It was 1973. Richard Nixon was mired in Watergate, the Vietnam War was winding down, and a young poet named Erica Jong decided to publish a book that would basically set the literary world on fire. Fear of Flying by Erica Jong didn't just sell millions of copies; it shifted the entire conversation about what women were allowed to want. Honestly, it’s kind of wild to look back at the outrage it caused. People weren't just shocked; they were offended.
Isadora Wing, the protagonist, is a dreamer. She’s also a bit of a mess. She’s an intellectual, a poet, and—at the start of the book—a woman trapped in her second marriage to a silent, brooding psychiatrist named Bennett Wing. They’re heading to a psychoanalytic congress in Vienna, of all places. It’s a setting rife with irony. Here are all these people supposed to understand the human mind, yet Isadora is internally screaming because she feels like her soul is evaporating.
The book is famous for a specific phrase. You know the one. The "zipless f**k." It became a cultural shorthand for casual, no-strings-attached sex, but if you actually sit down and read the thing, you realize the book is about so much more than a catchy, provocative term. It’s about the bone-deep terror of being truly independent.
The "Zipless" Myth vs. Isadora’s Reality
Everyone talks about the sex. In 1973, hearing a woman describe her desires with the same bluntness as Henry Miller or Philip Roth was a lightning bolt. Critics called it "dirty." Others called it revolutionary. But Isadora’s search for the "zipless" encounter is actually a bit of a tragedy. She’s looking for a fantasy to escape a reality that feels too small.
She meets Adrian Goodlove. He’s a British analyst, and he's basically the opposite of her husband. Where Bennett is stoic and silent, Adrian is impulsive and loud. Isadora ditches her husband to travel across Europe with this guy, thinking she’s finally found her liberation.
She hasn't.
That’s the part most people miss. Fear of Flying by Erica Jong isn't a celebration of infidelity; it's a study of a woman realizing that jumping from one man to another isn't actually freedom. It’s just a change of scenery. Adrian turns out to be kind of a jerk—he’s flaky, he’s selfish, and he doesn’t actually care about Isadora’s growth. He’s just another mirror for her to look at herself in.
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Why "Flying" Is the Perfect Metaphor
Jong didn't pick the title at random. Isadora has a literal, paralyzing fear of airplanes. She’s terrified of the plane going down, of the loss of control, of the void. This mirrors her fear of life. To "fly" in Isadora’s world is to exist without the safety net of a man’s approval.
Think about that for a second.
In the early 70s, a woman’s identity was almost entirely tethered to her domestic status. Isadora is terrified that if she isn't "Mrs. Somebody," she might just cease to exist. She’s a poet, sure, but she doesn't trust her own voice yet. The literal turbulence she feels on a flight to Vienna is the same turbulence she feels when she thinks about leaving her marriage. It’s that stomach-dropping sensation of being untethered.
The Backlash Was Intense (and Telling)
When the book came out, it wasn't just a hit; it was a scandal. John Updike gave it a positive review in The New Yorker, which helped give it some "serious" literary cred, but many others were appalled. They saw Isadora as narcissistic. They hated her neuroses.
But isn't that the point?
Jong was writing a female character who was allowed to be as self-obsessed and flawed as the "Great American Novelists" of the time. If Portnoy could have his complaints, why couldn't Isadora? The double standard was glaring. People felt that Jong had betrayed some unspoken rule of "feminine" writing. She wasn't being delicate. She wasn't being polite. She was writing about sweat, and smells, and the messy mechanics of both sex and psychoanalysis.
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Psychoanalysis as a Character
You can’t talk about Fear of Flying by Erica Jong without talking about Freud. The book is saturated in it. Isadora is obsessed with "the couch." Her husband is an analyst, her lover is an analyst, and she spends half the book analyzing her own childhood.
It’s almost a satire of the profession. Jong pokes fun at the way these men try to categorize female "hysteria" while being completely clueless about the women right in front of them. Isadora is surrounded by experts on the human soul who can’t even hold a conversation with her.
There’s a specific scene where Isadora reflects on her childhood—the "German-Jewish" upbringing, the pressure to be perfect, the strange mix of intellectualism and repression. It’s vivid. It’s specific. It gives the reader a reason to care about her beyond her romantic entanglements. You start to see that her "fear of flying" was planted long before she ever stepped on a plane.
Is It Still Relevant in 2026?
You might think a book from the 70s would feel like a museum piece. It doesn’t. Honestly, the anxieties Isadora feels about balancing her creative ambitions with her desire for intimacy are still everywhere. We just use different words for it now.
We talk about "having it all" or "imposter syndrome," but Isadora was grappling with the original version of those concepts. She was trying to figure out how to be an artist and a woman simultaneously without one destroying the other. That struggle hasn't gone away.
Also, Jong’s writing is just sharp. She has this way of landing a joke and a gut-punch in the same paragraph. Her observations on European tourism, the pretentiousness of the academic elite, and the sheer exhaustion of trying to be "sexy" are timeless.
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What People Get Wrong About the Book
- It’s not just "mommy porn." That’s a reductive label used to dismiss female-centric literature. It’s a serious picaresque novel in the tradition of Tom Jones or The Adventures of Augie March.
- Isadora isn’t Erica. While the book is semi-autobiographical, Jong has spent decades reminding people that it’s fiction. Isadora is a construct, a way to explore ideas that Jong was feeling at the time.
- The ending isn't a "happily ever after." Without spoiling it too much for the three people who haven't read it, the ending is famously ambiguous. Isadora doesn't find a new man to save her. She finds herself in a bathtub, literally and figuratively washing off the grime of her journey.
The Cultural Legacy
Fear of Flying by Erica Jong paved the way for everything from Sex and the City to Girls to the modern "unfiltered" female memoir. It broke a seal. Before Jong, women in novels were often either saints or vixens, victims or villains. Isadora Wing was just a person. A frustrated, funny, horny, brilliant, scared person.
The book has sold over 20 million copies. Think about that number. That’s 20 million people—mostly women—who saw a bit of their own secret thoughts on the page and felt a massive sense of relief. It’s a "permission slip" in book form.
If you’re going to dive into it for the first time, don't go in expecting a smutty romance. You’ll be disappointed. Instead, go in expecting a dense, witty, and often uncomfortable look at what happens when a woman decides to stop lying to herself.
How to Approach the Book Today
- Read it as a period piece first. Acknowledge the 1970s setting. The technology is different, the slang is different, but the emotions are raw.
- Look past the "zipless" stuff. Focus on Isadora’s relationship with her mother and sisters. That’s where the real "fear" lives.
- Pay attention to the poetry. Jong is a poet by trade, and it shows in the prose. Some of the descriptions are breathtakingly beautiful.
- Don't feel like you have to like Isadora. She can be annoying. She’s entitled. She’s self-absorbed. But she’s real.
The real power of the novel isn't in the destination. It's in the fact that Isadora actually got on the plane. She faced the void, she felt the turbulence, and she didn't die. She realized that the "fear of flying" was actually a fear of living—and once you realize that, you might as well take the trip.
If you want to understand the history of feminist literature, you can't skip this one. It’s the connective tissue between the buttoned-up 50s and the "tell-all" culture of today. It’s messy, it’s loud, and it’s absolutely essential.
To get the most out of your reading, try pairing it with Jong’s later non-fiction or her poetry collections like Fruits & Vegetables. It gives you a much wider perspective on her goals as a writer. Also, check out some of the original 1973 reviews versus contemporary ones; the shift in how we talk about female desire is staggering.
Grab a copy, skip the dated introduction if it bores you, and go straight to the first page. You'll know within five minutes if you're ready to fly with Isadora.
Actionable Next Steps:
- Source an Unabridged Version: Many modern editions contain forewords by famous authors (like Naomi Wolf or Molly Jong-Fast) that provide crucial context for how the book changed the publishing landscape.
- Identify the Satire: As you read, look for moments where Jong is mocking the "Freudian" view of women. This makes the book much funnier and less of a heavy "trauma" read.
- Compare with "The Golden Notebook": If you’re a lit nerd, read this alongside Doris Lessing’s work to see two very different, very powerful ways 1970s women were dismantling the status quo.
- Journal Your Own "Fear of Flying": Isadora’s journey is about identifying what holds you back from independence. Use her internal monologue as a prompt to figure out what your own "zipless" fantasy is—and what reality it’s trying to hide.