Fear of Flying by Erica Jong
New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston: 1973
336 pages
Before I read Fear of Flying I heard it described as (1) a mere piece of pornography and (2) a woman’s liberation tract. It is both of those things, but neither of those elements is what keeps the book going. It is amusing to read because of the sparkling brilliance of the writing. It is full of clever, unexpected comparisons and descriptions, allusions to all sorts of things (recognition of which naturally flatters the reader’s ego), flashes of humor, bizarre situations. The protagonist pokes fun at her family, her husband, her former husband, her numerous sexual partners, the world around her, and herself. The writing sustained the book for me.
The “story” is easily told: a young woman hops from bed to bed while trying to “find herself.” Does she want love? Does she want marriage? Marriage to whom? Her husband? Someone else? What is love, anyway, and is it enough? Does she want a career? Can she have it all? Why is she afraid to take charge of herself? The only certainty through all this is that she wants sex.
As a woman’s liberation tract Fear of Flying didn’t seem to me to be particularly significant. It raises a lot of the standard “woman’s issues” that have been in the air since the 1960’s, but it doesn’t go anywhere in particular with them. The pornography is certainly essential to the book-I can’t imagine it would have been as commercially successful as it was if it had contained fewer obscenities-but it is not the sort of pornography that is intended to arouse or stimulate or make a statement about love and sex. It is not De Sade or D. H. Lawrence or Deep Throat. It is more reminiscent of Rabelais-but a Rabelais for whom sex was not just one of many topics to be approached in a light-heated way but was instead a constant obsession. Indeed, the preoccupation with sex and the gratuitous obscenity get a bit in the way of what I presume is supposed to be the serious theme of the book. It dilutes and makes less convincing the tentative resolution of her difficulties finding herself that the protagonist reaches toward the end (though the resolution is admittedly supposed to be tentative, not conclusive).
I enjoyed the book, mostly for the writing, but I’m unlikely to read it again. It is suitable for getting a cheap copy to read on the plane and discard on arrival.
336 pages
Before I read Fear of Flying I heard it described as (1) a mere piece of pornography and (2) a woman’s liberation tract. It is both of those things, but neither of those elements is what keeps the book going. It is amusing to read because of the sparkling brilliance of the writing. It is full of clever, unexpected comparisons and descriptions, allusions to all sorts of things (recognition of which naturally flatters the reader’s ego), flashes of humor, bizarre situations. The protagonist pokes fun at her family, her husband, her former husband, her numerous sexual partners, the world around her, and herself. The writing sustained the book for me.
The “story” is easily told: a young woman hops from bed to bed while trying to “find herself.” Does she want love? Does she want marriage? Marriage to whom? Her husband? Someone else? What is love, anyway, and is it enough? Does she want a career? Can she have it all? Why is she afraid to take charge of herself? The only certainty through all this is that she wants sex.
As a woman’s liberation tract Fear of Flying didn’t seem to me to be particularly significant. It raises a lot of the standard “woman’s issues” that have been in the air since the 1960’s, but it doesn’t go anywhere in particular with them. The pornography is certainly essential to the book-I can’t imagine it would have been as commercially successful as it was if it had contained fewer obscenities-but it is not the sort of pornography that is intended to arouse or stimulate or make a statement about love and sex. It is not De Sade or D. H. Lawrence or Deep Throat. It is more reminiscent of Rabelais-but a Rabelais for whom sex was not just one of many topics to be approached in a light-heated way but was instead a constant obsession. Indeed, the preoccupation with sex and the gratuitous obscenity get a bit in the way of what I presume is supposed to be the serious theme of the book. It dilutes and makes less convincing the tentative resolution of her difficulties finding herself that the protagonist reaches toward the end (though the resolution is admittedly supposed to be tentative, not conclusive).
I enjoyed the book, mostly for the writing, but I’m unlikely to read it again. It is suitable for getting a cheap copy to read on the plane and discard on arrival.