"Fear of Flying" - forty and fabulous !

Forty years ago, Fear of Flying by Erica Jong was mandatory reading. We had Roe v. Wade and The Joy of Sex and then protagonist Isadora Wing, irreverent libertine, neurotic analys and, a sexy New York smartie whose nipples are erect by paragraph two. Sentences like "My underpants were wet enough to mop the streets of Vienna"? That was new. So was the "zipless fuck" - anonymous sex, sex like a man. But Wing's not entirely like the Girls she paved the way for. She has to like the guy, which makes us like her even more. Decades later, casual sex may be the norm, but it can't hold a candle to when you feel it in your heart, too, which is among the many reasons Flying still soars.

 -by Patricia Volk