Customer Reviews

Fear of Flying

5 star:		(38)
4 star:		(23)
3 star:		(12)
2 star:		(7)
1 star:		(7)

 

 

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.

I picked up this book in my mother's garage about 3 years ago, when I was 18. I admit that I was interested in it because of the sexy cover quotes like "steamy!" and "shocking!"

I read it. And it's turned out to be one of my favorite books. Not because it got me hot and bothered.. it wasn't any more "steamy" than an episode of NYPD blue, but because I found myself identifying so much with Isadora's plight... her urge to find herself, to balance her love for her husband with her urge to find the "zipless f***" and to do it all in a society that frowned upon a healthy sexual appetite in women.

Some people have found that the novel is self-serving and self-righteous, but not a drop of that came through to me. As a matter of fact, I was shocked to hear it!

I loved the book and I think most young women would too - which is why you're hearing a heartfel reccomendation from me!

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"?

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.

Jong's writing is witty, clever, and insightful. This was also a pretty brave book, coming out when it did. I think her characters and situations (for the most part) were quite believable. Here's my gripe: Jong's major theme is that women (at least her heroine) yearn for love and security, but also adventure and excitement. What a revelation! I am a man, but guess what, folks? I'd kind of like to have a loving, dependable, child-rearing wife at home while I go off around the world having exciting affairs with other women. Pretty amazing that women might want that too, huh? My other gripe is that Isadora, while (see above) witty, intelligent and insightful, is also wealthy enough to be a lifelong world-traveler, have endless shrinks, countless affairs, and to complain about the accomodations on ocean cruises and Paris hotels. Poor baby; we all have problems like that. Given her social status, it's tough to sympathize with 300 pages of whining about problems that confront all women AND all men. I give this three stars despite the unsympathetic protagonist and because of Jong's writing ability.

When I was a college freshman I wrote a paper critiquing Adrienne Rich's essay "When We Dead Awaken." Rich argued that women writers had it harder than men because there was no tradition of writing done in a genuinely female voice; women who wanted to be heard had to write like men. I argued against that reading, saying that all writers, regardless of sex, had to struggle with how to adapt their voices to the accepted canon. But now, four years later, I'm starting to see Rich's point.

I realized while reading Fear of Flying that I haven't read a single book written by a woman in the past hundred years that sounds like something I could have written (in terms of voice -- questions of technique and craft and all that aside.) When I started Fear of Flying I thought that maybe I'd finally found one. I read it because a week or so earlier I'd read Jong's book on Henry Miller, The Devil at Large, and learned that Miller apparently saw Fear of Flying as the female-authored version of Tropic of Cancer.

Maybe the reason why I was so frustrated by Fear of Flying is that it came so close to getting it right, to being the sort of book that I've wanted to find: something written by a woman who is as honest and funny and brave as the male writers I admire. But in the final analysis, Fear of Flying wasn't quite it.

It was a combination of factors. Fear of Flying felt too self-conscious, just a little too infatuated by its own cleverness. (I suppose feminist critics would tell me that I've been brainwashed by the male literary establishment, that if the same self-conscious "cleverness" came in a novel written by a man I'd find it admirable.) And the symbolism was just a bit too heavy-handed -- the book's protagonist has the last name of Wing, but it's her married name -- "fear of flying," her "wing" borrowed from someone else, from a man... yeah, yeah, we get it. And the dashing yet terminally flawed man who tempts her away from her husband bears the last name of Goodlove. Didn't Dickens beat this whole "foreshadowing via surname" thing to death in the 1800s?

But my problems with the book run deeper than that. The whole novel focuses on the protagonist's struggle to overcome her fear of being alone -- but where are the books written about women who AREN'T afraid of being alone? Why is the fear of being alone not even an issue for most male protagonists?

A moderately entertaining read though.

Erica Jong really accurately describes the complexity of relationships, desire, love, dependence and freedom. Even though this book is seen as a symbol of the women's liberation movement in the 70s (which is before I was born), it's not at all out of date.

I read Fear of Flying straight though, looking for the answers to the most difficult questions: how do I remain independent without just being lonely? how can we control love, others, and ourselves? what makes a relationship work? where does sex come into the equation? what's love got to do with it? and what do you do when a relationship is pretty darn good but not perfect?

The book doesn't have an answer key, and doesn't try to simplify what is inherently complex. Instead it is vividly real, and sticks with you long after you're done reading it.

"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.

My friend gets on me all the time because I don't read many female authors. While we were having fun with it he referenced Bob Dylan's song Highlands from his Time Out of Mind album where he sings about Jong. I had to check it out.
I am all about women being independent and leading their lives on their own accord - but when they talk about it and drone on and on about it, it irritates me. This was the book's downfall for me. Jong's main character, Isadora, either acts on impulse or does what she thinks she should. Never once did she do anything because it was what she wanted. But that is OK - because there lies the theme of the book. As the reader, I felt that Jong was trying to describe a woman who had for so long lived her life based on what was seen as acceptable by others. When Isadora was able to assert herself she was told it was wrong or had to analyze it with her countless therapists. Her character finds what she thinks is freedom in a lover and embarks on a trip accross Europe while leaving her husband behind in London. In this lover she finds that things are still the same for her - and I think that the key is realizing that the only thing all of her past experiences have in common are herself. By the end of the book it seems that she realizes that she is no longer the victim of a series of circumstances she had no conrol over - and she embraces the power of hindsight to move forward in her indepence and make choices of her own. To me that is such a cool move for the Isadora - but it doesn't happen until the last few pages and the main part of the book is so full of all her baggage that I nearly didn't finish it.
Overall it is an OK book, but I just didn't like Isadora enough to really like the book. I found her to be whiney, possibly histrionic and someone with tons of issues I didn't care to hear about.
Here is the note about it that I wrote to my friend after he hassled me to finish it and said if I didn't I was a weenie - I think it summarizes Jong's theme quite well...

My decision to not finish Jong was my way of asserting my independence - why burden myself with a task that I derive no satisfaction from... and after all, how can I let a man attempt to dictate what I read?
You'll be happy to know that I finished it. I thought maybe there is something in the ending that will make it worth it. There really wasn't and I guess we'll just have to disagree on this one. I hope you are rolling in your satisfaction of oppressing young women by teasing them and calling them weenies until they do what you want. Sheesh.
-- Mel

I had heard so much about how this book was so 'liberating'. It is not at all. It is deeply conservative, if not reactionary. It finally admits that women cannot do without men, are helpless, disorganised, flighty (indeed) and generally useless unless some man with an appendage is telling them what to do. For all her evocations of women writers Isadora is the opposite of them. Is this meant to be her tragedy? Her fear? If so, it never comes across that way. She is too privileged, self-indulgent, whiny and obsessive for us to really care what happens to her. And yet it is funny and in some places deeply inspired. But Portnoy's Complaint was better written.