Fear of Fifty

With intelligence, humor, and candor, the author of Fear of Flying explores what it means to be a woman in the 1990s in chapters including "The Mad Lesbian in the Attic," "Seducing the Muse," and "How I Got to Be the Second Sex." 150,000 first printing. $100,000 ad/promo. Tour.

This autobiographical meander goes right to the jugular of the women who lived wildly and vicariously through Jong's The Fear of Flying in the early '70s--and the book will likely sell big. Unfortunately, the package doesn't live up to its wrapping. Jong talks randomly of her youth, her four marriages, a great deal about her daughter Molly (by husband Jonathan Fast) and about literary celebrity. There are a multitude of sexual encounters, and now that Jong is 50 they have to "mean" something. "In mid-life," she writes, "I was drawn to memoir because I needed to understand myself before it was too late." What her readers come to understand is that Jong's depth of interest in herself is not easy to share. She takes herself too seriously as a pioneer and a thinker. No hint of humor intrudes upon these pages, nor any stab at structure either--chronological or intellectual. 150,000 first printing; $130,000 ad/promo; first serial to Parade and Cosmopolitan; Literary Guild selection; author tour.
Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc.

A half-century under her belt has not staled Jong's passion nor has painful controversy withered her talent for unflinching observation. This memoir is Jong's (The Devil at Large, 1993) meditation on what it all means for women encountering 50. ``We are the Whiplash Generation,'' she says, ``raised to be Doris Day...yearning to be Gloria Steinem, [and raising] our midlife daughters in the age of Nancy Reagan and Princess Di.'' Jong now has a husband (no. 4), a 14-year-old daughter, a mother and father, and a senile aunt for whom she is responsible. In chapters often fliply titled--``The Mad Lesbian in the Attic'' (about her aunt); ``Donna Juana Gets Smart'' (about loving ``bad boys'')-- Jong ruminates eloquently and movingly on her roots (she's the granddaughter of Eastern European Jews and the privileged daughter of parents with frustrated callings to art and music), her flamboyant life (frequently played out in public since the appearance of Fear of Flying 21 years ago), and on being a woman in the '90s (``From the vantage point of fifty, the discriminatory cycle is utterly clear...we know we have reasons for despair''). The Erica Jong of the irrepressible libido and the Anglo-Saxon vocabulary is here. But a mellower Jong mocks her own infatuation with Literature with a capital ``L,'' regrets the messiness of her divorce from Jonathan Fast (the father of her daughter), and delves into her Jewishness, spirituality, love, and work. A chapter titled ``Men Are Not the Problem'' ponders the cruelty of women to one another. Reflecting bitterness-turned-to- puzzlement about the antagonism many feminists have felt to her work, she argues that women who demand political correctness- -whatever that may be in a given year--perpetuate separatism and sexism. With a quotable line on almost every page, Jong's story is more than flash and fire--there's poetry and wisdom, too. (First serial to Parade and Cosmopolitan; Literary Guild selection; $130,000 ad/promo; author tour) -- Copyright ©1994, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

Twenty years ago, Jong boldly exposed the truth about women's sexuality in the novel Fear of Flying. Now wiser and more generous but no less exuberant, Jong explores the paradoxes inherent in being a woman in this time of flux and backlash, especially for a woman who writes. Fear of Fifty is a tight weave of engrossing personal history and shrewd social commentary. It is, in part, about aging as the title implies, but it's really about growing. Jong isn't so concerned with the wrinkles or stigma age brings; she's more interested in how we learn and adapt over the course of a lifetime. Memories and anecdotes lead to musings about childhood and education, sex and sexism, femininity and feminism, art and ambition, love and responsibility. Jong scrutinizes all the mixed messages about gender roles she and her peers, the whiplash generation, have had to cope with while limning memorable portraits of her parents and other influential figures and creating a series of frank self-portraits documenting each stage of her full and colorful life. Jong describes the torments and discoveries of writing, fame, and criticism; chronicles her marriages and a selection of love affairs notable for their sexual thrills and instructive ironies; and recounts her demanding experiences as a single mother. Her honesty about sex is priceless, while her insights into desire and relationships are remarkably accurate, funny, entertaining, and useful. Donna Seaman

Jong, a talented and celebrated writer (Fear of Flying, LJ 10/1/73) has written a memoir intended to be a book about her generation. She assumes, she says, that she is not so different from her readers. She thus tells us her story and, along the way, chides us for our mutual failings: women compete with one another rather than creating alliances; women collaborate with men "to shut each other up" (this comment is aimed specifically at women book reviewers). She fails to appreciate the particularities of her experience. Few women at 47 agonize over giving up "snake-hipped studs on various continents" to marry a fourth time. Furthermore, lectures on sisterhood are unseemly coming from a woman who calls other women "fatties," who talks of longing to "dwindle into a wife," and who brags about countless married lovers (she has always "attracted men like a honeypot"). Still, her tale is engaging and in places moving. Her final note rings true: For many women, the goal of 50 may well be to say, "I am not my mother."-Cynthia Harrison, Federal Judicial Ctr., Washington, D.C.
Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc.