How do you make that jibe with “playing hard to get”?”
Vassi says this is, “Basically a literary novel.” Thank you! This was my thought as I read though the passages that changed point of view, tense, and fell smoothly into profound or hilarious rumination. Isadora does lots of fantasizing, especially what I suspect both women and men can relate to--the zipless fuck. Intrigued? Read the book. I would say the purest version of this for me has always been found in books, alone with my authors and their words…After you read the book you can let me know what you think.
When I started raving on Facebook a family friend said she hated the book and sent me this review as she said it summed up why. http://regularrumination.com/2009/03/... Isadora comes off to some as whiny to some.
Fair enough. I can see this, but I would also argue that we hardly ever nail the guys for the same things when they are angsting about finding their place in the world, droning endlessly about their feelings of isolation, or how trapped they feel at the prospect of a new family or a career change. They aren’t whining, they are making sense out of important issues. We might even call them philosophers! (A wonderful book that centers on this quite a bit is Kenzeburo Oe’s A Personal Matter which I also reviewed. Wonderful book, the author eventually won a Nobel prize.)
I could agree with some of the reviewer’s comments about the plot, about the main character Isadora’s “problems.” She created a lot of them, and she is not always sympathetic. I could have cared less. What I will continue to recommend about this book are all the passages that sum up a particular situation or emotion, frustrations I had felt that someone else had finally legitimized. Erica Jong fictionalized several situations I had also found myself in, resenting the hell out whatever was going on and hating myself for smiling the whole time because that’s what good girls do. Can’t embarrass the man and his intellectual or physical failings, though he thinks he is being honest and helpful for pointing out yours.
What I find morbidly interesting is the fact that this book came out the year Roe v. Wade was passed. Could women in 1973 imagine that we would still have to listen to politicians make snide remarks about birth control in the year 2012? Maybe they could, maybe they were less optimistic than I am. For 2012, none of the situations or thoughts presented should be shocking. I’ve had much more graphic conversations with my friends over coffee at Starbucks, but I imagine in 1973 to see these thoughts in print, and to have people talking about zipless fucks, Tampax, and running away with that handsome stranger was something to see indeed.
To judge Fear of Flying, without benefit of the same social and political climate has got to be a mistake. To read this book now, I have to consider all the women who came before me, who divorced their husbands because they were not happy, who demanded to be taken care of in bed, who decided against having children so they could pursue their life’s goals. All of this surely could not have been as common and as acceptable as it is now. I would love to hear from any women who were adults at the time Fear of Flying came out and get a sense of what you think has changed if anything.
I can understand women who worked for a certain level of equality becoming impatient with Isadora and her angst, they were too busy making changes to stop and worry about anything else. Good for them, I send a sincere thank you and say God Bless. I would also would argue that being impatient with Isadora doesn’t make the angst any less relatable. Who hasn’t paid careful attention for half an hour while a male loved one spouted facts about a new civil war book he’s reading, only to have him put on an impatient face two minutes into your own explanation of something you find just as fascinating?
I would almost argue that the frustration the reader may feel with Isadora for making the decisions she does, staying with and listening to all her stupid male analysts, her infatuation with the infuriating Adrian, are part of what made me appreciate the book. My reactions to her behavior said a lot about me and I learned things about myself from having that experience. It is much easier to judge other women than to admit that we are often also mirrors of each other’s behavior. Sometimes I was ashamed to admit I had done some of the same things I was frustrated with Isadora for. She struggled with guilt for leaving a man who would in the end equal a lifetime of unhappiness and sacrifice. I know some women who say they don’t have time to write, to work on their art, to do any number of things that are important to them because hubby spends their after work time on his hobby. Someone after all has to look after the kids. At least they aren’t being bitchy and demanding like Isadora though. Where would we be if everyone were like her?
In the first few years of my marriage I am ashamed to admit I hardly read any of the books I loved so much because my husband, who doesn’t read, felt left out. Me, who came to that marriage with three full shelves of books and about ten different projects in mind! Fuck. Erica Jong has gone farther in identifying that bullshit female need to make everyone so goddam happy than anyone I have read before. She also did a beautiful job showing us how we force these ideas on our friends and our daughters. (Another reason I need to spend more time with the women.) In Isadora’s bitchiness, and refusal to just go along in many situations, I was reminded how easy it is to give up my own happiness, my own strength, my own ambition to take care of kids, hubby, friends who need me, whatever. Certainly they all matter to me, and certainly I cannot only live for me, or I would cease to be me, but does it have to be one or the other? Isadora Wing, though confused and clueless sometimes, stands up for herself, and when she doesn’t she stops to consider why. It was in these moments that I felt the most grateful.
What I did through most of the book was fold down pages and mark passages with my thumbnail until I was able to get ahold of a pencil. Don’t read this book for the story or for any kind of lesson about anything, unless of course you find something relevant in that. Read this book for what is relatable, good and bad. Here is one of my favorite passages:
“So I learned about women from men. I saw them through the eyes of male writers. Of course, I didn’t think of them as male writers. I thought of them as writers, as authorities, as gods who knew and were to be trusted completely.
Naturally I trusted everything they said, even when it implied my own inferiority.”
That last line almost made me ill it was so applicable to me. The passage goes on to give examples and when combined with all the men who keep telling her what is wrong with her and the fact that she listens to them makes the point yet again. Well what the fuck are you listening to them for? Makes you want to slap her and then hug her for finally coming to her senses. I challenge any woman to tell me she hasn’t ever done the same thing.
And guess who contributed a blurb…Henry Miller**!
“It is rare these days to come upon a book written by a woman which is so refreshing, so gay and sad at the same time, and so full of wisdom about the eternal man-woman problem.”
What I find interesting about the Miller quote is that he sees the problems Erica Jong shows us as “eternal.” Maybe they are when you consider that in some ways not much has changed about the dynamics between the sexes, we still routinely give up our dreams to support Him, nurture the family, while neglecting ourselves, and when we do finally stand up and take charge, we have to contend with a fair amount of guilt for doing so.
Maybe for me what is terrifying to admit is how easy it is to give up our best selves for some ideal that we can’t even identify in the real world. Ever since I read this book I have had even more reason to hate The Princesses.
Read this book. You may hate it, but I would hazard a guess that even then you will find some of yourself in this crazy woman’s thoughts and fantasies. This is an important book that I can’t believe more women haven’t read, and men for that matter. I also guess that everyone who reads it will take away something different and am eager to hear from anyone willing to discuss the book.
*Anyone read Outlander? My word, there were a few scenes in there that really worked for me, though the book is classified as a historical romance.
** See my review of Tropic of Cancer. I love Henry Miller, but I never found much of his writing all that erotic either.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
July 5, 2019
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fear_of...
If you've never read Erica Jong's classic, well, you should. On the re-read list. I have no idea (or record) of when I read it. But I expect you remember the Zipless Fuck! The book has sold more than 20 million copies worldwide.
Jong explains that it is "zipless" because "when you came together, zippers fell away like rose petals, underwear blew off in one breath like dandelion fluff. For the true ultimate zipless A-1 fuck, it was necessary that you never got to know the man very well."
Well. Yet Another 70s Experience I missed out on. Dammit.
Note that my 5* rating is based on a long-ago memory. Who knows how I might rate it now.
If you've never read Erica Jong's classic, well, you should. On the re-read list. I have no idea (or record) of when I read it. But I expect you remember the Zipless Fuck! The book has sold more than 20 million copies worldwide.
Jong explains that it is "zipless" because "when you came together, zippers fell away like rose petals, underwear blew off in one breath like dandelion fluff. For the true ultimate zipless A-1 fuck, it was necessary that you never got to know the man very well."
Well. Yet Another 70s Experience I missed out on. Dammit.
Note that my 5* rating is based on a long-ago memory. Who knows how I might rate it now.
December 27, 2007
I found this very dated and not relevant to women today. Not only because the zipless fuck is less likely to happen but because the book dosen't seem to approach realtionships with any equality. The psychology of the book seemed like the most outdated part. For me the writting was not good enough to overcome the shortcomings of the story. I appreciate that the the book for the impact it made on women's sexual liberation and freedom, but not relevant in today's sexual practices or norms. More intresting as a historical artifact then as a novel.
August 31, 2022
إن تخيلاتي كلها تتضمن الزواج . فما إن أتخيل نفسي أهرب من رجل حتى أتخيلني أرتبط بآخر . كنت أشبه بقارب مضطر دائما إلى اللجوء إلى مرفأ للتزود بالمؤن . ببساطة لم أستطع تخيل نفسي من دون رجل. فمن دونه كنت أشعر بالضياع. ككلب تاه عن سيده ؛ بلا جذور بلا وجه بلا هوية.
ولكن ما الشيء العظيم في الزواج ؟ لقد تزوجت مرارا وقد كانت له مزاياه ، ولكن له أيضا مثالبه ، كانت فضائل الزواج في معظمها سالبة ، فالبقاء بلا زواج في عالم يخص الرجال كان مشاحنة حول وجوب أن يكون كل شيء أفضل.الزواج كان أفضل.ولكن ليس كثيرا ، كنت أقول لنفسي ما أشد براعة الرجال ، لقد جعلوا الحياة لا تطاق بالنسبة إلى النساء الوحيدات بحيث أن معظمهن يسعدهن بدل ذلك أن يقبلن بأي زواج . كل شيء تقريبا كان ينبغي أن يكون تطويرا للسعي الحثيث من أجل الحفاظ على عمل متدني الأجل وابعاد الرجال غير الجذابين في وقت فراغك وفي الوقت نفسه تحاولين يائسة أن تعثري على الجذابين منهم . وعلى الرغم من أنني لا أشك في أن البقاء بلا زوج أمر موحش بالقدر نفسه للرجل ، إلا أنه لا يتسم بالخطر الصريح ، ولا يتضمن آليا الفقر والنبذ الاجتماعي الحتمي.
هل ستتزوج معظم النساء إذا علمن فحواه ؟إنني أتخيل نساء شابات يتابعن أزواجهن أينما قادتهم أعمالهم، أتخيلهن فجأة وقد أصبحن على بعد أميال من عائلاتهن وأصدقائهن ، أتخيلهن يقمن في أماكن لا يستطعن فيها أن يعملن ، ولا يتحدثن بلغاتهن ، أتخيلهن ينجبن أطفالا بدافع الشعور بالوحشة والوحدة دون أن يعلمن السبب ، أتخيل أزواجهن دائما على عجلة من أمرهم ومرهقين بسبب تحقيق ذواتهم.
خصصت إريكا يونغ هذه الصفحات للسخرية من التحليل النفسي وممارسيه ، وقد أخذت من الجنس موضوعا لها كما كان يفعل فرويد ذلك دائما.. شعرت بها كأنها تصب جام غضبها على زوجها المحلل النفسي المدهش ومن قبله زوجها الذهاني ، وعلى سنواتها التي قضتها في فهم ذاتها المشطورة نصفين ، بين ما عانته في حياتها ، وبين الصورة النمطية للزوجة البرجوازية التي ينبغي أن تكون عليها..
لاشك أن اسلوبها فج ومدهش في نفس الوقت ، الشخص الذي لا تطيقه ولكنك تذهب خلفه لتضايقه ولا تعلم السبب في اندفاعك خلفه! هي إريكا تحديدا تمثل ذلك الشخص ، فإذا استدار ناحيتك ونظر إلى وجهك الفاضل المناضل في سبيل حياة مثالية ستلكمك لكمة مفرطة في اباحية الوصف ، شيء يجعلك لا ترغب باستكمال المسير خلفها ، شنيعة أنت يا اريكا ، منحطة ، لكني سأواصل المسير خلفك لأرى النهاية! هكذا تحدثك نفسك ، لن يكون القادم أسوأ مما قرأت سابقا ، تبدو لي أنها أخرجت كل القباحة الكلامية في هذا النص ولن تعود لتفعل ذلك مرة أخرى ، لكنها تفعل ، وتثير اشمئزازك ، تريد أن تسألها كيف تتحملين نفسك على هذا الطراز ا��بوهيمي؟ أليس من البديهي أن تتحلى المرأة باللطف والرقة والحياء ؟ لماذا أنت مجاهرة ومفصلة لجملة الأشياء التي ينفر الانسان منها ومن سماعها وتخيلها هكذا؟
تخبرك في أول الرواية أنها تخشى من الطيران ، تخشى من آلية العمل ، نعم هي لا تثق في الحشو الانساني الرهيب داخل الجسد الواحد ، أشياء مضللة ورمزية وقاحلة وموغلة في الفحش والدناءة ، لكنها طبيعة انسانية ، يتجمل الانسان بالخلق والدين والزينة ليبدو في أفضل صورة ممكنة لنفسه وللآخرين ، لكنك يا إريكا تنزعين كل الستر والرموز التي تغلف أجسادنا ، تريدين أن تطيري فتتطهري من جملة الرغبات الحيوانية بالجهر بها وصبها في قالب أدبي يرغمني وأنا أسمعك تقرين في خبايا نفسك أنك تريدين انجاب طفلة حتى تستطيع الطيران بلا خوف ، بلا ثقل وخشية من ركام الآثام التي لن تنمحي عنها ، تعطيها مساحة آمنة لتنهض وتكتشف ذاتها وتتقبلها ثم تحسنين إليها بالقبول الغير شرطي ، تريدين انجاب طفلة تتقوى بالتخلص من نقاط ضعفك أنت ، وانك يا إريكا في الحقيقة تريدين إنجاب نفسك ، هذه البلاغة كافية لأن تذوي غضبي ، أستطيع أن أقرأ وأشطب العبارات وأتخطاها في صمت ، دون أن أحكم عليك ولا أعرقل مسيرتك بالنصائح الغير مجدية..
فقط حين تفصحين عن شيء ضعيف ، يختبئ في جوف مظلم ، موحش ، اقتلع من مكانه الطبيعي الآمن ، أخشى من السطور التالية ، كتلك مثلا:
ما أثار غيظي أنه كان يراني بطريقة ساخرة أكثر مما رأيت نفسي ، ولطالما اعتقدت أنني أحمي نفسي ضد رأي الآخرين فيّ باتخاذ أشد المواقف تحاملا ضد نفسي..
رأيت أنك عند العبور بمواطن ضعفك ، ولب عقدتك ، كنت تنحرفين بعدها لأقصى درجة ، لتزيلي ذلك الشعور الواهن وتستبدليه بالمرأة الماجنة ، الغير مبالية..
كانت رحلة لا وصف يضمنها ولا اسم ، أتمنى أن تكوني محلقة في فضاء أوسع الآن.
ولكن ما الشيء العظيم في الزواج ؟ لقد تزوجت مرارا وقد كانت له مزاياه ، ولكن له أيضا مثالبه ، كانت فضائل الزواج في معظمها سالبة ، فالبقاء بلا زواج في عالم يخص الرجال كان مشاحنة حول وجوب أن يكون كل شيء أفضل.الزواج كان أفضل.ولكن ليس كثيرا ، كنت أقول لنفسي ما أشد براعة الرجال ، لقد جعلوا الحياة لا تطاق بالنسبة إلى النساء الوحيدات بحيث أن معظمهن يسعدهن بدل ذلك أن يقبلن بأي زواج . كل شيء تقريبا كان ينبغي أن يكون تطويرا للسعي الحثيث من أجل الحفاظ على عمل متدني الأجل وابعاد الرجال غير الجذابين في وقت فراغك وفي الوقت نفسه تحاولين يائسة أن تعثري على الجذابين منهم . وعلى الرغم من أنني لا أشك في أن البقاء بلا زوج أمر موحش بالقدر نفسه للرجل ، إلا أنه لا يتسم بالخطر الصريح ، ولا يتضمن آليا الفقر والنبذ الاجتماعي الحتمي.
هل ستتزوج معظم النساء إذا علمن فحواه ؟إنني أتخيل نساء شابات يتابعن أزواجهن أينما قادتهم أعمالهم، أتخيلهن فجأة وقد أصبحن على بعد أميال من عائلاتهن وأصدقائهن ، أتخيلهن يقمن في أماكن لا يستطعن فيها أن يعملن ، ولا يتحدثن بلغاتهن ، أتخيلهن ينجبن أطفالا بدافع الشعور بالوحشة والوحدة دون أن يعلمن السبب ، أتخيل أزواجهن دائما على عجلة من أمرهم ومرهقين بسبب تحقيق ذواتهم.
خصصت إريكا يونغ هذه الصفحات للسخرية من التحليل النفسي وممارسيه ، وقد أخذت من الجنس موضوعا لها كما كان يفعل فرويد ذلك دائما.. شعرت بها كأنها تصب جام غضبها على زوجها المحلل النفسي المدهش ومن قبله زوجها الذهاني ، وعلى سنواتها التي قضتها في فهم ذاتها المشطورة نصفين ، بين ما عانته في حياتها ، وبين الصورة النمطية للزوجة البرجوازية التي ينبغي أن تكون عليها..
لاشك أن اسلوبها فج ومدهش في نفس الوقت ، الشخص الذي لا تطيقه ولكنك تذهب خلفه لتضايقه ولا تعلم السبب في اندفاعك خلفه! هي إريكا تحديدا تمثل ذلك الشخص ، فإذا استدار ناحيتك ونظر إلى وجهك الفاضل المناضل في سبيل حياة مثالية ستلكمك لكمة مفرطة في اباحية الوصف ، شيء يجعلك لا ترغب باستكمال المسير خلفها ، شنيعة أنت يا اريكا ، منحطة ، لكني سأواصل المسير خلفك لأرى النهاية! هكذا تحدثك نفسك ، لن يكون القادم أسوأ مما قرأت سابقا ، تبدو لي أنها أخرجت كل القباحة الكلامية في هذا النص ولن تعود لتفعل ذلك مرة أخرى ، لكنها تفعل ، وتثير اشمئزازك ، تريد أن تسألها كيف تتحملين نفسك على هذا الطراز ا��بوهيمي؟ أليس من البديهي أن تتحلى المرأة باللطف والرقة والحياء ؟ لماذا أنت مجاهرة ومفصلة لجملة الأشياء التي ينفر الانسان منها ومن سماعها وتخيلها هكذا؟
تخبرك في أول الرواية أنها تخشى من الطيران ، تخشى من آلية العمل ، نعم هي لا تثق في الحشو الانساني الرهيب داخل الجسد الواحد ، أشياء مضللة ورمزية وقاحلة وموغلة في الفحش والدناءة ، لكنها طبيعة انسانية ، يتجمل الانسان بالخلق والدين والزينة ليبدو في أفضل صورة ممكنة لنفسه وللآخرين ، لكنك يا إريكا تنزعين كل الستر والرموز التي تغلف أجسادنا ، تريدين أن تطيري فتتطهري من جملة الرغبات الحيوانية بالجهر بها وصبها في قالب أدبي يرغمني وأنا أسمعك تقرين في خبايا نفسك أنك تريدين انجاب طفلة حتى تستطيع الطيران بلا خوف ، بلا ثقل وخشية من ركام الآثام التي لن تنمحي عنها ، تعطيها مساحة آمنة لتنهض وتكتشف ذاتها وتتقبلها ثم تحسنين إليها بالقبول الغير شرطي ، تريدين انجاب طفلة تتقوى بالتخلص من نقاط ضعفك أنت ، وانك يا إريكا في الحقيقة تريدين إنجاب نفسك ، هذه البلاغة كافية لأن تذوي غضبي ، أستطيع أن أقرأ وأشطب العبارات وأتخطاها في صمت ، دون أن أحكم عليك ولا أعرقل مسيرتك بالنصائح الغير مجدية..
فقط حين تفصحين عن شيء ضعيف ، يختبئ في جوف مظلم ، موحش ، اقتلع من مكانه الطبيعي الآمن ، أخشى من السطور التالية ، كتلك مثلا:
ما أثار غيظي أنه كان يراني بطريقة ساخرة أكثر مما رأيت نفسي ، ولطالما اعتقدت أنني أحمي نفسي ضد رأي الآخرين فيّ باتخاذ أشد المواقف تحاملا ضد نفسي..
رأيت أنك عند العبور بمواطن ضعفك ، ولب عقدتك ، كنت تنحرفين بعدها لأقصى درجة ، لتزيلي ذلك الشعور الواهن وتستبدليه بالمرأة الماجنة ، الغير مبالية..
كانت رحلة لا وصف يضمنها ولا اسم ، أتمنى أن تكوني محلقة في فضاء أوسع الآن.
July 31, 2017
"La vita non ha una trama"
Paura di volare, pubblicato nel 1973, è accompagnato dalla fama di essere il libro manifesto della liberalizzazione dei costumi sessuali femminili, una sorta di proclama della possibilità o del desiderio della donna di poter praticare sesso in maniera lieve e senza legami.
Almeno, io mi ero fatta più o meno questa idea.
A me pare però che l'obiettivo del libro sia tutt'altro: per come l'ho letto io, il libro, intriso di psicanalisi e di citazioni libresche di tutti i tipi [la Jong sicuramente è stata una lettrice non solo accanita ma pure onnivora], è una sorta di romanzo di formazione, un romanzo scritto per affrontare le proprie paure, che nel caso di Isadora [alter ego di Jong] è quella di riuscire a stare da sola, è quella di riuscire a reggersi sulle proprie gambe senza necessità di avere il sostegno di un uomo al suo fianco. Diciamo ancor meglio è la necessità di trovare la propria dimensione individuale senza passare da stereotipi o ruoli preconfezionati. E qui sorge spontaneo il link con la lettura de "La campana di vetro" di Sylvia Plath, peraltro iper-citata dalla Jong all'interno del testo.
"Tutte le donne che ammiravamo erano zitelle o suicide. Era tutto lì? Era lì che volevamo arrivare?
La ricerca di Isadora, passa attraverso l'esperienza sessuale "multipla" e "variegata", e qui, il linguaggio greve, la scelta di inserire particolari a volte proprio volgarucci [cfr. lenzuola sporche di escrementi di qualche improbabile e sudicio amante], alla lunga arriva proprio a saturare il lettore che ne esce stomacato. Una pletora di scelte sbagliate, e di esperienze che non solo non aggiungono niente se non una grande tristezza alla nostra eroina, o meglio antieroina ["Avevo già fattol'esperienza indicibilmente triste di svegliarmi vicino a un uomo che non sopportavo, al quale non avevo assolutamente nulla da dire… e non era certo stata una esperienza liberatoria. Eppure non sembrava proprio possibile impostare la vita in modo equilibrato, conciliando la propria esuberanza con il bisogno di stabilità"] Isadora arriva alla conclusione che "le fantasie sono fantasie e non si può vivere in estasi dal mattino alla sera tutti i giorni dell'anno. Anche se te ne vai sbattendo la porta, anche se ti scopi tutti quelli che ti capitano a tiro, non per questo riesci ad avvicinarti di un passo alla libertà.»"
"Nessuno può completarci. Dobbiamo essere noi a completare noi stessi. Se non ci riusciamo la ricerca dell'amore diventa autodistruzione; e poi cerchiamo di convincerci che questa autodistruzione è amore."
Ma che cosa cerca Isadora? Uscire dagli schemi e dai ruoli preconfezionati, guardare solo e soltanto alla propria soddisfazione personale, dove la conduce? Nel romanzo c'è Isadora, solo e soltanto Isadora coi suoi bisogni, le sue paure e le sue necessità. Ma l'altro? C'è interesse e dolcezza nei confronti dell'altra metà del cielo? L'ego smisurato della protagonista e le sue riflessioni esondano. E risultano grevi, l'uso dell'ironia non riesce ad alleggerire le riflessioni spesso circolari della scrittrice.
"Non era chiaro come sarebbe andata a finire. Nei romanzi dell'ottocento i protagonisti si sposano. In quelli del novecento divorziano. E' possibile avere un finale in cui non facciano nessuna delle due cose?"
Nei romanzi del ventesimo secolo cosa ci auspichiamo che accada?
"La vita non ha una trama", se non visibile a posteriori, e il fil rouge tra le letture, si compone sempre in maniera retrospettiva. Questo fil rouge mi fa accomunare "Il Male Oscuro" a questa "Paura di volare". A differenza della Jong, Berto è riuscito a produrre un opera di valore letterario indiscutibile e pur partendo dall'esperienza del singolo, dalle proprie hpaure ed ossessioni, è riuscito a produrre un'opera di valenza universale.
Il libro della Jong, mah..."La questione femminile non ha soluzioni unilaterali"
Paura di volare, pubblicato nel 1973, è accompagnato dalla fama di essere il libro manifesto della liberalizzazione dei costumi sessuali femminili, una sorta di proclama della possibilità o del desiderio della donna di poter praticare sesso in maniera lieve e senza legami.
Almeno, io mi ero fatta più o meno questa idea.
A me pare però che l'obiettivo del libro sia tutt'altro: per come l'ho letto io, il libro, intriso di psicanalisi e di citazioni libresche di tutti i tipi [la Jong sicuramente è stata una lettrice non solo accanita ma pure onnivora], è una sorta di romanzo di formazione, un romanzo scritto per affrontare le proprie paure, che nel caso di Isadora [alter ego di Jong] è quella di riuscire a stare da sola, è quella di riuscire a reggersi sulle proprie gambe senza necessità di avere il sostegno di un uomo al suo fianco. Diciamo ancor meglio è la necessità di trovare la propria dimensione individuale senza passare da stereotipi o ruoli preconfezionati. E qui sorge spontaneo il link con la lettura de "La campana di vetro" di Sylvia Plath, peraltro iper-citata dalla Jong all'interno del testo.
"Tutte le donne che ammiravamo erano zitelle o suicide. Era tutto lì? Era lì che volevamo arrivare?
La ricerca di Isadora, passa attraverso l'esperienza sessuale "multipla" e "variegata", e qui, il linguaggio greve, la scelta di inserire particolari a volte proprio volgarucci [cfr. lenzuola sporche di escrementi di qualche improbabile e sudicio amante], alla lunga arriva proprio a saturare il lettore che ne esce stomacato. Una pletora di scelte sbagliate, e di esperienze che non solo non aggiungono niente se non una grande tristezza alla nostra eroina, o meglio antieroina ["Avevo già fattol'esperienza indicibilmente triste di svegliarmi vicino a un uomo che non sopportavo, al quale non avevo assolutamente nulla da dire… e non era certo stata una esperienza liberatoria. Eppure non sembrava proprio possibile impostare la vita in modo equilibrato, conciliando la propria esuberanza con il bisogno di stabilità"] Isadora arriva alla conclusione che "le fantasie sono fantasie e non si può vivere in estasi dal mattino alla sera tutti i giorni dell'anno. Anche se te ne vai sbattendo la porta, anche se ti scopi tutti quelli che ti capitano a tiro, non per questo riesci ad avvicinarti di un passo alla libertà.»"
"Nessuno può completarci. Dobbiamo essere noi a completare noi stessi. Se non ci riusciamo la ricerca dell'amore diventa autodistruzione; e poi cerchiamo di convincerci che questa autodistruzione è amore."
Ma che cosa cerca Isadora? Uscire dagli schemi e dai ruoli preconfezionati, guardare solo e soltanto alla propria soddisfazione personale, dove la conduce? Nel romanzo c'è Isadora, solo e soltanto Isadora coi suoi bisogni, le sue paure e le sue necessità. Ma l'altro? C'è interesse e dolcezza nei confronti dell'altra metà del cielo? L'ego smisurato della protagonista e le sue riflessioni esondano. E risultano grevi, l'uso dell'ironia non riesce ad alleggerire le riflessioni spesso circolari della scrittrice.
"Non era chiaro come sarebbe andata a finire. Nei romanzi dell'ottocento i protagonisti si sposano. In quelli del novecento divorziano. E' possibile avere un finale in cui non facciano nessuna delle due cose?"
Nei romanzi del ventesimo secolo cosa ci auspichiamo che accada?
"La vita non ha una trama", se non visibile a posteriori, e il fil rouge tra le letture, si compone sempre in maniera retrospettiva. Questo fil rouge mi fa accomunare "Il Male Oscuro" a questa "Paura di volare". A differenza della Jong, Berto è riuscito a produrre un opera di valore letterario indiscutibile e pur partendo dall'esperienza del singolo, dalle proprie hpaure ed ossessioni, è riuscito a produrre un'opera di valenza universale.
Il libro della Jong, mah..."La questione femminile non ha soluzioni unilaterali"
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