‘Fear of Flying’ Is 50. What Happened to Its Dream of Freedom Through Sex?

"Fifty years ago last month, Erica Jong published a debut novel that went on to sell more than 20 million copies. 'Fear of Flying,' a book so sexually frank that you may have found it hidden in your mother’s underwear drawer, broke new ground in the explicitness of writing by and for women. Jong’s heroine, Isadora Wing, was a live wire. She was also a dead end, certainly for Jong, and maybe for feminism, too. Born in 1942 to a family of freethinkers in Manhattan, Erica Mann, who became Erica Jong, belonged to a generation 'raised to be Doris Day,' as she later wrote. Her Barnard yearbook photos showcase the full early-1960s checklist: velvet headband, twin set, pearls. Jong was gifted and ambitious. But even as a literature major at one of the country’s most distinguished women’s colleges, she had read vanishingly little work by female authors. ..."

NY Times

Erica Jong published “Fear of Flying” “during that fleeting moment when sex struck some feminists as the thing that would set us once and forever free.”