[.ca] Fear of Flying (ISBN 0061149055)

**Life-Changing For Me**:
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!

This is an exceptional woman:
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.

So what?:
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.

Not Afraid Anymore:
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!

Isadora Wing's Zipless Funds:
"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.