I recently tried to read that and just couldn't get into it. I tried really, really hard, but it has been relegated to the "promise I will read you later (I'm lying)" pile.

Man, talk about letting sibling rivalry fester. Wow.

She's just mad that it'll say Erica Jong's Sister on her tombstone.

BTW, the section on foreign toilets in that book seriously freaks me out.

I could never write a memoir. No one would ever speak to me again.

I'd be pissed if my sister published a book that insinuated that my (nonexistent) husband was a nasty, cheating slimebag. Even if I, and the rest of my family, knew it wasn't true, and even if the book were technically fiction, it'd still piss me off.

My sis is way too vanilla to write about anything interesting.

If anyone's life is going to be written about, it will be mine, and probably by me.

I'm guessing that Erica and her sister had problems looong before she wrote that book.

You wouldn't write a memoir--even an ersatz memoir like that--if you didn't have the fodder for it. And the fodder in this case included a fucked-up sisterly relationship. The book is proof of their problems rather than the source of the problems.

I couldn't get through it either, though last time I tried was in high school. I suspect that the truth is that Mead was the only one who knew that it was her life and her details--well, her and her husband--and because she felt exposed, she made sure she was exposed, when in fact no one would have known if she hadn't said so. I certainly wouldn't have, and now I think her sister's a bit of a famewhore.

She also fucked Martha Stewart's husband. Although Martha blames the divorce on the giant gingerbread house from one edition of "Martha Stewart's Christmas."

Sorry, but writers have been doing this to their friends and loved ones since the beginning of time and will do so until the end of time.

35 years? My sister and I can barely go 35 minutes with that kind of tension. That being said, she is the wind beneath my wings, for reals, and I'm not sure how these two women operate.

If my sister ever called me insane, I would probably throw a hissy fit but twenty minutes later we'd be on the couch eating ice cream and watching "I Am Legend."

As long as the mock memoir is listed under fiction and contains the diclaimer "the following story is fictional and does not depict any actual person or event" it's all good. If not, she sold out her sister.

*disclaimer!

Re "his curled pink penis which tasted faintly of urine":

Thanks for that. I was craving a midafternoon junkfood fest but am not anymore. It's the Fear of Flying Diet!

"Isn't it anti-feminist to sell your sister down the river to further your own success?" In a word, yes. It's also pretty immoral, and nasty, too.

I would forgive any of my three sisters almost anything so I guess my bonds of sisterly affection stretch pretty far, but I'm not so sure if I'd like my sister putting a 'her sister's husband climbed into my bed' storyline in her book. I'd be pretty damn pissed for a long time. And I'm afraid I might also wonder if it had actually happened, too.

@brookidy: Okay, now I'm intrigued.

My sister has these feelings about me, as well. I probably should have never written "Hortense Thinks Violet Stinks" in 4th grade, but Violet did stink. And I thought so. And I never thought the story would live on to this day.

Violet, you still stink, man. Quit smoking.

@fucking.bracket: Ah yes, I believe I read about that in an essay she wrote for Vogue. There are some things Erica should keep to herself, I think.

In the fast-paced world that we live in today, where novels are shortened into blurbs and posted every millisecond on a blog somewhere to be read by millions of people with no time to sit down and read a magazine, let alone an erotic novel, I want to thank the Jezebel editors for bringing this line into my life:

"his curled pink penis which tasted faintly of urine and refused to stand up in my mouth"

That's more than I've gotten in weeks, amen sisters.

@TheFormerJuneBronson: Perhaps we are too young and too third wave for this book to be interesting or relevant for us. I thought it was a bore (she compares it to Moll Flanders, FFS?)

Heh, the part I remember is when she's messing around with her lover's sack with avocado all over her hands. How come this shit never goes down in my kitchen?

my first & only exposure to Fear of Flying was a parody called "Fear of Fucking" in this all-women humor anthology called Titters. it was actually something my mom suggested I look through (when I was about 15), clearly evidence that she didn't remember much about the content. needless to say, it awesomely warped my fragile young mind, & it's worth checking out if anyone else has a soft spot for '70s feminism...it's sort of fascinating how much things have changed & yet how many things remain the same. [www.amazon.com]

I can *sort of* see both sides of this but as a writer am personally not ruthless enough to do something like that. Though I know some who are. And wonder what kind of nasty surprise their ex-loved ones are going to get if the thing is ever published.

The trouble is that there's been this general trend (fed by a certain kind of literary biography/profile) to assume that every fictional character is a direct representation of a real person. Which is obviously bollocks. But it's filtered through into public consciousness.
There's a "real Sally Bowles" and "Sylvia Plath's poems were all TRUE" (Sylvia's poor mother published her letters' home in order to try and counter just this kind of reductive, stoopid reading) and "Thomas Hardy shagged Tess of the D'Urbervilles".

Oh, and Flabuert was Madame Bovary. Such as.

@Macloserboy (Who Is Finally On Facebook For You Bitches): Yup, you took the words out of my mouth.

It takes balls to publish anything because even if you are the most creative person in the world and create characters out of thin air, everyone you know will read your books searching for themselves. And they will find themselves. I have a lot more respect for the writers who say "f it" and publish, knowing they're stirring up shit, then the sisters who publicly whine about it.

I think all writers that write about anything dealing with their family run into this. I wrote about my sister's autism in a piece for a paper I use work at and my mom after reading it online wrote me a nasty note because of it. It was nothing negative. Just how my sister use to obsess over John Waters' movies and turned me on to them. But the true conflict comes from the fact that my mom wanted to be a writer but do to her own doing never made it.

In reading this book it was blatantly obvious that Jong sure as hell wanted us to think that most episodes were pulled from her experiences. Thinly veiled to say the least. I still enjoyed it though

@ihateyourescalade: My stomach lurched reading that. I have never been so glad to be a Lezebel. ugh.

I like it when sisters keep it real and don't automatically get behind the person and go, "I'm proud of you no matter what you do," in order to keep up appearances. How boring.

That said, Dame Taffyhat, I'm mad at you. Quit being a bitch every time I call you and act like your life is so much more difficult than mine.

@JessaFields: After I read that, I SHARPIED "Fear of Flying" out of my books-to-read-at-some-point-before-death-or-at-least-check-them-out-from -the-library notebook.

I didn't need to know about it and you don't need to be so GLEEFUL about committing an act of adultery.

I dunno, I'd be pretty pissed if someone told MY life without MY permission, especially as a private person (meaning, not a celebrity who lives a public life), but I haven't read the book, so I can't comment on how personal it was.

I just read "Cures for Heartbreak" by Margo Rabb, and she goes as far as to state in her afterword that the sister in the book is NOTHING like her real sister. So at least there is one sister looking out in the literary world.

@BeckySharper: There's a really interesting piece in the New Yorker (mar 24) on novels vs history vs fake memoirs by Jill Lepore, stating that novels are interesting because they're 'true' in a sense too - it's the history that COULD plausibly have happened.

So it was believeable to a large audience that her brother-in-law COULD have snuck into her bed. if the brother-in-law she painted in the book is the exact same as her brother-in-law in life, maybe there is a problem.

Blah... if her sister knew it was fake, she should get over it already. It's been 20 years.

People write what they know, and I think I could make a fairly convincing argument to the effect that if authors were unable, by law or conscience or whatev, to not write about thinly veiled aspects of their lives and the lives of those around them, we (as a collective culture) would be missing out on some pretty fucking awesome books. Further, if you don't want to bring attention to yourself or to have people know a character was based on you, don't fucking scream about it public. Retard.

@MFortuna: Gah. I read that and almost turned lezebel for good.

Add me to the list of people who just couldn't get through Fear of Flying.

I'm writing fiction and I'm drawing heavily on real people in my life. I'm fictionalizing a lot of it and not calling it a memoir, though. I don't get writers who call their stuff memoir when it's so fictionalized. Is the "memoir" label sexier somehow?

@Macloserboy (Who Is Finally On Facebook For You Bitches): Amen. I'm a book editor so I know whereof you speak.

@MFortuna: I'm actually a little creeped out by that sentence. I've never gave a beej that tasted like urine. Like, that shit is pretty contained when they pee...I'm thinking way too far into this.

But seriously, I love the fact that she made a failed beej sound erotic. His penis "refused to stand in her mouth" rather than the usual, Friday-night, "he was too fucking drunk and high to get hard, instead passing out and farting on me all night." That's a sign of a real story-teller...classy.

The really amusing thing to me, here, is that I guarantee no matter how ruthless I was in portraying my sister in a novel (fantasyland here folks!), I know we'd be over it after one or two booze-fueled yellfests.

My god, THIRTY-FIVE YEARS. Grow up.

My sister and I are so close I could never betray her for my own success, but sometimes sibling rivalry is intense. It always makes me a little sad when I hear sisters don't get along.

@hfree: The skeletons will be staying in brookidy's closet.

@Macloserboy (Who Is Finally On Facebook For You Bitches): Yeah, but the catch is, you have to write well enough to make the disguise work. Otherwise you're just airing your grievances in a forum that your loved one/antagonist can't respond to. That's not cool.

@BeckySharper: i totally agree... she wouldn't have written something that upsetting about her sister if she didn't want to piss her off...

I had wanted to read Fear of Flying for a long time. When I finally did, I was underwhelmed. It seemed dated to me. If I had read it during the time it was written maybe I would have felt differently. Also, the writing itself was not so hot.

@CristinaS: Agreed...if her sister knew it was fake, she should get over it. If it was true, her sister's got bigger problems than Erica writing about it, don't you think? I also think it's kind of ridiculous how her sister makes it all about her, y'know?

i think all authors/artists/people have to continually asks themselves these questions, ask what they must sacrifice of themselves in order to express themselves.

fiction always interferes with life always interferes with fiction.