I read this on my way to Germany long long ago so don't remember much about it except of course for the zipless fuku as the guy's name is in Japanese! (one short story I just read). I guess this book has been totally forgotten. On the way back I read Steppenwolf again.

Jong's right on the money: zipless flings aren't worth the love that's lost on them. But we zipless hippies of the seventies thought we had life aced!

We were the First Wave of the Love that swept around the world in that decade... But love don't pay the bills, and we were all broke at the end of it.

Reaganomics put an end to all that and ushered in an unkind, brutal kinda practicality. But we had to face the noise the hallucinating music of Woodstock had sired, and I was no exception.

A crash test dummy on that wave, I wasn't wearing my helmet when I hit rock bottom. And my brain damage was intensified in the funny farm I went to next.

Free Love sired a Weird kinda Werewolf in the chemistry of my noggin, but being in that First Wave, it was sink or swim time...

I sank.

Liberal psychiatry held my head there and counted to ten. For by the 70's morals were toast everywhere.

Luckily a higher power saw the murderous act, and pulled me out. My deus ex machina was real: I kid you not.

Sputtering, I revived.

Erica Jong, on the contrary, is saved from the whole crazy shooting match - all nine yards of it - by plain, market garden common sense. She returns to the beauty of the bland and is once more glad of it!

You know, in the year of Woodstock according to one song all you needed was love:

What for - to wreck your life in a hurry?

For now that and a buck fifty might not even buy you a coffee...

But for a brain fulla common cents your Sun will Shine Again!

Isadora Wing is an intellectual young poet. She is married (for the second time), but still wants a fling. One that is spontaneous and has no commitments. Her search for and experience of this fling are described with no-holds-barred frankness and irreverence.

Surprisingly, I was not offended by this. Jong has a way of writing that entertains; it is not off-putting (at least to me). I laughed instead of scowled.

This book was written in 1973 and is partially auto-biographical. Which part, I do not know!!

Glad I read it. Will probably try Jong again.

4 stars

It started out okay, even though it's awfully dated, language-wise, and the fact that it was seen as shocking and liberating when it was first released. I heard somewhere it was so revolutionary at the time, that when a man went to a girl's house and saw this book on her nightstand, he knew he was gonna get him some. Then I heard an interesting recent interview on NPR with Erica Jong about her new book, and thought I should check this one out.

But this is not even a novel, though it says it is; it's an overly-long,rambling and repetitive series of journal entries from a neurotic and self-obsessive nymphomaniac, who keeps dropping pretentious literary allusions and quotes throughout to point out how well read and intellectual she is, even though she doesn't really manifest that in her daily life. Not to mention the non-stop, annoying 70's pop psychology claptrap. Everybody's got an "analyst". I don't know why she bothers with the pretense of changing her narrator's name.

I was so relieved to toss it aside and leave it in my lobby after a hundred pages or so, because it was obvious it wasn't going to get any better or introduce any other kind of conflict. Maybe she gets more unapologetically sexual and promiscuous later...but by now I don't care. It's not daring or brave anymore. The tedious verbatim conversations she has with her husband and English lover go on and on and on. What do they even like about each other? Do they talk about anything else but their romantic and physical hang-ups and guilty obsessions?

Lei e gli altri (tanti)

Paura di volare, di Erica Jong, è un romanzo semi autobiografico del 1973, apparentemente lettura obbligata per le donne negli anni settanta/ottanta.

Cos'è la paura di volare per la Jong?

E' la paura di mettersi in gioco. E' come quando durante una discussione continui a non prendere nulla sul serio, ti limiti a deridere, a prendere le distanze, a criticare, non prendi posizione. Perché se prendi posizione poi sei attaccabile e ti devi difendere. E' molto più facile stare a guardare.

Volare significa significa portare avanti una relazione perché ci si crede, nonostante i se e i ma, nonostante i difetti difetti dell'altro.

Paura di volare è paura di essere grandi, di imboccare una strada e tenerla.

La protagonista di questo libro, alter ego della scrittrice stessa, sa cosa non vuole. Non vuole una vita ingabbiata da marito e figli. Non vuole sacrificare tutta la sua una vita unicamente per il lavoro. Non vuole un uomo che la condizioni.

Cosa vuole? Non lo sa, lo cerca. Lo cerca disperatamente, in modo esagerato, in modo scomposto, in modo discutibile. Lo cerca non mettendosi in discussione, ma principalmente mettendo in discussione tutti gli altri. Difficile trovare un equilibrio però, in questo modo.

Il risultato è a mio avviso un romanzo poco divertente (ironia per me assente), poco interessante (una noia mortale), poco utile (soprattutto a distanza di tempo). Diciamo un libro decisamente datato.

La relazione uomo donna negli ultimi anni è in evoluzione e ciò che era vero cinquant'anni fa non è più vero ora. L'equilibrio può essere trovato solo congiuntamente con la voglia di costruire qualcosa di nuovo. Una voglia che, in questo romanzo, non ho trovato.

There is something to be said about a writer that creates a relatable, all engrossing world within the pages of her book. For me, that is a marker of good writing – writing that speaks to me and allows me to be taken on a ride within the world of the protagonist. This creates a story that has me compulsively turning pages, eager to read more. A good writer creates a protagonist that leads herself to be a transparent guide to understand the world through her eyes, to relate her experiences with my own. Such was the case with Isadora and Ms. Jong’s work with this book.

Perhaps it is because I am also 29 and understand Isadora’s internal guilt of sexual right and wrong, the paradox of being an artist or being normal, the apparent craziness of wanting to be honest and free. I could see some of my ex relationships summed up as Adrians. The longing toward being normal summed up as Bennets. I understood her motivations for temporarily leaving Bennett to explore the depths of herself through her interactions with Adrian. Additionally, the chapters that explain the details of Isadora’s past, self analyzation and asides reinforced the engrossing scope of the book.

Like Anne Desclos / Pauline Réage, Nin and Miller (after I’ve had a few glasses of wine and feel adventurous enough to tackle), Ms. Jong created a classic that takes you on an provocative sensual awakening that leaves you changed.

This is a fearless work and truly, a great book.

You know those books that you wouldn't necessarily list as one of your favourites, but they leave such a lasting impression anyways? It's raunchy and slightly scandalous (or maybe more than slightly), but it's more so that because it was published in 1973. Which makes it incredibly interesting. And yet, it felt so modern and relatable towards today, which is especially intriguing because of how it was originally received. Sensationalized, but critics were still wondering, "women can write like this?" It was clever as well. The almost parody of the psychoanalytical approach made me laugh. But even with all of this, the most interesting fascinating part of the book was the connection I felt with the author's experience in Heidelberg. She talked about the greyness of the American military base, and I remember being on the base in 2013 and how depressing it was. She also wrote in-depth about the abandoned Nazi rally grounds far up on the side of the valley - how it is completely unmarked, not talked about (took her years to learn about it), the description of the exact journey to get up there, with the crumbling ruins from various time periods. I remembered all of what she was describing in vivid detail from when I was there, and even how my aunt had only learned about it after living there for three years. It was probably one of the most unique experiences I've ever had reading a book. Heidelberg, though lovely, isn't a particularly big city, but my experience there was so particularly similar to an experience of a writer who was there almost fifty years previously. The fact that I had such a personal connection made it as if the book transcends time. I guess books do.

Eons ago, I'd heard this book consisted wholely of sex & zipless fucks.

Surprise! Jong writes insightfully about the between-a-rock-and-a-hard-place that women resided in during the early 1970s, and at times still do. The protagonist isn't what I consider terribly likable, yet her bold intelligence, self-awareness, and wit carry her through myriad messy bits.

Jong states in the author interview at the end that she'd like this book to be considered a modern classic - which it is! - so I've marked it as such my Goodreads bookshelf.

The audiobook narrator is stupendous!

I imagine it's hard to read this out of context, but for as much as I've heard about its importance it was agonizing to read. Not sexy, not liberating, it feels like a story about a bunch of people whose lives are dominated by analysis/therapy. Just not interesting at all.

لا أحب هذا النوع من الروايات الإباحية
القراءة الأولى والاخير لك يا إيركا.

Zipless Fuck

My one and only one-night stand.

A review

to come

in more ways than one.

By the end of this book, I realized that i had enjoyed it. Minus the casual bits of racism and parts where i felt like the inner monologue really dragged on for too long, i appreciated how honest the book was and how introspective. Isadora’s line of thinking was structureless, sporadic, contradictory, bare, and natural.