Much later, I found out that Fear of Flying was a classic novel of second-wave feminism, which is to say it was derided by lots of first-wavers as trivial, solipsistic and too sex-oriented to be considered truly political. None of this concerned me. The writing was furiously good. It had a desperate edge to it, and the force of something that needed to be written. I still remember the final line of the first chapter, which I thought hit exactly the right note between pretentious, pleading, self-dramatising and self-knowing. It was the perfect layup for the novel that followed: “Consider this tapestry, my life.” Because the fact was that we’d reached that crucial time in a marriage (five years and the sheets you got as wedding presents have just about worn thin) when it’s time to decide whether to buy new sheets, have a baby perhaps, and live with each other’s lunacy ever after—or else give up the ghost of the marriage (throw out the sheets) and start playing musical beds all over again.

a b c "Erica Jong papers, 1955–2018 bulk 1965–2004". Columbia University Libraries Archival Collections. Columbia University . Retrieved May 22, 2022. Jong denies that the novel is autobiographical but admits that it has autobiographical elements. [6] However, an article in The New Yorker recounts that Jong's sister, Suzanna Daou (née Mann), identified herself at a 2008 conference as the reluctant model for Isadora Wing and called the book "an exposé of my life when I was living in Lebanon." Daou angrily denounced the book, linked its characters to people in her own life, and took her sister to task for taking cruel liberties with them, especially Daou's husband. In the book, Isadora Wing's sister Randy is married to Pierre, who makes a pass at both Wing and her two other sisters. Jong dismissed her sister's claim by saying instead that "every intelligent family has an insane member." [7] Film and radio adaptations [ edit ] Erica Jong Marries Kenneth Burrows". The New York Times. August 6, 1989. Archived from the original on November 13, 2013. For some women in the early 1970s, this was exhilarating; they’d found a novel whose female protagonist expressed what they were thinking and feeling about marriage, commitment, independence, sex. For others, it was trash. Finally, through an emotionally taxing and melodramatic letter that she never delivers to Bennett because he once again walks in and interrupts her, Isadora decides to leave with Adrian. The two of them drive through France, Germany, and Italy camping every night, drinking, and making love. Along the way, Isadora confides in Adrian the stories of her past relationships and first marriage. She reveals that she met her first husband, Brian, in college, where they connected over their mutual love of literature and ability to walk for hours while quoting poetry. That ended when they married and became a "bourgeois" couple not seeing each other, not having sex, disconnecting. Brian, a certified genius, began to fall into delusions, believing himself to be the second coming of Christ. He became violent, raped Isadora, and choked her close to death in one mental break. He was repeatedly hospitalized and eventually moved to a facility in Los Angeles in which Brian blamed her for everything, and they finally divorced.Phillips, Julia (1991). You'll Never Eat Lunch in This Town Again. Random House. pp. 136 et seq. ISBN 0-394-57574-1.

of Flying in print in the U.S. alone. Around the world there are 12.5 million copies in print in 27 languages. There were 117 psychoanalysts on the Pan Am flight to Vienna and I’d been treated by at least six of them. And married a seventh. God knows it was a tribute either to the shrinks’ ineptitude or my own glorious unanalyzability that I was now, if anything, more scared of flying than when I began my analytic adventures some thirteen years earlier. Isadora became an icon for women searching for freedom. I wanted to show how she dealt with motherhood, divorce, addiction, new relationships. Because she was so important to so many readers, I felt her story had to go on. This fivesome bounces along for a while, the widow and the fat woman keeping silent, the mother and grandmother talking to the child and each other about the food. And then the train screeches to a halt in a town called (perhaps) corleone. A tall languid-looking soldier, unshaven, but with a beautiful mop of hair, a cleft chin, and somewhat devilish, lazy eyes, enters the compartment, looks insolently around, sees the empty half-seat between the fat woman and the widow, and, with many flirtatious apologies, sits down. He is sweaty and disheveled but basically a gorgeous hunk of flesh, only slightly rancid from the heat. The train screeches out of the station. 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.Fleming, Mike Jr. (10 May 2013). "Erica Jong's Fear of Flying Getting a Movie after 40 Years in Print". Deadline Hollywood . Retrieved 1 April 2018. Erica Jong (née Mann; born March 26, 1942) is an American novelist, satirist, and poet, known particularly for her 1973 novel Fear of Flying. The book became famously controversial for its attitudes towards female sexuality and figured prominently in the development of second-wave feminism. According to The Washington Post, it has sold more than 20 million copies worldwide. [2] Early life and education [ edit ] The generation that came of age in the sixties married too young and without much of an idea of the burdens of marriage. Then we discovered how tough marriage is, how much compromise is required. Often we divorced our first spouses. Now our kids, who often grew up with divorced parents, are more realistic about marriage, more cautious about commitments. In general, that’s a good thing. They see marriage more realistically than we did. I think their chances of successful marriages are greater than ours were. Jong, Erica (May 18, 2008). "Hurrah for Gay Marriage". The Huffington Post . Retrieved October 18, 2013.

Upon arriving, Isadora meets the English Langian analyst Adrian Goodlove and is immediately hooked. Despite his gruff attitude and dirty sandals, he seems to provide what she desires but does not find in her own marriage: energy, excitement, desire, danger. They begin a poorly-veiled secret affair by dancing and kissing rather openly at conference events, staying out nights, and spending days by German pools. Adrian is wild and awakens things in Isadora she believed to be lost in the everydayness of her marriage although he is a rotten lay and often impotent. Fear of Flying – Erica Jong". Penguin Reading Guides. Penguin Books. Archived from the original on January 14, 2010 . Retrieved January 23, 2010. In the thirty years since Fear of Flying was published, the line between autobiography (or memoir) and fiction has blurred. Fear of Flying was at the forefront of this trend. But it was never a literal autobiography though it had autobiographical elements. It’s not unusual for a first novel to have such elements. Early on, some critics (like John Updike) saw similarities between my novel and Catcher in the Rye. That’s another book that uses an autobiographical New York City setting but also takes the protagonist on a journey that is mythical.

Success!

The most meaningful praise came from John Updike and Henry Miller, who both recognized, in very different ways, that I was trying to do something new for women in fiction. The rudeness wasn’t just in the sex, either; she is unbelievably rude about the Germans. I also loved the way she started sentences with “and”, as well as using slang and other things we’d been taught were capital crimes against good taste and grammar. This was my first encounter with a way of writing that was simultaneously posh and not posh. It's for this, partly, that I write. How can I know what I think unless I see what I write? My writing is the submarine or spaceship which takes me to the unknown worlds within my head. And the adventure is endless and inexhaustible. If I learn to build the right vehicle, then I can discover even more territories. And each new poem is a new vehicle, designed to delve a little deeper (or fly a little higher) than the one before.” Bowman, David (June 14, 2003). "The 'Sex Woman' ". Salon. Archived from the original on July 6, 2007 . Retrieved January 23, 2010. Parachutes & Kisses. New York: New American Library (1984) (UK ed. as Parachutes and Kisses: London: Granada, 1984.) [12]