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Flying Fearlessly, Author Navigates Issues of Aging

(Columbia Flier) --  I was in the throes of puberty when "Fear of Flying" was published in 1973, and the hubbub about this supposedly sexy novel piqued my adolescent curiosity. So when my mother got a paperback copy, it wasn't long before I started sneaking peeks at it.

Erica Jong's first novel had some racy passages, true, but the book proved disappointing to me. It had less to do with the sexual act than with what's been called the most important sexual organ: the one between the ears.

"Fear of Flying" didn't speak to me then, wasn't meant to. This was an adult book actually intended for adults. More specifically, "liberated" women -- or those who hoped to be -- back when the phrase "women's lib" was in common use.

Jong addressed a ballroom full of such contemporaries (there were men there too) Tuesday at the Columbia Sheraton as keynote speaker for the Maryland Summit on Health and Aging, sponsored by the Horizon Foundation and the county government.

She remarked that through the arc of her writing career the subjects on which journalists and others have consulted her as a supposed authority have evolved. When she first became known as a poet, people asked her why Sylvia Plath committed suicide. When "Fear of Flying" was a best-seller, people asked whether she believed in the zipless (expletive we can't use in a family newspaper, but you can probably guess even if you didn't read the book).

"Now I find myself being asked about aging."

She answered happily, laying out her recipe for health in one's advanced years. It includes "laughter, cardio, yoga and teaching the next generation.

"My other terrific recipe -- besides sex, which changes with age, which I'll talk about later -- is grandchildren, which I think are the secret of youth on some level," she continued.

In addition to helping her to reconnect with her own childhood, her interactions with her 3-and-a-half-year-old grandson have helped Jong, who grew up in a family of girls, gain new insights into maleness. Dinosaurs and bugs fascinate him. "I buy him a new shirt, he doesn't care."

And yet, "he's the boy I'd have been had I not been born a girl.

"My generation insisted gender differences were the result of social conditioning. 'Free to be' was our mantra.

"I was never a conventional feminist," and so was never quite sold on that point of view, she said, but since her grandson's come along, firsthand knowledge has convinced her that boys and girls truly are born different in ways other than plumbing.

"I'm now observing the male of the species," Jong said. "This is more exciting to me than Harry Potter. This is all the magic I need. Having a grandson, I get to be a kid again. I get to be a boy and a girl."

Jong got a big laugh when she related an exchange with Max during which he walked about on all fours.

"Look, I'm pretending to be early man," he said.

"And I'm early woman," she replied.

"Then you're extinct," he shot back.

After Jong started taking questions from the audience, I steered her back toward her promise to talk more about the sexual issues of aging. I'm not getting any younger either, y'know.

She lamented our focus on male potency -- which becomes more problematic as men age -- as the be-all and end-all of sexuality. "And nobody's more cheated by this than men."

Jong said she is tackling such issues in the new novel she's writing. "There's a lot of inhibition about writing about older people in general," she said. "I see myself opening up territory. People are terrified of sexuality."

Well, fear and sex certainly proved fertile subject matter for Jong before. Her best work might still be ahead of her.