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Summary: A valuable gift to women everywhere.
Review: I bought this book when I was fourteen because I thought it would be sexy. I scanned the book for dirty parts, then shelved it when I couldn't find anything very steamy and returned to the bodice-rippers under my mom's bed. Many years later, I opened the book as a different person. Married, childless, and still confused about what I should do with my life, Isadora Wing spoke straight to my heart. I laughed at myself when I learned that FOF does have a few sexual encounters, but they tend to be awkward, disappointing, and often uncomfortable. No wonder I didn't notice them when I first thumbed through. I was looking for the descriptions of perfect and seamless couplings found in romance novels, and that sort of language just wasn't there, accept for in Isadora Wing's fantasies about the "zipless f---". Isadora has big ideas, firm convictions, passions, but is often held back with fear and insecurity. The plot of the book is not nearly as important or engaging as Isadora's ruminations on love, sex, hypocrise, and searching for good examples of women to look up to. I think every woman should read this book, especially if she is married and getting just a little bit itchy. If it's really bad, have your husband read it, too.
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Summary: Decent (as far as I know) analysis of the woman's sexuality
Review: First off, I'm a guy, so perhaps I'm off base on this book in terms of how "real" or "true" it is. My apologies for that. At the time I read it, I was a not-quite-but-almost-naive college junior, so perhaps I will learn in time.But regarding this book, I thought it was pretty insightful. After countless late nights of sitting up and listening to the woes of my women friends, I could easily detect echos of FOF in the conversations. This novel spawned at least three sequels. Perhaps someone with firsthand (rather than my secondhand) experience with the issues presented in those books could comment more specifically on them. I'll limit myself to saying that while I did not find Fear of Flying to self-serving or overly didatic, I did find its various sequels to be so, the degree worsening as the chronology did. *Fear of Flying* is an Excellent Book, ladies and gentlemen. I highly recommend it men and women of all genders (who says we only have to have two?).
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Summary: This is an exceptional woman
Review: Isadora is not representative of the masses of women; she is an exceptional woman: one that we all secretly want to be. She dares to live the desires that we all crave, and fear. She returns our humanity to us, our right to choose pleasure and the position on top. Men with short dividends, beware! This book will outlive the third millennium, as will Sappho. The book is utterly compelling; I read it from cover to cover six times before I could put it down. It is one book you won't want to miss! Erica Jong deserves the Nobel Prize for her pioneering work of rediscovering and defining the feminine soul.
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Summary: Decent (as far as I know) analysis of the woman's sexuality
Review: First off, I'm a guy, so perhaps I'm off base on this book in terms of how "real" or "true" it is. My apologies for that. At the time I read it, I was a not-quite-but-almost-naive college junior, so perhaps I will learn in time. But regarding this book, I thought it was pretty insightful. After countless late nights of sitting up and listening to the woes of my women friends, I could easily detect echos of FOF in the conversations. This novel spawned at least three sequels. Perhaps someone with firsthand (rather than my secondhand) experience with the issues presented in those books could comment more specifically on them. I'll limit myself to saying that while I did not find Fear of Flying to self-serving or overly didatic, I did find its various sequels to be so, the degree worsening as the chronology did. *Fear of Flying* is an Excellent Book, ladies and gentlemen. I highly recommend it men and women of all genders (who says we only have to have two?).
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Summary: **Life-Changing For Me**
Review: Browsing the bookstore the other day, I came across a new edition of this & realized it's been THIRTY years since this book was published! (Actually thirty one.)
I read this book about ten years ago. I was 18 at the time & from then on, greedily read all her novels (and poems) ever published. Jong taught me not to be ashamed of my sexuality, but to embrace being a woman and to go after what you want. At that time, I was conflicted, mainly because I was feeling so "open", but yet felt I should not venture out of my normal "good girl Baptist upbringing". I read her novels in secret, afraid of what others would think of me. Not long after this very book, I started to bloom into what was being stifled inside me all long.
I can now say that I am happily married with two young boys. I let myself roam freely & basically went after what I wanted & needed. I know that through that discovery is how I found my soulmate & developed love with all the sparks, too.
Take the time & read this classic & all her others. Keep an open mind & enjoy. My favorite thing about Jong is that she simply says all the "dirty" & "not-so-nice" things we women think of all the time. Such liberation to read her work!
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Summary: Isadora Wing's Zipless Funds
Review: "Fear of Flying" presents an honest and often brilliant perspective on female sexual desire and artistic ambition. Like Sylvia Plath's Esther Greenwood in "The Bell Jar," Erica Jong's Isadora Wing is based on a Salingeresque approach to a woman who is both intellectually precocious and sexually curious. Like the young Holden Caulfield, both Esther and Isadora use powerful satirical voices to question restrictive social norms. Yet, while I admire Isadora's literary sophistication and her strong feminist bent, I'm also disappointed that she lacks awareness of her socioeconomic privilege. Besides having an Ivy League education and indisputably high intelligence, she is cheerfully jobless, as she has unrestricted (zipless?!) access to traveler's checks and an American Express card. Isadora's pursuit of the "zipless f***" as she travels throughout central Europe is made possible by her unlimited use of bucks. When Isadora aims to break free of her neurotic Upper West Side family, she seems not to notice that she owes much to their wealth and cultural sophistication. Similarly, she takes for granted her somber but supportive husband, who appreciates her intelligence and encourages her in her writing. With unconcealed contempt, Isadora describes the uneducated and consumeristic army housewives who dwell in Heidelberg, seemingly unaware that had she been born into less fortunate circumstances, she could have been one of them. Had Isadora come from one of the less fashionable boroughs of New York City, from a less educated and moneyed family with more immigrant cultural baggage, she would have had a much different story to tell. In twentieth century American culture, the privileged classes always had more access not only to better education, but to greater sexual freedom. (The Kennedy family and the culture surrounding Camelot are the best known examples of this phenomenon). Although Isadora Wing has become a feminist icon and a symbol of the sexual revolution, readers must not forget that her sexual experimentation is supported by her wealth and her intellectually sophisticated social class.
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Summary: Not Afraid Anymore
Review: Isadora Wing, the ever-fearful, paranoid, and sexual heroine of FEAR OF FLYING, is a woman all women either know or recognise part of her in themeselves. While at a psychiatrists conference with her husband, Isadora engages in an affair with another psychiatrist which eventually leads to her ability to liberate herself. The bubble gum category that seems to be sprawling through bookstores these days is "chic lit." This rather vacuous literature has nothing on Jong's amazing style and candid method of writing. Jong's heroine is well read, eduacted and a true writer: scattered, mentally tortured and non-committal, yet very likeable. As we read the adventures of Isadora we can see a once weak woman begin to discover herself. This book is both empowering, entertaining and well-written....And that is 30 years after its publication date!
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Summary: So what?
Review: Here we have a woman who didn't know if she loves or not her husband and want an affair, if you tell me that that is the way that all the women think I really don't agree with that, I don't really think that this book could save any marriage or even any relation, having an affair is against all the laws, but many people do that (I said many not all) and I think that if one is having an affair he or she will not tell the New York Times, this things are secretes always or almost always. This book has to many pages that doesn't say anything or what it says is out of range of any book, but why she has to returned to her husband? I thing that Isadora really needs help.
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Summary: A thirty year journey that is true today in 2003!!!
Review: I saw the book in one of those big franchise book stores and the cover caught my eye, white with a zipper half unzipped revealing red underneath. Now that I have read "Fear of Flying" the cover seems very symbolic and provacative just like the book. From the dedication to the afterword I was captivated by this book, a true literary work about a woman seeking self. It is not a chick lit book but true literature. I couldn't beleive I missed this book all my life, I am in my early thirties and had never heard about it but wish I had it starting in my teens. Every woman, every man should read this book it gives great insight on the insecurities of women. From sentence one I felt like Isadora Zelda White Wing spoke to me of my own doubts and emotional struggles. All of a sudden I was not alone...I was not lost, her journey was mine and mine hers. This book was about getting your passion back along with your identity, not sex or fantasies as so many want to dwell on. Although she is very candid about her sexual exploits(Isadora's) and the language is very forward but its relevent to the story. As a woman, I can say that the idea of the zipless f...k has had an appeal but after reading her encounters with Dr. Goodlove you have to re-address your impulses and figure out what you really are looking for. I think that was the true teaching of this book........find out who you really are not what or who defines you.
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Summary: Powerful Novel Retains Its Place in History.
Review: I get a little peeved when I read some reviews of this novel passing it off as some sort of salacious, "Peyton Place"-ish trifle meant to shock midwestern Americans. The truth is, over thirty years since its appearance, that the reviews Henry Miller and John Updike offered were no less than prophetic. The book is a genuine work of literary art and craft, frank but necessarily so in the same way "Lady Chatterley's Lover" was. Jong's style is compelling; her opinions, questions, and searches for her character's validations are no less valuable today. Perhaps a good portion of people were in a more open state of mind in the early seventies, more willing to experiment with lifestyle, substances, morality, even music and art. But are people today in less need of this kind of open consciousness? One only needs to examine the current political climate to see that we're heading for a revisionist version of McCarthyism. So perhaps the views expressed in "Fear of Flying" bear reexamination. This book has so many ways to praise it one hardly knows where to begin. But as a man too young to read it in 1973, I am profoundly grateful to Ms. Jong for the opportunity to read and grow with it now and, no doubt, many times in the future (seeing it back in print, I quickly purchased 3 copies to get me through several more planned readings in the coming years). This edition features the new 2002 afterword by the author, which is invaluable. Jong's perspective on the value of the book, its uncertain early history, publishing stats, and humbling effect on the lady herself add to the novel's resonance. This may be told from a much-needed woman's persepective, but I refuse to label it as "women's" or "feminine" lit. This towering work should not be so conveniently monikered. Its far too challenging, and important, for that. How about simply "classic"?
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