{"id":6341,"date":"2024-03-16T08:56:13","date_gmt":"2024-03-16T13:56:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.iwu.edu\/johnupdikesociety\/?p=6341"},"modified":"2024-03-16T09:10:26","modified_gmt":"2024-03-16T14:10:26","slug":"updikes-take-on-jongs-fear-of-flying","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.iwu.edu\/johnupdikesociety\/2024\/03\/16\/updikes-take-on-jongs-fear-of-flying\/","title":{"rendered":"Updike’s take on Jong’s Fear of Flying"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"As part of their feminist classics series which looks at influential books, The Conversation <\/em><\/strong>featured an article on “Sex, zips and feminism: Erica Jong’s Fear of Flying has a joyful abandon rarely found in today’s sad girl novels”<\/a> in which John Updike was quoted.<\/p>\n

\n

“Interestingly though, another male writer, John Updike,<\/a>\u00a0helped Jong\u2019s rise up the bestseller list. Even so, his compliments can read as backhanded as Goodlove\u2019s:<\/p>\n

It has class and sass, brightness and bite. Containing all the cracked eggs of the feminist litany, her souffl\u00e9 rises with a poet\u2019s afflatus. She sprinkles on the four-letter words as if women had invented them; her cheerful sexual frankness brings a new flavor to female prose.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

“Updike favourably links Jong with great male writers J.D. Salinger and Philip Roth, while carefully distinguishing her from the more disagreeable women\u2019s liberationists:<\/p>\n

Fear of Flying not only stands as a notably luxuriant and glowing bloom in the sometimes thistly garden of \u2018raised\u2019 feminine consciousness but belongs to, and hilariously extends, the tradition of Catcher in the Rye and Portnoy\u2019s Complaint.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

“Pull quotes from Updike\u2019s review featured on the novel\u2019s second edition (the one I have been reading), along with a new cover: a luscious 70s serif typeface in black and orange on a yellow background that blatantly copies the 1969 cover of Roth\u2019s Portnoy\u2019s Complaint.”<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

As part of their feminist classics series which looks at influential books, The Conversation featured an article on “Sex, zips and feminism: Erica Jong’s Fear of Flying has a joyful abandon rarely found in today’s sad girl novels” in which … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":818,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11,53,35],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6341","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-reviews","category-updike-in-context","category-updike-quoted"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.iwu.edu\/johnupdikesociety\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6341","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.iwu.edu\/johnupdikesociety\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.iwu.edu\/johnupdikesociety\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.iwu.edu\/johnupdikesociety\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/818"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.iwu.edu\/johnupdikesociety\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6341"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.iwu.edu\/johnupdikesociety\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6341\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6344,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.iwu.edu\/johnupdikesociety\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6341\/revisions\/6344"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.iwu.edu\/johnupdikesociety\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6341"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.iwu.edu\/johnupdikesociety\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6341"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.iwu.edu\/johnupdikesociety\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6341"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}