| Fear of Flying | |
|---|---|
1st edition cover |
|
| Author(s) | Erica Jong |
| Cover artist | Judith Seifer |
| Country | United States |
| Language | English |
| Genre(s) | Novel |
| Publisher | Holt, Rinehart and Winston |
| Publication date | 1973 (1st edition) |
| Media type | Print (hardback) |
| Pages | 340 pp (hardback edition) |
| ISBN | ISBN 0-03-010731-8 (hardback edition) |
| OCLC Number | 618357 |
| Dewey Decimal | 813/.5/4 |
| LC Classification | PZ4.J812 Fe PS3560.O56 |
| Followed by | How to Save Your Own Life |
Fear of Flying is a 1973 novel by Erica Jong, which became famously controversial for its attitudes towards female sexuality, and figured in the development of second-wave feminism.
The novel is narrated by its protagonist, Isadora Zelda White Stollerman Wing, a twenty-nine-year-old poet who has published two books of poetry. On a trip to Vienna with her second husband, Isadora decides to indulge her sexual fantasies with another man. In this context, a "zipless fuck" refers to a sexual encounter with a stranger that one will never meet again, and no one one knows will ever know that it happened.
The book resonated with women who felt stuck in unfulfilled marriages,[1] and it has sold more than 20 million copies worldwide. Jong has denied that the novel is autobiographical but admits that it has autobiographical elements.[2]
Despite Jong's claims to the contrary, Isadora Wing's origins in fact may be more than a sum of autobiographical elements. In 2008 Jong appeared at a conference to celebrate Fear of Flying as a feminist classic. An article recounting the conference in The New Yorker, described how Jong’s sister, Suzanna Daou, née Mann, identified herself as the reluctant model for Isadora Wing, calling the book “an exposé of my life when I was living in Lebanon”. Daou angrily denounced the book, linking the book's characters to those in her own life and taking her sister to task for taking cruel liberties with them - especially Daou's husband. In the book, Isadora Wing's sister Randy is married to Pierre, who makes a pass at both Wing and her two other sisters. Jong dismissed her sister's claim, saying instead that “every intelligent family has an insane member".[3]
In the novel, Jong coined the term "zipless fuck", which soon entered the popular lexicon.[4] A "zipless fuck" is defined as a sexual encounter for its own sake, without emotional involvement or commitment or any ulterior motive, between two previously unacquainted persons.
The zipless fuck is absolutely pure. It is free of ulterior motives. There is no power game . The man is not "taking" and the woman is not "giving." No one is attempting to cuckold a husband or humiliate a wife. No one is trying to prove anything or get anything out of anyone. The zipless fuck is the purest thing there is. And it is rarer than the unicorn. And I have never had one.
— Erica Jong, Fear of Flying (1973)
Jong goes on to explain that it is "zipless" because "when you came together, zippers fell away like rose petals, underwear blew off in one breath like dandelion fluff. For the true ultimate zipless A-1 fuck, it was necessary that you never got to know the man very well."
The term has seen a resurgence in popularity as third-wave feminism authors and theorists continue to use it while reinterpreting their approach to sexuality.