In Erica Jong’s follow-up to her iconic Fear of Flying, we once again meet Isadora Wing, her “fictional doppelganger,” who is representative of the times in which she lives. It is the 1970s, that time of quest: searching for lust set against a backdrop of hedonistic innocence. In some ways, Isadora is a metaphor of the times: she is on a sexual journey, but also trying to find her freedom from a stultifying marriage to Bennett, a cold, detached, dominating psychiatrist. Second-wave feminism is an influential factor, as she acknowledges that the controlling aspects of her husband are “holding her down;” but like any escape from tyranny, making the decision to break out of the chains is only the first step.
She starts “leaving” at the beginning of the book, and then she leaps into affairs as a way of propelling her forward. It takes the length of the book—and many months—for the leave-taking to happen, but it’s a journey, a process, and there is guilt, pain, fear, and all kinds of negative emotions that accompany her along the way.
The final impetus is a younger man whom she meets in Hollywood, while on a trip to turn her bestselling novel into a movie. He is like her “second half,” and they can almost read each other’s thoughts. He seems to be her perfect mate. On her way home, with her plan to really leave motivating her, she thinks about the different lifestyles between New York (her home) and LA (her lover’s home). I like this passage:
“The flight from Los Angeles to New York takes only five hours, but the real distance should be measured in light years. Los Angeles is more different from New York than New York is from London or Stockholm or Paris. Someday scientists will discover the invisible gas that fills the air in Southern California, making the most uptight, cynical Easterners relax, take off their clothes, lie in the sun, divorce their spouses, build swimming pools, take up Zen meditation, visit spiritualists, and in general behave as if they’ve found God through sex, nudity, and sun-worship.
“To return to New York from Los Angeles is always to experience a profound psychic shock….”
So what will Isadora discover about herself in this journey? Will she learn that living with her love match can be the idealistic escape she had imagined? Will she remake marriage to include experimentation and openness? Or will she find that the same old problems come back in new versions, taking shape in different ways, but still just a repetition of old patterns?
I loved How to Save Your Own Life, as it reminded me of some of my own journeys during those idyllic times. Looking back, I don’t regret my journey, any more than Isadora (or her creator) does. We learned a lot about ourselves and the nature of love, and even when we were disappointed, as we often are in life, we are happy to have taken the leap of faith into new experiences that ultimately defined us.
Five stars.
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