Reasons to Commit Suicide
03.27.2008 - 9:57 AMOne of my most productive confidential sources in Washington keeps what he tells me is an expanding file on his desk labeled “reasons to commit suicide.” He occasionally sends me items that he’s added to it.
Here’s the latest, a conference starting tomorrow at Columbia University: “Fear of Flying”: Can a Feminist Classic Be an American Classic?
Thirty-five years ago, Erica Jong’s first novel, the international bestseller Fear of Flying, electrified readers around the world and sparked fierce debate. Breaking from conventional expectations of fiction by and about women, Fear of Flying freed other women writers to write intelligently and openly about sex and to debate intimate issues of importance to women. Columbia University’s Rare Book & Manuscript Library acquired a large collection of Erica Jong’s archival material in 2007. Jong’s papers have become an important asset as the Columbia Libraries continue to document the history of women and feminism in contemporary American society. In an outgrowth of this interest and intent, the Rare Book & Manuscript Library will join the Columbia University Institute for Research on Women and Gender and the Center for Research on Women at Barnard College in gathering a group of distinguished writers and critics for a half-day conference, “Fear of Flying: Can a Feminist Classic be a Classic?” on Friday, March 28, 2008.
Speakers will revisit Jong’s novel and will assess the status of women’s writing and of feminism in today’s literary scene and the possibilities of subversion open to contemporary young women writers.
Here is the question of the day. What would be more painful to endure: watching Mahmoud Ahmadinejad reap the dividends of being ineffectually insulted by the president of Columbia, or attending this conference?
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March 27th, 2008 at 10:58 AM
I’d like to see A’jad address that conference.
March 27th, 2008 at 10:58 AM
“What would be more painful to endure: watching Mahmoud Ahmadinejad reap the dividends of being ineffectually insulted by the president of Columbia, or attending this conference?”
That’s easy — watching Ahmadinejad read passages from “Fear of Flying,” of course!
March 27th, 2008 at 11:31 AM
How about A’jad IN a dress at that conference?
March 27th, 2008 at 11:43 AM
This reminded me forcibly of the fact that my own mighty alma mater, the University of Tulsa (good academics; and not so pathetic football these days! — always of concern in Oklahoma), also has the honor to house the archival material of a well-known female author, and to sponsor conferences on her literary oeuvre. Tulsa can’t lay claim to Erica Jong, though, and has to make do with Jane Austen. This has effectively precluded any conferences to address the question whether the author’s work can be considered classic, in the generic sense.
March 27th, 2008 at 1:46 PM
It would be pleasantly surprising if the reference to the “possibilities of subversion” meant the possiblity of subverting the clerical regime in Iran, which, among other obscenities, hangs teenage girls for failing to be sufficiently “pure” and deferential. Sadly, I suspect that the brave feminists attending the Erica Jong conference are more concerned about Bollinger’s failure to be a good host to Ahmadinejad.
March 27th, 2008 at 9:10 PM
I was too young to read that book when it came out… then, after I grew up, the threat of being bored to death overwhelmed any latent curiosity and to this day I have not read it.
Perhaps I was repelled by the essential incoherence of her phrase, “zipless f***”. After all, unless two people are in a faraway land with in which very different styles of clothing are the norm, certainly at least one of the two must operate a zipper in order to participate. And unless there ARE two people, then “f***” is not an accurate description of the event.
If she is the liberated woman she pretends to be, she’s probably also wearing pants, and two zippers are involved.
The likelihood of no zzzippers is pretty much the same as the likelihood that anyone will be reading that book fifty years from now.
Zzzero.
March 28th, 2008 at 3:47 AM
I remember from reading Ms. de Jong’s prose that a) it was terribly boring and b) that Europeans and especially Germans have disgusting toilets where you see your poo before rinsing which told Ms Jong a lot about our character. From then on I always tried to avert my eyes for fear of being turned into a Nazi. So maybe the book should have been named Fear of Poo. By now I think almost all German toilets have been changed to models which wouldn’t raise the eye brows of Ms. de Jong. However, recently I read in a US-newspaper that Poo-Gazing will become the next health fad and so I am looking forward to read what Ms. de Jong will then phantasize into our (again) old-fashioned toilets.
March 31st, 2008 at 4:02 PM
You know, Silke, I was in Germany just a few years ago, and the toilets are still like that. It’s a peculiar ledge that seems purpose-built to prevent the deposited poo from sliding into the water until the flush comes. I didn’t understand it then, and still don’t.
Lucky for me I was driving back to Belgium the same day and was able to postpone the required business until normal French toilets were in sight.
The fabled German engineering appears to have been insufficient, for once, to the task. As a BMW owner, I”m dazed and confused.
March 31st, 2008 at 7:56 PM
Dave — although we can’t accuse Germany of giving us Freud, we can certainly hang him on the German speakers. Gives one to think. I’ve seen the toilets you describe in other parts of Europe, however…
March 31st, 2008 at 8:22 PM
Yeah, in areas that retain a strong German influence. For whatever reason.