In volo

In a kaleidoscopic, almost cinematic style, Kate Millett unreels her inner and outer life during one decisive year: the year after Sexual Politics transformed her almost overnight from unknown sculptor to media star.

Flying is a rushing, swirling outpouring, a moment-by-moment record of one remarkable woman's sustained effort to live her convictions to the letter. In the heady atmosphere of instant fame, while she is constantly moving between New York and London, Cape Cod and her farm in Poughkeepsie, Millett's days and nights are filled with flashes of anger, moments of intimacy, appointments, funerals, divorces, parties, and meetings. Her response is to write it all down, resulting in the book she called "the most fun I ever had as a writer."

A tour de force of intimate self-revelation, Flying sweeps the reader along in a whirlwind of anxiety, exhilaration, and white-hot passion. Millett retraces her strict Irish-Catholic upbringing in St. Paul, Minnesota, and the shock of early sexual feelings and events. She recounts the guilt of her first love for another woman and the joy of her relationship with her husband, the Japanese sculptor Fumio Yoshimura. With complete candor, Millett reveals a turmoil of memories, fears, triumphs, and doubts about her own strength in the face of the demands made on her as a visionary for the women's movement, pressure from the movement when she reveals her bisexuality to the press, and, finally, a renewed determination to live and grow as an artist and a writer.