Fear of Flying

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Even more to the point: the woman (unhappy though she knows her married friends to be) can never let he r sel f alone. She lives as if she were constantly on the brink of some great fulfillment. As if she were waiting for Prince Charming to take her away ‘from all this.’ All what? The solitude of living inside her own soul? The certainty of being herself instead of half of something else?

He served from 1961 until 1965 with the 9th Tactical Fighter Squadron at Spangdahlem Air Base in Germany flying the F-100 and F-105. In addition to flying, he did accident investigation and developed a safety device for the F-100. Erica Jong grew up on Manhattan’s Upper West Side and attended Barnard College, where she majored in writing and literature, and she later received her M.A. in eighteenth-century English literature from Columbia University. She left halfway through the Ph.D. program to write her groundbreaking first novel, Fear of Flying, which went on to sell 20 million copies worldwide. She is also the author of many award-winning books of poetry, novels, and non-fiction including Sappho’s Leap, Fanny, Any Woman’s Blues, and Fear of Fifty. She lives in New York City and Connecticut. Her work has had a major impact on women’s lives all over the 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.Umm I know I have anxiety and fear of flying. I don’t need to read about why other things didn’t work. Maybe a chapter or a couple of paragraphs but this seems to go on throughout the book. The decision was, of course, further complicated by analysis—the basic assumption of analysis being (and never mind all the evidence to the contrary) that you’re getting better all the time. The refrain goes something like this:

A great book, with a warm and funny heroine…It’s simply fun to read the adventures of the deeply likable Isadora Wing, and it’s sexy as hell.”Implying that he might just find someone sweeter, prettier, smarter, a better cook, and maybe even due to inherit piles of bread from her father.) Be kind to your behind.”“Blush like you mean it.”“Love your hair.”“Want a better body? We’ll rearrange the one you’ve got.”“That shine on your face should come from him, not from your skin.”“You’ve come a long way, baby.”“How to score with every male in the zodiac.”“The stars and sensual you.”“To a man they say Cutty Sark.”“A diamond is forever.”“If you’re concerned about douching . . .”“Length and coolness come together.”“How I solved my intimate odor problem.”“Lady be cool.”“Every woman alive loves Chanel No. 5.”“What makes a shy girl get intimate?”“ Femme, we named it after you.”

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?Great guide to connect why anyone has a fear or uncertainty to flight. The read details individuals' base of fear, the psychology in it, and how the magic of aviation works to this day.