Tuesday

further indulging my sylvia plath obsession...

Current reading:

2 comments:

laura linger said...

It's rather cliched to say this, but...

The Bell Jar is, by far, the best book about mental illness ever written.

Following the death of my Dad in 1999, I had a complete and total nervous breakdown, with the requisite attempt to take my own life.

The Bell Jar gets everything, and I mean everything, right. My personal favorite bit from that book is when Mother brings Esther the roses for her birthday, and Esther acts like an ungrateful little bint about them. The Mother breaks down in tears, so desperate to have something approaching normalcy with her daughter again, and Esther realizes with dawning horror what a selfish, self-serving, self-centered person her depression has fashioned her into. That is a key discovery for any mentally ill person...that the illness does not affect you and only you, and that it very often can actually be more painful for the people around you.

I like Plath, too. The big black book of her unabridged journals is great. Because of Sivvy, I have adopted a word. When someone is being a smarmy flirt, he or she is being a "smiler." Ted Hughes was a smiler. He was also a philandering bastard who should burn in hell solely for the stunts he pulled with Assia and Shura.

laura linger said...

Here is something you might find interesting.

http://tinyurl.com/2obpgm