Updike, in the more sensible bits of his critique, compared this to Portnoy’s Complaint, but it also had roots in The Adventures of Augie March and – as the author herself liked to point out – in the picaresque novels of the 18th century.

Isadora became an icon for women searching for freedom. I wanted to show how she dealt with motherhood, divorce, addiction, new relationships. Because she was so important to so many readers, I felt her story had to go on. There were 117 psychoanalysts on the Pan Am flight to Vienna and I’d been treated by at least six of them. And married a seventh. God knows it was a tribute either to the shrinks’ ineptitude or my own glorious unanalyzability that I was now, if anything, more scared of flying than when I began my analytic adventures some thirteen years earlier. The most meaningful praise came from John Updike and Henry Miller, who both recognized, in very different ways, that I was trying to do something new for women in fiction.It took me years to learn to sit at my desk for more than two minutes at a time, to put up with the solitude and the terror of failure, and the godawful silence and the white paper. And now that I can take it . . . now that I can finally do it . . . I'm really raring to go. Mead, Rebecca (April 14, 2008). "The Canon: Still Flying". The New Yorker . Retrieved January 23, 2010. Megan's Two Houses: a story of adjustment; illustrated by Freya Tanz (1984; West Hollywood, CA: Dove Kids, 1996) How was Isadora shaped by her mother and sisters? Do you think her mother’s advice to eschew the ordinary has caused her pain or happiness? Isadora seems to feel most free when she’s experiencing sexual pleasure and when she’s writing. What’s the connection between these two aspects of her world?

Five years of marriage had made me itchy for all those things: itchy for men, and itchy for solitude. Itchy for sex and itchy for the life of a recluse. I knew my itches were contradictory—and that made things even worse. I knew my itches were un-American—and that made things stil l worse. It is heresy in America to embrace any way of life except as half of a couple. Solitude is un-American. It may be condoned in a man—especially if he is a ‘glamorous bachelor’ who ‘dates starlets’ during a brief interval between marriages. But a woman is always presumed to be alone as a result of abandonment, not choice. And she is treated that way: as a pariah. There is simply no dignified way for a woman to live alone. Oh, she can get along financially perhaps (though not nearly as well as a man), but emotionally she is never left in peace. Her friends, her family, her fellow workers never let her forget that her husbandlessness, her childlessness—her sel f ishness , in short—is a reproach to the American way of life. Much later, I found out that Fear of Flying was a classic novel of second-wave feminism, which is to say it was derided by lots of first-wavers as trivial, solipsistic and too sex-oriented to be considered truly political. None of this concerned me. The writing was furiously good. It had a desperate edge to it, and the force of something that needed to be written. I still remember the final line of the first chapter, which I thought hit exactly the right note between pretentious, pleading, self-dramatising and self-knowing. It was the perfect layup for the novel that followed: “Consider this tapestry, my life.”

Retailers:

In May 2013 it was announced [10] that a screenplay version by Piers Ashworth had been green-lighted by Blue-Sky Media, with Laurie Collyer directing. So many novels —Anna Karenina and Madame Bovary are but two examples —punish female sexuality with death. I found myself fantasizing that Isadora’s answer to her dilemma would be suicide. I think I was influenced by the cultural archetype in which women die for sexual passion. But then I realized I had to transform that archetype. I thought it was important to grant women the possibility of passion without draconian punishment. Not that passion is easy or without conflict. But death seems an excessive punishment. As I read the notebook, I began to be drawn into it as into a novel…. And then a curious revelation started to dawn. I stopped blaming myself; it was that simple. People always ask how I got the guts to write such an intimate book. I don’t really know the answer. I was driven to write it. I wanted to document all the things that go on in a woman’s mind. I wanted to get the female psyche down on paper. And I must because the most frequent comment I get about the book is: You read my mind. The harshest criticism has always been that Isadora is self-absorbed. I think our culture says that women who wonder about their own fulfillment aren’t doing what women should do —which is take care of everyone else. We don’t seem to criticize male protagonists for probing their own psyches. But women are held to a different standard. We are supposed to be caregivers both emotionally and psychically. It’s very hard to break out of that mindset. But how can women become important writers if they are thought to be unfeminine when they look into the female mind?

Is this a book only a young writer could write? Is there anything in the book that embarrasses you now? You went on to write two more books about Isadora Wing. What makes a character someone you want to revisit? The political battle over women's bodies today has also renewed the book's relevance in Jong's mind, constituting a 40th anniversary redistribution of the book. "All these states are introducing crazy anti-abortion rules... passing laws that they know are unconstitutional, shutting down Planned Parenthood clinics, and making it very hard...to get birth control." She cites those types of political moves as a regression from the progress set out by the Sexual Revolution. She also still feels that female authors are "second-class citizens in the publishing world," as Jennifer Weiner says in the introduction to the 40th anniversary edition: "it's very hard, if you write about women and women's struggles, to be seen as important with a capital 'I'." [5] Character models [ edit ] A graduate of Barnard College and Columbia University's Graduate Faculties where she received her M.A. in 18th Century English Literature, Erica Jong also attended Columbia's graduate writing program where she studied poetry with Stanley Kunitz and Mark Strand. In 2007, continuing her long-standing relationship with the university, a large collection of Erica’s archival material was acquired by Columbia University’s Rare Book & Manuscript Library, where it will be available to graduate and undergraduate students. Ms. Jong plans to teach master classes at Columbia and also advise the Rare Book Library on the acquisition of other women writers’ archives. Jong supports LGBT rights and legalization of same-sex marriage. She says, "Gay marriage is a blessing not a curse. It certainly promotes stability and family. And it's certainly good for kids." [11] Bibliography [ edit ] Erica Jong visiting Barnes & Noble in New York. Jennifer Weiner and Erica Jong at the Miami Book Fair International 2013 Fiction [ edit ]Isadora struggles to be her own woman in a man’s world. How do you think things have changed for women since the 1960s and how are they the same? Isadora says relationships are always unequal, that the ones who love us most we love the least and vice versa. Do you agree? Some readers think Isadora has a casual approach to marriage. How does her marriage reflect your own views?