The book is witty, candid, and brainy-there are meditations on everything from Western psychoanalysis to being Jewish in modern-day Germany-and what an eye its author has. The extramarital lover Isadora does end up taking is most notable for his dirty toenails and his impotence. The zipless fuck ( was that doing it in an airplane lavatory?, I’d always wondered) refers to the fantasy-not the reality-of quick sex among strangers, unencumbered by baggage or backstory or even zippers. Visiting a psychiatrists’ convention in Vienna with her shrink husband, Jong’s 29-year-old heroine, Isadora Wing, lusts after all kinds of men-naturally. It’s totally not the sort of book I thought it was. So I turned first to the semiautobiographical novel that made her name, and even at my advanced age, I was shocked. Still, I wasn’t ready to rush into Jong’s latest. At any rate, we’re both facing the countdown, aren’t we? But now that I’ve joined her on the far side of 50, those two decades between us barely register. Whatever was happening in the cloud-streaked skies above my middle-class home-louche Jacqueline Susann and Jackie Collins girls in miniskirts flying first-class in a confetti swirl of champagne and pills and zipless fucks-down below I was eating meatloaf, wearing plaid jumpers made from Simplicity patterns, and watching PBS.

I was 11 years old when Fear of Flying was published and didn’t notice when it took off, a sensational debut novel by a 31-year-old that has sold more than 27 million copies (and remains in print). From the start, Jong has surged to the front, leading Baby Boomers where they fear to tread, though somehow I’ve missed out until now. That is, I made her Fear trilogy- Fear of Flying (1973), Fear of Fifty (1994), and now Fear of Dying-my bedtime reading for a week, playing catch-up with a cultural phenomenon that doesn’t just “linger on,” as she humbly puts it.

And then they linger on, despite the odds. Sometimes my books are messengers that people want to shoot. But, in the interim, like a child, it may have to take a lot of abuse. It will begin its long journey from my will, my brain, my language, into the hearts of those who need it. It will cease to be mine it will go out into the world and become like a fire hydrant for any cur to piss on. The truth is: I do not want to finish the book and let it go.

Isadora wing novel