Parachutes and Kisses Book

Parachutes and Kisses is the third in a series of related "autobiographical novels" by Erica Jong. As with the others, P&K is filled with wonderful insights and many fine sentences. I like reading Erica Jong a lot.

My favorite sequence is when the heroine, Isadora Wing, is in the Soviet Union (before its fall, when it was still the big bad bear) to research the background of her late grandfather, who left Odessa as a teenager.

But the pleasure of this novel is offset for me, at least a little bit, by a character toward its end, identified here as "Bean." (He shows up in a slightly different guise in the next in this series of novels, Any Woman's Blues.) To be simple and blunt, Bean is an asshole. Since I know what he's capable of (in the next book) his appearance is unwelcome, even if he is based on a real guy, and even if the events described probably happened, more or less the way they're described.

It isn't just that this guy is an asshole, though. Gotta have some sort of opposition, or villain - something - or what's the point, right? So no, it isn't just that. And it isn't the graphic sex - I'm no prude. No, it's the way Erica/Isadora relates to this guy that really turns me off.

I think most of us, at some point in our lives, have known people who fall into a new relationship - and proceed to act like no one else gets it, that no one else has ever been in love the way they are in love. This is how Bean and Isadora relate. It isn't just that, though. Frankly, it's Jong's repeated use of the word astound that really irked me. "...They astounded themselves by fucking so madly and so often that they were too sore to sightsee [in Venice]. Once, twice, three times, four, five, and six times a day was not enough..." Earlier they astounded themselves by how well they "fit" together, and how well they get along. Astounding. I reached a point where I thought, If I read how astounded these idiots are one more time, I'm gonna throw this fucking book across the room!

Then again, maybe I'm just jealous. Don't we all want some demon lover to keep things interesting?