Enjoyed Fear of Flying enough to read this follow up. A sequel I'm which the second book is better than the first. More mature, more well written more thoughtful and more fun. I did read the edition with the postscript by Anthony Burgess. Everything you need to know about this book and Erica Jong is there. Great read. Great analysis by Burgess.

If the words “cunt,” “clit,” or “cock” make you uncomfortable, you will be utterly desensitized by the end of Erica Jong’s How to Save Your Own Life. I considered counting the number of times “cunt” appeared (perhaps a dozen times per chapter) but I eventually gave up.

About seven years ago, I read Jong’s first novel, Fear of Flying, featuring the feminist and lustful Isadora Wing. It’s a wonderful novel about the sexual lives of women in the sixties, hard-hitting commentary on the politics of marriage and relationships. How to Save Your Own Life is the second installment in the story and, holy crap, what a disappointment. Written in the seventies, with a distinct nostalgia for the sexual freedoms of “bisexual chic” and orgies, we join Isadora once again as she grapples with the ending of her marriage.

Isadora has become truly nauseating, a bourgeois writer with nothing better to do than complain about her husband, have countless affairs, and go on incessantly about the guilt. Most of the characters in the entire book are incredibly difficult to like. And yet, I kept turning the pages. I wanted to see if she could actually “save her own life.” Honestly, I was more curious to know what Erica Jong’s interpretation of the phrase would be.

I’m sad to say that Jong’s idea of saving one’s life means jumping from one dysfunctional relationship to another. For nearly three hundred pages, Isadora laments about her cold and unresponsive husband, Bennett. He doesn’t understand her, or her “art,” her “writing,” or her sexual appetite. Sure, he’s a jackass. I can’t argue there. Indeed, he’s dismissive, patronizing, and surprisingly unfaithful. But – so is she! Isadora doesn’t see any fault in her own character, which is amazing considering the amount of guilt she experiences. Perhaps it’s a strange grand of virgin guilt, and it’s somehow unattached to destructive behavior. Instead she wallows extensively in her anger, but doesn’t do anything about it. And by the time she actually finds love, her idea of the concept is so fu*ked up, it’s impossible to see Josh (husband number two) as the savior. He’s just another Bennett, in a different form.

Isadora appears to be doomed, sexually and romantically. While the social climate of gender politics certainly comes into play here, she’s convinced herself that Josh is the soul mate she’s been searching for. Unfortunately, in the Epilogue, we get a glimpse of their married life and – sweaty, Herculean sex aside - we come to realize there is something wrong with the picture Jong paints in the final pages. Horribly wrong. They play an odd game together, a power struggle of the most masochistic kind.

Perhaps this is simply the environment of marriage, and no matter how many times you escape one demented relationship, your fate is to fall into another. In David Finch’s interpretation of Gone Girl, all relationships are apparently doomed to become a power struggle, reduced to nothing but mind games between people who used to love each other. Maybe we are hardwired to play these games. That could be the case here, but I don’t think so.

The divide between Isadora/Bennett and Isadora/Josh is not nearly as wide as she might think. But, by jumping from one man to the other, she never has to make a decision one way or another. She doesn’t have to worry about being alone, nor does she have to sacrifice her sexuality, which seems to have been so intertwined with her identity that losing it would likely result in losing her mind.
To Jong’s credit, this book made me think. It made me angry, and frustrated and outright annoyed. It seems insane to become one-hundred percent dependent on the experience of our bodies to keep us happy. Regardless, the prose is painfully honest. Isadora speaks for the women of a generation who felt trapped by the social expectations of their culture, and shamed by any desire deemed “unladylike.”

However, a book like How to Save Your Own Life doesn’t work very well in 2014. It feels like Jong was trying too hard to connect the dots for us. We didn’t need to be hit over the head with a steel pipe to understand her argument. Throwing around the word “cunt” hundreds of times doesn’t make your reader see the issue more clearly. Even if the word had been “rainbow,” overuse doesn’t do anyone any favours. Maybe Jong was trying to re-appropriate the term from something traditionally offensive to powerful, feminist sexual vocabulary; a noble effort, but ultimately troublesome and completely lost on me.

I received this book as an ARC from Netgalley.
Isadora Wing, the 1970's, NYC... What could be better?
Except it could definitely be better
I read FoF years ago (and I recommend reading it before reading this. I recommend reading FoF even if you don't read this.). Isadora Wing is back and not better than ever. There might be elements of the book that resonate. I myself can't relate to a rich woman going about her daily life jet setting to Europe and the West Coast at the drop of a dime. But as a woman, I can definitely relate to how a relationship can gradually disintegrate until there is nothing left. Isadora is searching for something she might have found. We follow along as she meets quite cast of characters. She's restless, she's bored and she's been betrayed by her husband. But I found the "character" to be unlikable and selfish in this sequel. The 70's was a hedonistic time. That is captured fairly well. I raced through it as it is a fast paced read. I laughed out loud a few times. But didn't feel any particular way at the end.

This book is incredibly positive, and I really liked the direction in which Erica Jong took her character. The development seemed logical, and necessary. I usually have arguments with the "why" of passionate romances. I did in Fear of Flying. This one, I didn't. In some ways, Isadora seemed less mature than in the first novel, but I think that was a reflection of the love that was introduced here.

Just again, very positive and happy. You'll whip through it in less than three days. I took 24 hours.

To celebrate International Women's Day How to Save Your Own Life by Erica Jong has been republished by Agora Books. Originally published in the 1970's, this book follows Isadora Wing's story and her trials and tribulations of love set against the glamorous backdrop of Hollywood.

Navigating daily life we follow Isadora as she tackles work, friends, lovers and a bore of a husband. NYC in the 1970's and apparently everyone has a shrink, an avocado plant and an affair. Isadora is no different.

This well-written character driven book is witty, sad and shocking in equal measure.

Thank you to @agorabooksldn for my chance to be on the book tour and for my #gifted digital copy of the book.

I normally read books twice or three times before I feel comfortable reviewing them, but this book was so bad that I did not want to reread it beyond the first few chapters.

Yet, I think that Erica Jong was attempting to write doggerel for this book, and she deserves accolades for succeeding.

The fifth chapter of How to Save Your Own Life is the novel's worst, but is the best example of to what I was referring in my second paragraph. In chapter five, Isadora goes from friend to friend and lover to lover to complain about Bennett, the psychiatrist whom she desires leaving after she finds out that Bennett cheated on her while she and he lived in Germany. In the most repetitive, annoying way possible, Isadora reiterates the same laments: Bennett was inhumanly cold, his affairs were hypocritical in comparison to hers, etc. Jong makes me feel like someone listening to a recent divorcee. Yes, his or her complaints are cliché, repetitive, and melodramatic, but, if I were going through the internal pain to which divorce (or the thought of it) leads, then, yes, I too would like someone to listen to my tedious grievances.

I do not recommend the book to anyone other than those who want to hear how people who are getting divorced sound. Are there any aspiring marriage counselors who read my reviews?

So many negative reviews of this book just focus on the obvious. Too much sex. Too many dirty words. Heroine breaks all the rules, yet never takes any chances. Nothing is ever at stake for her, emotionally or even financially. She claims to want love, but expects to be as promiscuous as she wants without committing to anyone or anything. All those points are valid.

But there's a lot more going on than that. On about page three of the novel Isadora receives a "fan letter" which she reprints in full, complete with misspellings. It's supposed to be from some poor little nobody out in Kansas or someplace, and she's supposed to be utterly thrilled and liberated by reading about Isadora's erotic adventures. But what comes across isn't sisterhood. It's condescension. Erica Jong has to let you know that the "little people" are on her side -- but she also makes it very, very clear that they *are* the little people. (Making the woman misspell a simple word like "nice" was an especially cheap shot.)

The point is, this cause Isadora is fighting for isn't feminism. It's class privilege, and it stinks. This is a rich girl from Manhattan who gets fan letters from Kansas (yeah, sure) but she wouldn't be caught dead in Harlem. Nobody from Harlem is sending her any fan letters, either! The reason feminism generated so much backlash at the time, and still does to this day, is because the leaders are all desperate to hold onto social and educational privilege they don't deserve. In Erica Jong's day feminists pretended to care about working-class women, even though they didn't really pretend very hard. But today they don't even pretend to care.

And that's why so many poor white women voted for Trump.

I read 'fear of flying ' a few years back now chancing upon it in a charity shop for a small sum of money...in honesty I wasnt expecting a lot I kind of had it pigeon holed as maybe a smutty light read with no real worth..sort of maybe fifty shades ish....I think years of growing up and seeing book club warnings of it being for adults only kind of led me to believe this...anyhow I read it enjoyed it and in truth found it more philosophical than shocking.
The relevance of the above is due to this book being a continuation of episodes featuring the main character Isadora Wing...Isadora seems in a darker place this time around in a lifeless marriage and surrounded by folks who either want a piece of her success or sycophants who don't seem to understand her book..there's that plus ..the analysts.
in truth I enjoyed this book somewhat less the main character (maybe due to circumstances) seems more lost and at times hypocritical this time around..as she has found her partner had a long term affair..her prior and indeed current infidelities within the book seem to be viewed by her as OK though,in fairness this is addressed within the book but at times the character seems overtly self involved and rather whiny.
All told however I would read more episodes or books by Erica Jong they have their worth and at times to me recalled Henry Miller.

This book charts the daily life of Erica Jong's alter ego, Isadora Wing, as she navigates her way through a maze of work, fans, friends, lovers, and an emotional vacuum of a husband. This is NYC in the 70's, and apparently everyone has a shrink, an avocado plant, and an affair. Isadora is no exception. Jong's writing is witty, candid and fast-paced. She lets you peek into her (I assume it's hers) world of hedonism, confusion and boredom. It's alternately hilarious (I actually laughed out loud 3 times), shocking (blatant adultery, drug abuse, orgies), and sad (divorce, disappointment, shattered dreams).

I highly recommend it to most of the women I know, some specific men, and ALL of my neurotic Jewish girlfriends.

Isadora emprende el vuelo es el título y es una mentira pues aunque milagrosamente supera su miedo a volar, continúa siendo una mujer dependiente de tener una pareja y nunca abre totalmente sus alas.

Confunde libertinaje sexual con libertad, el libro comienza muy bien dando continuidad a Miedo a volar.

Se puede dividir en tres el libro al inicio cuenta qué pasó después de volver con Bennet su marido.

La segunda parte que pasó con su primera novela publicada.

La última parte cambia radicalmente el estilo de la novela y de escritura volviéndose soft porn sin razón ni añadiendo algo importante a la historia.

El final es lo peor me decepciono totalmente parece que se le acabo la cinta a su máquina de escribir (se publicó 1977).

Entiendo porqué fue un betseller pero me quedó a deber con esos últimos capítulos y terrible final, pero si vale la pena leerlo tiene varias gotas de sabiduría.

I recently bought this book in paperback with fancy color cover after a decade of borrowing from my writing mentor the hardback with a black and white dust jacket.

The book is a straight forward tale about a woman who finally decides to recognize that her marriage has failed, that her husband is a bad fuck and a lousy person, and that only she can decide what she wants to do, or as LouEllen aka Eddie, paraphrases and says to me, "Get off the razor blade and stop cutting your pretty cunt."

LouEllen loaned it to me to read when I was going through the first of a series of bad relationships with men who were okay in bed and that was the best thing going for them (just okay and only okay). It was a manual of sorts for me and certainly helped guide me to making swifter decisions that have always been dead on since. Never again will I sit on the razorblade cutting my pretty-

It's a more interesting read than Fear of Flying, which I find a little dull. Given the erection Fruits and Vegetables gave me when I first read those poems, this was reassured me that sex, love, marriage like writing and anything else worth pursing is trial and error and a whole lot of practice.

In French, when you want to address an elder you will use 'vous', which grammatically is the same as when you are addressing second-person plural. In English, YOU, is plural and singular, and in Croatian is the same as in French. We use 'vi' as a respect and as second person plural, and 'ti' for second person singular.

What am I trying to say? I am addressing Erica Jong with 'vous' because I don’t want to be disrespectful. We don’t really have common topics but there is a certain understanding between us – part of it being age gap and me being accustomed to zipless fuck. We were eyeing each other, we were aware of each other but we kept our distance and showed only our greatest politeness and manners. And that is perfectly fine and enough.