Thursday, September 10, 2009

The Other Side of Sylvia Plath


The Second Pass talks about Plath's other writing, not including her famed The Bell Jar.

From the story...

Sylvia Plath’s only work of fiction, The Bell Jar, continues to be one of the most widely read books of all time, finding a home in most high school English curricula as the female version of The Catcher in the Rye. It’s unfortunate — and surprising — that Johnny Panic and the Bible of Dreams, a collection that includes nonfiction, should be so neglected by the literary establishment and even by her fans.

It’s true that the book is not for the faint of heart. It takes stamina and patience to read in its entirety. Johnny Panic is the product of the Ted Hughes camp’s total control of Plath’s posthumous legacy, and Hughes’ arrogant introduction comes as no surprise. Although Hughes claimed there were seventy unpublished stories extant, he only chose twenty to include, tossed with five essays and five journal entries. His excuse for not publishing more was his determination to protect those Plath chose to caricature in her stories: “Her description of neighbors and friends and daily happenings is mostly too personal, her criticisms frequently unjust.” We might reasonably translate this to say that her description of Hughes is too just.


Here's Plath reading some of her own poetry:

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