Take a photo of a barcode or cover
4.64 AVERAGE
4.64 AVERAGE
This is a masterpiece in biographical writing and literary criticism.
As anyone who knows Sylvia Plath’s story can appreciate, her biography has been twisted to fit the narrative of the biographer – whether they are a feminist, anti-Hughes, or a Hughes defender. Sylvia’s talent, hard work and ambition have often been overlooked in favour of a narrative which portrays a doomed, depressed young poet, who courted madness throughout her short life. This, of course, is not the truth. Red Comet is different from previous biographies. There is no overarching argument – no ultimate goal, only to attain an understanding of the life and art of Sylvia Plath. Finally, Sylvia is the subject of a biography she deserves.
The reader follows a genius little girl with literary ambitions as she grows, experiences adversity, and forms her world view. We see a teenager and young adult who struggles between conformity and independence in an age where a woman’s greatest achievement was to marry, bear children, and support her husband. We are shown writers who inspired Plath, as well as a particularly liberal, inspiring English teacher. From journal entries, to letters, we hear Plath herself describe her burning ambition, and how this ambition and struggle to find a place in the world would culminate in a suicide attempt, and subsequent experience in a psychiatric hospital, at twenty-years-old. We witness her trauma of misused, agonising electric shock treatment, and then her rebirth, marked when she sheds previous sexual constraints, and societal expectations, although there yet remains an undertone of struggle. Throughout her time in Smith, she sends poetry and short stories to magazines; she wins prizes, goes on dates, and hones her literary talent. She struggles to decide whether or not to marry Dick Norton or Gordon Lameyer, boys of whom her mother would approve, or if she should risk it all and wait for a man she feels can offer her the intellectual equality, and creative freedom she needs, if such a man even exists. We follow her to Cambridge, and are left to wonder if Richard Sassoon is indeed the man who got away. We see her charged, symbiotic relationship with Ted Hughes explode into existence. Dr. Clarke makes it clear; without Plath, Hughes would not be the poet he was, and without Hughes, Plath would not be the poet she eventually became. She portrays the marriage without judgement. We see Plath achieve her dreams of marriage and motherhood, and struggle to find a balance between the domestic and creative spheres. We see her mature, true poetic voice emerge gradually, and the eventual breakdown of her marriage. Dr. Clarke chronicles the months following this, particularly October 1962, where Plath would write one poem a day – an astonishing outpouring of some of the twentieth century’s most powerful poetry. She chronicles Plath’s final days and death with tact.
Dr. Clarke chronicles all this with biographies of the most important people in Sylvia’s life. She references Plath’s letters, journals, calendars, poems, short stories, and novels; we also hear from those who knew Plath and can fill in the details that she herself does not. This weaving of private and public biography – and the disparities between these sources (as for example, Plath’s ebullient letters vs her gloomier journal entries written on the same day; or contradictions between various sources) creates a three dimensional image of Plath which tells us about the person, and not the myth.
Trust me, if you read this, you will gain such a new understanding of Sylvia Plath’s poetic and prose works. She will be more than “the depressed poet”, a description whose pervasiveness has disappointed me deeply over the years. I hope enough people read this so that the narrative of Plath’s life and death changes. I hope that people come to see that Plath was a hard-working, ambitious prodigy, who was so ahead of her time. You will observe Plath’s good points, as well as the negative – this biography is not to glorify Plath, but simply to understand the person and the art: the real.
As anyone who knows Sylvia Plath’s story can appreciate, her biography has been twisted to fit the narrative of the biographer – whether they are a feminist, anti-Hughes, or a Hughes defender. Sylvia’s talent, hard work and ambition have often been overlooked in favour of a narrative which portrays a doomed, depressed young poet, who courted madness throughout her short life. This, of course, is not the truth. Red Comet is different from previous biographies. There is no overarching argument – no ultimate goal, only to attain an understanding of the life and art of Sylvia Plath. Finally, Sylvia is the subject of a biography she deserves.
The reader follows a genius little girl with literary ambitions as she grows, experiences adversity, and forms her world view. We see a teenager and young adult who struggles between conformity and independence in an age where a woman’s greatest achievement was to marry, bear children, and support her husband. We are shown writers who inspired Plath, as well as a particularly liberal, inspiring English teacher. From journal entries, to letters, we hear Plath herself describe her burning ambition, and how this ambition and struggle to find a place in the world would culminate in a suicide attempt, and subsequent experience in a psychiatric hospital, at twenty-years-old. We witness her trauma of misused, agonising electric shock treatment, and then her rebirth, marked when she sheds previous sexual constraints, and societal expectations, although there yet remains an undertone of struggle. Throughout her time in Smith, she sends poetry and short stories to magazines; she wins prizes, goes on dates, and hones her literary talent. She struggles to decide whether or not to marry Dick Norton or Gordon Lameyer, boys of whom her mother would approve, or if she should risk it all and wait for a man she feels can offer her the intellectual equality, and creative freedom she needs, if such a man even exists. We follow her to Cambridge, and are left to wonder if Richard Sassoon is indeed the man who got away. We see her charged, symbiotic relationship with Ted Hughes explode into existence. Dr. Clarke makes it clear; without Plath, Hughes would not be the poet he was, and without Hughes, Plath would not be the poet she eventually became. She portrays the marriage without judgement. We see Plath achieve her dreams of marriage and motherhood, and struggle to find a balance between the domestic and creative spheres. We see her mature, true poetic voice emerge gradually, and the eventual breakdown of her marriage. Dr. Clarke chronicles the months following this, particularly October 1962, where Plath would write one poem a day – an astonishing outpouring of some of the twentieth century’s most powerful poetry. She chronicles Plath’s final days and death with tact.
Dr. Clarke chronicles all this with biographies of the most important people in Sylvia’s life. She references Plath’s letters, journals, calendars, poems, short stories, and novels; we also hear from those who knew Plath and can fill in the details that she herself does not. This weaving of private and public biography – and the disparities between these sources (as for example, Plath’s ebullient letters vs her gloomier journal entries written on the same day; or contradictions between various sources) creates a three dimensional image of Plath which tells us about the person, and not the myth.
Trust me, if you read this, you will gain such a new understanding of Sylvia Plath’s poetic and prose works. She will be more than “the depressed poet”, a description whose pervasiveness has disappointed me deeply over the years. I hope enough people read this so that the narrative of Plath’s life and death changes. I hope that people come to see that Plath was a hard-working, ambitious prodigy, who was so ahead of her time. You will observe Plath’s good points, as well as the negative – this biography is not to glorify Plath, but simply to understand the person and the art: the real.
Magnificent, and well worth the 900+ pages. They fly by. This biography doesn’t pigeonhole Plath, but shows her as the multi-faceted, complex human that she was. Two things that struck me most were her passionate approach to life, and how demeaning it must have been to be such a brilliant and ambitious woman in the 1950s and 60s. Highly recommended.
Wow. What an amazing, in-depth, work about Sylvia Plath. I knew little about her. I read The Bell Jar, years ago, and know of her through cultural references, but knew little about her history.
What I took most away from this work:
How much she WORKED at being a poet. She studied. And copied. And studied. And wrote. And played with her voice. And found her voice. It wasn't about sitting down and writing herself -- she was well-read so as to understand what she liked and didn't and practiced and was on this track from a young age. Did her mother push her to achieve what was her own unfulfilled artistic dreams? Perhaps. But I think like many young women, we overemphasize the role our mother's play when we're facing deciding who it is we want to be and how we want to be in this world.
My difficulty with certain passage of the book was that I'm not that familiar with all of Plath's work, and I felt at times as if the author was providing "facts not in evidence" to me. But that's my reading, not her approach.
What I also took away is how it isn't that long ago that women still (well, we probably still do) have this pull between being an artist (or insert career here) and balancing a desire to also be a traditional wife/mother role. Also how Sylvia kept looking for TIME TO WRITE. And she was a full-time artist. Or that was her goal. So not having a regular job doesn't make that any easier, eh?
The other thing -- while she wrote because she loved it, felt she NEEDED to write, she also learned very early ways to make money writing, how to be professional about it, even as a woman in a world where only men were writers. (Maybe that's why she had to be uber professional and incessant about sending her stuff out.) In a way, it was Plath's work ethic when it came to the business/profession of writing that helped launch the career of Ted Hughes.
"Sylvia Plath took herself and her desires seriously in a world that often refused to do so."
"Anything to evade the life not lived, the poem not written, the love not realized. Plath spread her wings, over and over, at a time when women were not supposed to fly."
"Sylvia's 'perfectionism,' often derided as neurotic or pathological, needs to be understood within the historical and sociological context of the American immigrant experience, which framed her life. Her desire to excel on all fronts has its roots in the Germanic aspirational work ethic that was her inheritance."
"These very early poems .. suggest that the origins of her art were not rooted in trauma or supplication, but in confidence, pleasure, and self-satisfaction. Writing was not something Sylvia did to please others, but to please herself."
"She was at the mercy of a patriarchal medical system that assumed that highly ambitious, strong-willed women were neurotic."
What I took most away from this work:
How much she WORKED at being a poet. She studied. And copied. And studied. And wrote. And played with her voice. And found her voice. It wasn't about sitting down and writing herself -- she was well-read so as to understand what she liked and didn't and practiced and was on this track from a young age. Did her mother push her to achieve what was her own unfulfilled artistic dreams? Perhaps. But I think like many young women, we overemphasize the role our mother's play when we're facing deciding who it is we want to be and how we want to be in this world.
My difficulty with certain passage of the book was that I'm not that familiar with all of Plath's work, and I felt at times as if the author was providing "facts not in evidence" to me. But that's my reading, not her approach.
What I also took away is how it isn't that long ago that women still (well, we probably still do) have this pull between being an artist (or insert career here) and balancing a desire to also be a traditional wife/mother role. Also how Sylvia kept looking for TIME TO WRITE. And she was a full-time artist. Or that was her goal. So not having a regular job doesn't make that any easier, eh?
The other thing -- while she wrote because she loved it, felt she NEEDED to write, she also learned very early ways to make money writing, how to be professional about it, even as a woman in a world where only men were writers. (Maybe that's why she had to be uber professional and incessant about sending her stuff out.) In a way, it was Plath's work ethic when it came to the business/profession of writing that helped launch the career of Ted Hughes.
"Sylvia Plath took herself and her desires seriously in a world that often refused to do so."
"Anything to evade the life not lived, the poem not written, the love not realized. Plath spread her wings, over and over, at a time when women were not supposed to fly."
"Sylvia's 'perfectionism,' often derided as neurotic or pathological, needs to be understood within the historical and sociological context of the American immigrant experience, which framed her life. Her desire to excel on all fronts has its roots in the Germanic aspirational work ethic that was her inheritance."
"These very early poems .. suggest that the origins of her art were not rooted in trauma or supplication, but in confidence, pleasure, and self-satisfaction. Writing was not something Sylvia did to please others, but to please herself."
"She was at the mercy of a patriarchal medical system that assumed that highly ambitious, strong-willed women were neurotic."
dark
emotional
informative
sad
slow-paced
I am truly speechless. I finished the book 40 minutes ago and needed those 40 minutes to process the monumental biography I just read. My thoughts are not fully organised yet, and I apologise for this.
- I believe Heather Clark knows Sylvia Plath better than Sylvia herself. There isn't one aspect of her life that wasn't talked about. This is the first time I feel familiar with a person through a biography.
- Related to the previous point, I cried, which is new for me upon reading biographies.
- Despite having studied The Bell Jar, I did not realise how autobiographical it was before reading this book. Even smaller, more trivial elements are rooted in Sylvia's real life. In the same way, some poems become much easier to interpret
- This book didn't feel tedious to read like some biographies are. It reads as easy as a novel, at the end of each chapter I just wanted to keep reading.
I truly believe this is a book one must read if they've ever read anything by Sylvia Plath. It is necessary to understand her writings, and her life illustrates the psychiatry of her time, a system which failed to understand women's suffering and the impact of patriarchy on their psychology.
A genuine, major recommendation.
- I believe Heather Clark knows Sylvia Plath better than Sylvia herself. There isn't one aspect of her life that wasn't talked about. This is the first time I feel familiar with a person through a biography.
- Related to the previous point, I cried, which is new for me upon reading biographies.
- Despite having studied The Bell Jar, I did not realise how autobiographical it was before reading this book. Even smaller, more trivial elements are rooted in Sylvia's real life. In the same way, some poems become much easier to interpret
- This book didn't feel tedious to read like some biographies are. It reads as easy as a novel, at the end of each chapter I just wanted to keep reading.
I truly believe this is a book one must read if they've ever read anything by Sylvia Plath. It is necessary to understand her writings, and her life illustrates the psychiatry of her time, a system which failed to understand women's suffering and the impact of patriarchy on their psychology.
A genuine, major recommendation.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Mental illness, Suicidal thoughts, Suicide, Suicide attempt
Wow. This is the best biography I've ever read. Comprehensive, unbiased, and compulsively readable. It's the longest book I've ever read, but one of the best.
Only 3 stars because this book was way too long. I got tired of the endless similar episodes of her life. As interesting as I find Plath, this book did a disservice to her by a lack of editing.
challenging
dark
emotional
informative
inspiring
reflective
sad
tense
slow-paced
Content Warnings
Moderate: Chronic illness, Domestic abuse, Mental illness, Suicide, Toxic relationship
Minor: Animal death
emotional
informative
reflective
sad
slow-paced
Well researched, based on objective documentation, fascinating and heart-breaking. The author provides essential insight into the poetry of Plath, and of other writers of the period.
In addition, while describing Plath's life, it also depicts the life and circumstances of intelligent women struggling to be seen for their intelligence in a time when women's intelligence was overtly dismissed and undervalued. Her struggle to be a writer, while also living with the demands of being a mother and "wife" (i.e. taking care of house and husband, while husband has few practical demands placed on him) were (are) a plight for many women.
I found this picture of Sylvia Plath with baby Nicholas. It wasn't in the book, but I wanted to share it https://www.huffpost.com/entry/sylvia-plath-photos-_b_2648814?slideshow=true#gallery/5bb61fe5e4b039c29568b782/10
In addition, while describing Plath's life, it also depicts the life and circumstances of intelligent women struggling to be seen for their intelligence in a time when women's intelligence was overtly dismissed and undervalued. Her struggle to be a writer, while also living with the demands of being a mother and "wife" (i.e. taking care of house and husband, while husband has few practical demands placed on him) were (are) a plight for many women.
I found this picture of Sylvia Plath with baby Nicholas. It wasn't in the book, but I wanted to share it https://www.huffpost.com/entry/sylvia-plath-photos-_b_2648814?slideshow=true#gallery/5bb61fe5e4b039c29568b782/10