Most of what Erica Jong, author of the controversial '70s novel Fear of Flying, is saying in The Devil at Large can be summed up as follows: "If we have trouble categorizing Miller's 'novels' and consequently underrate them, it is because we judge them according to some unspoken notion of 'the we...
I have always been a fan of Greek mythology. Although I'd never heard of Sappho until discovering this novel more than a year ago, I've come to appreciate the attention Jong gives to Sappho's life and poetry.The novel moves quickly and is just what I've come to expect from this author's writing. ...
I was in high school when Fear of Flying came out and reading it was a bit of a rite of passage. Most of us, lacking any actual sex scenes of our own, read about Isadora's without any informed idea as to their accuracy. I read Parachutes & Kisses in my mid-twenties, and it has a special spot in m...
First, "What do Women Want?" by Erica Jong. Jenni borrowed this from me ages ago and said it wasn't much good. She'd be right. I thought it was going to be quite feminist, but rather wasn't. The title page maybe should have had me guessing that-four pics, bread, roses, sex, power. Now, I suspect ...
I haven't read any of Jong's other books and I don't know I'd want to. Probably a strange thing to do; read her memoir of sorts and not really have idea of who she is or what she's written but recently I was going through my bookshelves and was disgusted at how many books I own that I haven't yet...
Diciottesimo secolo. Una donna sta scrivendo. È nella sua sfarzosa camera da letto. La sua identità è un mistero, così come la sua vita. La fama può diffonderne la grazia e magnificarne i lineamenti, eppure è penoso farne un ritratto che non ne esalti al contempo il carattere. Del resto, le voci ...
I went out and got this book because of a record. I was on college radio in 1995, and we got in this record from Vanessa Daou called "Zipless." I'll be honest, the only reason I checked it out is because she's on the cover and she's hot. But in the end, I really liked it. Her husband provides all...
Loved your blog -- and boy did you nail Jong as a shallow starf***er who's really only into name dropping rather than insight. Gertrude Stein really was more interesting, but see, Jong is only interested in how cool her characters are, not how cool the famous people are. They're just props!Having...
Interestingly, when I took this out of the library, there was a piece of paper taped on the inside jacket titled “readers comments”. Here’s what our anonymous guest critics had to say:“Great fun!” “Enjoyed every minute” “Unfortunately, rather boring” “Waste of time. Read ¼ and returned book.” “...
Bored with her marriage, a psychoanalyst’s wife embarks on a wild, life-changing affair After five years, Isadora Wing has come to a crossroads in her marriage: Should she and her husband stay together or get divorced? Accompanying her husband to an analysts’ conference in Vienna, she ditches hi...
I discovered Jong's 1973 debut FEAR OF FLYING in my basement at 14, and it was the most thrilling overnight-read of my life. I spied it on a forgotten shelf on a private quest for a “sex book,” which was any book in which sex was implied, discussed, or— please, lord— described. The front cover ...
Erica Jong--like Isadora Wing, her fictional doppelganger--was rich and famous, brainy and beautiful, and soaring high with erotica and marijuana in 1977, the year this book was first published. Erica/Isadora are the perfect literary and libidinous guides for those readers who want to learn about...
Frick...here I was saying I was not going to call my reviews "reviews" any more but "impressions"...and now I realize that I did not compose a review in the right place but in the "Comments" place...So I basically commented on my non-existent review...so, bass ackwards and cart before the horse, ...
This is not my normal reading fare - but I was 3 years old when Fear of Flying came out. As I got older, I’d heard about it. It was on the must read list, mostly because it was so controversial (although not in this day and age). In my 30's I decided to read it and found myself a familiar protago...
The Crew’s Grievance seem’d, in the Main, to be Whitehead’s Denial of a Trial to Llewelyn, for they knew he must be punish’d, but they felt all Trueborn Englishmen were entitl’d at least to a Trial by Jury, howsoe’er abridged and unfair it must necessarily be with Captain Whitehead acting as Judg...
12 CREATIVITY VERSUS MATERNITY . . . sitting at the table, thinking of the book I have written, the child that I have carried for years and years in the womb of the imagination as you carried in your womb the children you love . . . —JAMES JOYCE TO NORA JOYCE Only a man (or a woman who had nev...
—MURIEL RUKEYSER NOTEBOOK 1 June 1952 Mama and Papa came back today, cramping my style and spoiling Sally with marvelous smocked dresses which probably she will never wear. She's a tomboy. Loves work clothes, pants, sweatshirts, and those little blue smocks they use at "progressive" nursery schoo...
We have come from the bitter city to heal ourselves. We have come looking for a patch of beach not yet built into a fortress of real-estate greed, a coral reef not yet picked clean of buried treasure, not yet bare of birds. The first night in the Keys, I dreamed I was a bird soaring over a hilly ...
Why? Probably because I was terrified of writing my next novel. I have been working on what I call, in my notebooks, “novel number nine” for more years than I want to admit. I start it, write two hundred or so pages and let myself be tempted into another project—a novel about Sappho in ancient Gr...
Brassaï. Henry Miller: Grandeur Nature. Gallimard, Paris, 1975. ——. The Secret Paris of the Thirties. Pantheon Books, New York, 1976.Charney, Maurice. Sexual Fiction. Methuen, London and New York, 1981. de Grazia, Edward. Girls Lean Back Everywhere. Random House, New York 1992. Dearborn, Mary. Th...
I was young, younger than I am now. I was twentysomething, and beautiful. Yes, I say that about myself because it is true. My skin was smooth and unlined. My body was unblemished, fit from Pilates and regular shots of liquid oxygen. I moved with certainty from my strengthened core. My hair, a nat...
—Bessie Smith I had never qualified at a meeting. I had seen others do it—tried to hear them and not to hear them—but I was terrified to make that leap. Now Emmie thought I should make that leap. I hadn’t even been sober a month. I wasn’t qualified to qualify. Nonetheless, one day I went to a ...
She has won many literary awards: the Bess Hokin Prize from Poetry magazine (also awarded to Sylvia Plath and W. S. Merwin); a National Endowment for the Arts award; the first Fernanda Pivano Award in Italy (named for the critic who introduced Ernest Hemingway, Allen Ginsberg, and Erica Jong hers...
The summer of a dormouse. -BYRON Letters & Journals The great thing about the dead, they make space. —John UPDIKE Rabbit Is Rich Patch grief with proverbs. -MIGUEL DE CERVANTES WHEN did their present troubles begin? Have you ever noticed that the contemporary antihero or antiheroine alway...