Fear of Flying As a woman in my 30s who wasn’t even born…
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Fear of Flying
As a woman in my 30s who wasn’t even born when *Fear of Flying* was published, I’m finding it surprisingly difficult to know how to judge it. I’m glad to have discovered it at this late date, and it feels to me like a genuine “turn-on,” but I’m not entirely sure what creates that effect, especially when so much of its sexual content is no longer shocking. It was given to me by my mother, who still thinks of it as positively risqué, which is already weird enough, but I can’t deny that I’ve kept it on my bedside table for weeks now, dipping back into it when I’m alone, almost at random.
Part of what fascinates me is that the eroticism seems to come from somewhere other than explicitness. Is it Isadora’s voice? Her self-awareness? The way the novel grants a woman permission to think and fantasize without apology? Or am I just responding to the fact that it still feels surprisingly, well, sexy and alive on the page?
So I’m curious: does the novel still stand on its own as literature, or is its reputation inseparable from how radical it was in 1973? And for those of us who came to it decades later, does it work for the same reasons, or for entirely different ones?
#entertainment
source
As a woman in my 30s who wasn’t even born when *Fear of Flying* was published, I’m finding it surprisingly difficult to know how to judge it. I’m glad to have discovered it at this late date, and it feels to me like a genuine “turn-on,” but I’m not entirely sure what creates that effect, especially when so much of its sexual content is no longer shocking. It was given to me by my mother, who still thinks of it as positively risqué, which is already weird enough, but I can’t deny that I’ve kept it on my bedside table for weeks now, dipping back into it when I’m alone, almost at random.
Part of what fascinates me is that the eroticism seems to come from somewhere other than explicitness. Is it Isadora’s voice? Her self-awareness? The way the novel grants a woman permission to think and fantasize without apology? Or am I just responding to the fact that it still feels surprisingly, well, sexy and alive on the page?
So I’m curious: does the novel still stand on its own as literature, or is its reputation inseparable from how radical it was in 1973? And for those of us who came to it decades later, does it work for the same reasons, or for entirely different ones?
#entertainment
source
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