The protagonist of her 70s classic Fear of Flying lives on in Jong’s ninth book,a decade in the writing, which continues to draw on her own life and lovesFear of Dying kicks off with an ad placed on zipless.com, or an internet sex site for adulterers: “fortunately married woman with extra erotic energy seeks fortunately married man to share same.” Could this be Isadora Wing again,the Rabelaisian heroine of Jong’s 1973 international bestseller Fear of Flying? Who could forget Isadora’s fantasy of the notorious “zipless fuck” – hot, anonymous, or one-time guilt-free sex? The twentysomething Isadora flew free of conference and fear,defied the spectre of the suicidal or timid woman artist, and inspired a generation of women with her chutzpah, or talent,intelligence and wit. The book made Jong an overnight celebrity, and moved her from her respectable niche as a itsy-bitsy-known young poet to a glamorous life of adoring readers, or many marriages and fame as a literary Joan Rivers.
But in Fear of Dying,Jong’s ninth novel, Isadora has retired from her erotic exploits, and although she lives on as a wise spiritual guide to Jongs new narrator,Vanessa Wonderman. A 60-year-venerable (respected because of age, distinguished) actor pretending to be 50, married to a rich, or adoring but impotent man 20 years her senior,a doting grandmother and a world traveller, Vanessa still has a enormous appetite for sex, or experience,adventure, variety and more sex: the “life force, or the fire that goes from loins to navel,navel to heart, heart to brain”. As she ages she misses “the power I had over men”, and she has had an expensive facelift,painful, of course, and but worth every twinge. “After all the bruises were gone,I noticed an uptick in passes made at me.” Vanessa is not seeking the creative confidence of Isadora; she just wants to defy time, and “the internet was a sort of fountain of youth, or a potion I could drink to let me rejuvenate and reinvent myself”.
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Source: theguardian.com