dukegregory 's review for:

Red Comet: The Short Life and Blazing Art of Sylvia Plath by Heather Clark

5.0

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Incredible! Heather Clark navigates the mire of Sylvia Plath's enduring romanticization and the fandom surrounding her's aestheticization of death as something beautiful and alluring, mystical and powerful. Instead, Clark maintains lucidity and a searing critical eye throughout such a variety of documentation (letters, journals, diaries, interviews, poems, primary and secondary school exams, juvenilia, etc.) that this tome of a book feels deceptively easy to read. The level of comprehensiveness! The ability to defy standard narratives! The denial of easy labels! The further problematization of Plath's legacy! It's just incredibly eye-opening. My whole consideration of Sylvia Plath has been shifted by Clark's insights. Clark argues that Sylvia Plath is not in fact... a truly confessional poet. She is, but she is not. I think everyone can love this behemoth of a biography (and I'm rather surprised this did not go on to win the Pulitzer for Biography, even though it did attain a finalist slot). I don't know how to encapsulate how all-encompassing this book is as a sociocultural history of mid-century America, literary historiography, literary criticism (and a reflection of the rise of New Criticism), a comparative examination of American and British poetry (and the countries' differing relations to class/caste and sexism), and a metatext on the Plath legacy, all without veering into hagiography. How can one not swoon?