The Lady In The Bell
Jar-The “One Life: Sylvia Plath” At The National Portrait Gallery
By Frank Jackman
I have known the name
Sylvia Plath for a long time, maybe since the time of her suicide when I was
still in high school and my senior year English who was a great influence on
all her charges especially about literature was pretty broken up about that
tragic event. While I may have known about Sylvia Plath and her well-known (and
still well-known) book The Bell Jar
and of her poetry in those days what she had to say, what poetry she wrote did
not “speak” to me.
How could such a
sensitive soul (but also much else as the exhibit at the National Portrait
Gallery points out including a sense of humor, a wry sense) speak to a
hard-bitten corner boy whose literary heroes if he had any centered on guys
like Ernest Hemingway and F. Scott Fitzgerald.
Tough guys writing for a tough hard-shell world. Even later, college
later, when I had a girlfriend who was crazy for whatever Ms. Plath wrote (she
did her senior thesis on Ms. Plath if I recall) and who endlessly coaxed me to
at least read The Bell Jar I bucked
her. (Needless to say that relationship did not last too long). It was not until
later, not until after a whole bunch of Army experiences during the Vietnam War
kind of broke a lot of my youthful prejudices did I finally read her work. That
is when I got why that Plath-crazed young women was so insistent that I take the
plunge. And it is not too late for you as well.
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