Fear of Flying: 50th Anniversary Edition

I first read FEAR OF FLYING in 1977. I was 15. My algebra teacher nicked it from my hand, threw it in the trash can and told me it was pornographic garbage, but I was already halfway through the book and smart enough to know that wasn't true. I rescued the book and spent a few weeks in detention, but it was well worth it. FEAR OF FLYING blew my tiny mind on several levels.Because of the open discussion of sex in FEAR OF FLYING, some of the other important themes get back-burnered. For me, having been raised in the 1960s attending Wisconsin Synod Lutheran churches and schools that were dominated by German culture, the greatest impact of the book was how it made me rethink everything I'd been taught about Jews. (Unscrupulously greedy. Killed Jesus. Automatically going to Hell.) Here was the fresh antidote to the heartbreaking guilt of Anne Frank and Corrie ten Boom, along with an electric cattle prod of enlightenment for a child indoctrinated with the party line about how Jews caused the Holocaust by telling Pontius Pilate, "Let his blood be on us and our children!"Erica Jong's brilliantly wry descriptions of her family, observations about psychoanalysis and running inner dialogue about desire, ambition, pleasure, displeasure, sanity, insanity and womanhood freed my mind in a way that every 15-year-old mind needs to be freed if the 50-year-old to come along later is to be anything close to happy. Erica Jong's wit and intellect profoundly impacted my understanding of literary craft, and I went on to consume everything else she wrote. My evolution as a reader serendipitously coincided with her evolution as a writer. I consider her body of work a major element in my education as an author.So now I'm 50, and I just now finished rereading FEAR OF FLYING for the first time since I rescued that battered paperback from the trash. It holds up beautifully, despite the intervening years. The world has changed, but the human heart has not. It never has and never will, and that's what blew my tiny mind this time around. FEAR OF FLYING is a book that begs to be revisited and deserves a place in every enlightened woman's library. Highly, truly, passionately recommended.

I suppose everything has been said about Fear of Flying. It was never on my "to read" list but Henry Miller's resounding endorsement in Jong's "Devil at Large" Miller biography persuaded me to give it a go. I approached the novel with misgivings some of which proved justified but can I just begin by saying, as a 62 year old male that I liked the novel and have given it 4 stars unhesitatingly. However on a par with Tropic of Cancer it is not, anymore than makebelieve is on a par with reality. Pace Miller.So while Fear of Flying may have appeared sensational or liberating fifty years ago it now reads like an above average sex comedy enlivened by the narrator's intelligence wit and honesty, I could say vulnerability. I was irritated at first as Isadora reminded me of one of those women who like to use swear words in company or openly discuss their sex lives for shock value or to get attention. Worse was her apparently helpless overeagerness to be defined by men and her awful taste in them. How could she go for Brian, Charlie, Bennett, and the ghastly cringeworthy Englishman Adrian? The whole pyschoanalytical framework also jarred. Between bouts of lovemaking these couples wondering if they really wanted to make love to their parents produced some horrible dialogue - I am aware I initially missed the satirical anti -romance subversion here or at least I hope I did. No, I know I did.I was becoming increasingly aware as I read however of how insightful and incisive Erica Jong could be. There are many outstanding passsges on relationships, on desire, on being a woman. I was also becoming aware that the novel was recounting her (Isadora) efforts to be or to become herself (the ending may disappoint in this respect). I also found I liked Isadora. She's insecure and wants to please, she's honest and wants to live, most of all she is desperate to become her own self, defined only as the woman she was born to be. She's attractive and intelligent, smart as hell, sassy, often unkind, I love her love of and commitment to writing and literature, I love her openness and vulnerability, she gives a lot of herself to people and scarcely gets what she deserves in return. I wanted to spend time with her talking over a wine or beer on Place St Michel. I wanted her to find herself and be happy. And I think she did. I also wanted her to find love and to be loved with a love equal to her own.Chapter 16 was a huge turning point for me. Isadora abandoned and alone in Paris. The narration and writing reach a level of seriousness, depth, and intensity which exalts the whole. And this is where the real, the true, Isadora begins finally painfully to be born.The book is part of the history of literature now, more especially the history of women's literature and women's voices. Literature would undoubtedly be the poorer without it. Hey it won me over. And if Henry Miller approved, I'm not going to argue. I'm for Isadora.

I didn't read this when it first came out in the 70s, and I guess it was kind of earth-shattering then, but to me it just read more like: memoir (disguised as a novel) of a spoiled girl who just discovered the Pill, and who gets to travel around and not think of consequences. It was a bit narcissistic for my taste. And the fact that the main character lusts after and just hops into bed with this equally narcissistic guy, then travels around Europe with him for a while, while callously ignoring her husband, didn't really do it for me. I felt I had to read it just because the title had been seared in my brain for so long. But I think it was well known because the topic (casually running off with a lover, casual sex) was more groundbreaking in the 1970s. The end was truly disappointing to me, because it was just so disconnected from everything--kind of abrupt, vague, and still really stupid. (***SPOILER ALERT***) I mean, come on, you just come home and slip into the bathtub of the apartment you share with your husband after all that time away having an affair? No conversation? (****END OF SPOILER****)

Eye opening, highly relatable coming of age story of an adult schoolgirl woman. Liberating, original yet highly relatable. Must be right up there in fiercely feminist 21st century writing

There’s not as much about sex as one would expect from the fuss around this book, and what’s there isn’t a turn-on to read as such. It’s not a work of erotica! But it is a brilliant account of female sexuality and more in the 1970s and the writing style is incredibly intimate - I felt like I was the narrator’s best friend whom she was confiding in. Loved it.

By now a classic written during the feminist movement, it is highly entertaining and well-written.

Spannende und spaßige Lektüre! Ich lese das Buch gerade mit großer Freude. Sehr erotisch, aber auch dramatisch und genial geschrieben.

The product was exactly what I ordered and arrived in very good condition and on time. Very happy :-)