Fear of Fifty: A Midlife Memoir [Paperback]

Erica Jong (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: July 1997

A publishing event, a real-life novel, Fear of Fifty is the true story of the woman who 20 years ago showed her generation how to soar in Fear of Flying and now looks back -- and ahead -- to assess the costs, the rewards and the meaning of the journey.

Opening on her fiftieth birthday, Jong's midlife memoir reads like fast-paced fiction as it flashes back and forth in time to tell at last the truths at the heart of her novels. Poet, novelist, essayist, Jong has forged one of the most visible and volatile careers in American letters, and as a charter member of what she calls the "whiplash generation," she has had a front seat on the roller coaster American women have been riding for the past decades. Raised to be Doris Day, growing up wanting to be Gloria Steinem, now rearing daughters in the age of Princess Di and Madonna, today's women have had their expectations raised and dashed and raised and dashed again, as they've watched themselves go in and out of style like hemlines. Now, as she and her contemporaries look for answers to the second half of their lives, Jong offers powerful, provocative insights into sex, marriage and aging; feminism -- past, present and future; the writing life; motherhood and family; identity and love, loyalty and loss, drawn through the brilliant prism of her own experience.

In chapters such as "Fear of Fifty," "The Mad Lesbian in the Attic," "How I Got to Be the Second Sex," "How I Got to Be Jewish," "Fear of Fame," "Seducing the Muse," "Dona Juana Gets Smart," "Becoming Venetian" and "How to Get Married," Erica Jong takes readers on an impassioned, outrageous, irreverent tour de force through the sea changes that have defined a generation. From technical virginity to the sexual revolution to the AIDS pandemic; from The Feminine Mystique to "political correctness"; from monogamy to open marriage and back again; from stay-at-home moms to moms who have won the right to be eternally exhausted; from sexual secrecy to sexual openness -- Jong proves yet again her unique ability to tap into the inner lives of women and the issues that matter most to them.

Fear of Fifty is an intoxicating, riveting read, free-wheeling and fun, warm, tough and full of wisdom. Sure to be embraced by women everywhere, it is destined, like its classic predecessor Fear of Flying, to become required reading for a generation on the threshold of a new revolution.

Fear of Fifty is a funny, touching, unflinchingly honest cri de coeur about the joy and pain of being a fully sentient woman in the last half of the 20th century. Elegant and eloquent, this moving midlife meditation chronicles the daunting feat of juggling all at once the roles of wife, mother and lover; daughter, sister and friend; writer, feminist and Jew. Many women who came of age in the '60s and '70s will recognize Jong's struggles, contradictions, and hard-won conclusions as their own. -- Lisa Alther, author of Kinflicks

 

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

This autobiographical meander goes right to the jugular of the women who lived wildly and vicariously through Jong's The Fear of Flying in the early '70s--and the book will likely sell big. Unfortunately, the package doesn't live up to its wrapping. Jong talks randomly of her youth, her four marriages, a great deal about her daughter Molly (by husband Jonathan Fast) and about literary celebrity. There are a multitude of sexual encounters, and now that Jong is 50 they have to "mean" something. "In mid-life," she writes, "I was drawn to memoir because I needed to understand myself before it was too late." What her readers come to understand is that Jong's depth of interest in herself is not easy to share. She takes herself too seriously as a pioneer and a thinker. No hint of humor intrudes upon these pages, nor any stab at structure either--chronological or intellectual. 150,000 first printing; $130,000 ad/promo; first serial to Parade and Cosmopolitan; Literary Guild selection; author tour.
Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From Library Journal

Jong, a talented and celebrated writer (Fear of Flying, LJ 10/1/73) has written a memoir intended to be a book about her generation. She assumes, she says, that she is not so different from her readers. She thus tells us her story and, along the way, chides us for our mutual failings: women compete with one another rather than creating alliances; women collaborate with men "to shut each other up" (this comment is aimed specifically at women book reviewers). She fails to appreciate the particularities of her experience. Few women at 47 agonize over giving up "snake-hipped studs on various continents" to marry a fourth time. Furthermore, lectures on sisterhood are unseemly coming from a woman who calls other women "fatties," who talks of longing to "dwindle into a wife," and who brags about countless married lovers (she has always "attracted men like a honeypot"). Still, her tale is engaging and in places moving. Her final note rings true: For many women, the goal of 50 may well be to say, "I am not my mother."-Cynthia Harrison, Federal Judicial Ctr., Washington, D.C.
Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Paperback: 400 pages
• Publisher: Perennial (HarperCollins) (July 1997)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0060984325
• ISBN-13: 978-0060984328
• Product Dimensions: 7.8 x 5.3 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 8.8 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 3.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (8 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,676,428 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

ERICA JONG
(Bio used www.ericajong.com)
Erica 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, seven 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, The New York Times Book Review and The Wall Street Journal.
In her groundbreaking first novel, Fear of Flying (20 million in print around the world 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. Erica's latest book, 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.
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 2008, 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 U.S., 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.

Known for her commitment to women's rights, authors' rights and free expression, Ms. Jong is a frequent lecturer in the U.S. and abroad. She served as president of The Authors' Guild from 1991 to 1993 and still serves on the Board. She established a program for young writers at her alma mater, Barnard College. The Erica Mann Jong Writing Center at Barnard teaches students the art of peer tutoring and editing.
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. In June 2009, Erica won the first Fernanda Pivano Prize for Literature in Italy.

Currently Ms. Jong is working on a novel featuring "a woman of a certain age." Its working title is secret. Fear of Flying is in preparation as a BBC mini-series. Her first anthology, Sugar In My Bowl: Real Women Write About Real Sex, will be published on June 14th, 2011.
Erica Jong lives in New York City and Weston, CT with her husband, attorney Ken Burrows, and standard poodle, Belinda Barkowitz. Her daughter, Molly Jong-Fast, is also a writer.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

24 of 28 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Too much whining and hypocrisy so far., January 27, 1999

By A Customer

This review is from: Fear of Fifty: A Midlife Memoir (Paperback)

I'm 50; that's what prompted me to pick up this book. I've only read 30 pages of Fear of Fifty so far, and am trying to decide whether to go on. So far Ms. Jong's main concern seems to be whether to get a face lift and whether her spa experience was spoiled by her husband. Most women, on their birthdays, get up and go to work. If they're lucky, their co-workers have a birthday card and maybe a cake for them. If they're really lucky their friends and/or family treat them to dinner out on the weekend preceeding or following their birthday. Wondering whether to get a facelift or spending the weekend at a spa isn't even a consideration. I am finding Ms. Jong's proclaimed need for spirituality, and more particularly her cry for women to unite rather than to divide, to be ringing hollow in light of her statement that married men are always available for affairs. Doesn't she realize that this is the oldest, most divisive issue between women? Doesn't she realize that when she has an affair with a married man she is enabling him to avoid confronting his marital problems and either repair his marriage or end it honorably? Doesn't she realize that she is injuring a fellow woman no matter how sympathetic she feels toward the man? I don't believe I am ultra-conservative. Rather, I have learned through hard experience that we owe it to ourselves and to our fellow human beings, both men and women, to not be enablers of negative behavior and to not seek thrills at the expense of others. Also, the cover promised lots of laughs. Well, I haven't laughed yet. Granted, I have nodded in agreement at many of Ms. Jong's generalizations about lack of spirituality and excess of greed in our culture, but I also read of here accounts of her homes (plural), travels, affairs, etc. I believe Ms. Jong speaks to a tiny minority of American women who are living a self-indulgent lifestyle, not to the majority who are working just to make ends meet for their families. In fairness, because I haven't read further, I could be pre-judging inacurately. I will probably read some more and/or skim a few chapters. If my impressons are changed, I'll write again and let you know. By the way, look at the author's picture on the back cover of the hardback -- she is posed in front of a backdrop of concrete monoliths -- a harsh cityscape with not one speck of nature in sight anywhere -- no wonder she feels disconnected and alientated. Who won't in that setting?

12 of 14 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Ah, to be a Jewish American Princess. . . ., February 19, 2000

By 

Marion "[e-mail]" (Louisiana) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)   

This review is from: Fear of Fifty: A Midlife Memoir (Paperback)

Having been born and spent my entire life in the South and being a lower middle class WASP, I envy those brash, brave, bold yankees who have the "ovaries" to speak their mind and lay their souls bare for all the world to see! WHAT A BOOK! I already love Erica's poetry and now I love her, too! As I am a forty-something boomer, I read this in anticipation of some much needed road-trip advice and boy, did I get what I asked for! Live your life according to your own conscience, follow your dreams AND your heart and baby don't look back in regret. Thank you, Erica, for being the fabulous writer and woman that you are. You're an inspiration to us all. Keep on writing!

9 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Pretty pathetic tale though funny in places., October 22, 1998

By 

[e-mail] (Copenhagen, Denmark) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Fear of Fifty: A Midlife Memoir (Paperback)

This book was something of a disappointment, especially after Fear of Flying and Fanny. The good points are some funny Jewish jokes and the author's commendable honesty. Her description of dating married men is also witty and she has a sharp eye for ludicrous self-deception (in others). However, on the subject of feminism I found her to be surprisingly self-pitying, and there was something uncannily shallow in her descriptions of her various husbands and other partners. The many descriptions of Italy verge on a glossy travel guide and quickly become tedious. Not a book which yields any insight of value.