Erica “Fearless” Jong

Erica Jong is described in a 1975 Time Magazine article, as “a pretty, blonde woman with an expansive smile.” The author “is giggly and ebullient, sprinkling her talk alternately with four-letter words and literary allusions.”  This description may have been written thirty-seven years ago, but it is just as apt today.  At first, the author appeared guarded, hidden behind her leather jacket and leopard-print scarf. She even seemed to have a twinge of condescension in her demeanor. However, this proved to be largely my own preconceived notions as, minutes into our discussion, she shed this persona entirely. She peeled off her jacket, removed her scarf and, in the ultimate transformative moment, removed her enormous sunglasses, appearing at once more relaxed and amicable.

Right from the beginning, Erica stood in blatant contrast to the other authors of the semester. With (to quote Jong herself) “dare I say penetrating” humor and guileless remarks, the author’s candor added new dimension to both her own novel and the course in general.  Many of the Jewish Lit Live authors have been charming, yet relatively pensive and introverted. In fact, these characteristics were becoming the status quo for our author visits. With a refreshing, forthright personality, Jong obliterated this trend. She spoke with a certain spark. Her sarcasm and emphatic nature teetered on the brink of hyperbole at times, but Jong ultimately grounded her statements in (at least some version of) reality. 

At times while reading Fear of Flying, I had sided with the Times article which deemed the book “ shapeless” with a “self-indulgent plot” and “too prone to phrases like ‘our mouths melted like liquid.’” I see now that perhaps Jong’s exaggerations and elaborate metaphors do not, like the article implies and like I claimed initially, replace the author’s authenticity. Instead, maybe the flowery, poetic prose mask the truth and challenge the reader to search a bit before they find it. This is similar to the way Jong seems to conduct herself; amidst her one-liners and amusing anecdotes, the author tucked profound insights and ideas.

When Pearl Abraham came to visit, she immediately drew a palpable distinction between herself and the protagonist of The Romance Reader. This was not the case for the Fear of Flying author. Both Jong and her character Isadora Wing are intriguing because of their inconsistencies; they have the ability to be simultaneously sardonic and sweet. Erica, like her protagonist, was a fountain of information. She bubbled with quotes from authors, book trivia, and historical facts. While she was open to every type of question, at times she veered from the subject at hand.  An aside would turn into a story or a simple answer would become a tangent to a more complex subject matter.  It was in these digressions that the Erica would unveil a gem of wisdom. Isadora’s confessions mimicked Jong’s responses. Both found their greatest stories once they swerved from an original path.

Although our class has been warned repeatedly to avoid categorizing an author and her protagonist as one in the same, Jong and Wing came as a unit. At times it seemed like the author had decided to become her book’s protagonist for the purpose of discussing Fear of Flying. The truth, however, is that Isadora and Erica actually are, mostly, one in the same; the lines between them are indelibly blurred. Some authors protest being compared to the characters they create. Erica embraces it, acknowledging that the book is "an interweaving of fiction with reality" (Time).

In the book that Jong openly admits is a “bit of a rant,” Isadora often speaks in melodramatic tones or confronts the sinister themes in life with wit and a touch of absurdity. Despite the subject matter, humor saturates the pages of Fear of Flying. Erica’s ability to be both side-splitting and serious may have been one of the reasons the mock-memoir had such success. It reads as both a ground-breaking and important novel which altered the feminist movement and a comic guilty pleasure.  The reason for this dichotomy is simple; Jong explained that “humor makes the medicine go down.” It allows us to addresses the harsh realities of the world in a way we can stomach. Fear of Flying gives women a way to approach taboo subjects. The important thing, Erica explained, is that when people laugh at the book, “they laugh at it with recognition.”

During the evening event, Erica described her growth as a writer but noted that the main themes in her work have stayed the same from her college years to today. When she read her story Kiss from the Sugar in My Bowl short story anthology, this became immediately apparent. With the same intimate tone seen in Fear of Flying, Jong once again confronted femininity and what the author called the  “psychological games that we play with ourselves and with each other.” She harkened back to the idea of the “zipless fuck,” expressing one woman’s desire to have sex without having to deal with the emotional repercussions.  Sex, fear, passion and inner turmoil, were just as pervasive in Kiss as they had been in her work three decades earlier.

While her advice to budding writers was in many ways similar to the tried and true advice we’ve heard before, her methods were also unique and innovative. When Jong described her work on her current book, she said that at times when she was writing she thought it might be a memoir. At other times she said it seemed like fiction. Sometimes, she believed it would be another Isadora Wing installment. This spoke volumes about Jong’s ability to make fiction and the real world interact.  Erica does not imagine new worlds or create characters out of nothing, as some authors do. Rather, she chooses to examine reality, at times contorting it to her liking. This is a perilous yet inspiring decision because it forces an author to take part in deep self-reflection, something Erica seems to know how to do. “You have to write for yourself” she assured our class, “write about the thing you feel a need to write about.”

"The Loves Of Isadora." Time 105.5 (1975): 93. Academic Search Complete. Web. 11 Apr. 2012.