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A review by clayjs
Fear of Flying by Erica Jong
5.0
I read this book because I thought for some reason it would be important to read this book. I thought maybe it would have something interesting to say about femininity or sex or second-wave feminism, and it kind of did, but I didn't really expect to really enjoy it.
The first half didn't really convince me, and I didn't really know if it was going anywhere, or how it was going to get there, and I put it down for a few months. It suffered from being not-the-kind-of-book-I-usually-read, which made it even more difficult for me to love it, but somehow it broke through.
Fear of Flying is one of those rare books from one of those rare voices that knows what language is. Erica Jong understands that the English language is malleable and delicious and charming and funny, and once you see it, you feel it in every line. Her prose is rich with allusion and quotation (in the jazz sense, where little strands of of other melodies drift through hers, deepening and broadening its originality and fixing it among the traditions of thought that helped to conceive it). The story is rich with thinly-veiled autobiography and symbolism. It's truth smashed into a novel. It's about what it means to be a woman at the height of feminism, but also about what it means to be a person who's not sure she's really human in a sea of voices shouting at her to assert her humanity. This is a very successful feminist novel, but it's a lot more than that. As a man, I found it amusing and edifying, brave and timid, but completely, unflinchingly honest in its worry that it isn't being honest enough. It is about what it means to be a creator in the honest act of creation, and I appreciate that.
The first half didn't really convince me, and I didn't really know if it was going anywhere, or how it was going to get there, and I put it down for a few months. It suffered from being not-the-kind-of-book-I-usually-read, which made it even more difficult for me to love it, but somehow it broke through.
Fear of Flying is one of those rare books from one of those rare voices that knows what language is. Erica Jong understands that the English language is malleable and delicious and charming and funny, and once you see it, you feel it in every line. Her prose is rich with allusion and quotation (in the jazz sense, where little strands of of other melodies drift through hers, deepening and broadening its originality and fixing it among the traditions of thought that helped to conceive it). The story is rich with thinly-veiled autobiography and symbolism. It's truth smashed into a novel. It's about what it means to be a woman at the height of feminism, but also about what it means to be a person who's not sure she's really human in a sea of voices shouting at her to assert her humanity. This is a very successful feminist novel, but it's a lot more than that. As a man, I found it amusing and edifying, brave and timid, but completely, unflinchingly honest in its worry that it isn't being honest enough. It is about what it means to be a creator in the honest act of creation, and I appreciate that.