Now the year is turning and the eeriness comes: what are you reading in autumn 2021?

🤨

Last night I finished My Home is Far Away, Dawn Powell. It felt like one of her weaker efforts, largely because it was strongly tethered to her own life story and I think the pull of memory interfered with her natural instincts as a satirist and storyteller.

Now I've started The Ten Thousand Things, Maria Dermoût, set in the Moluccas.

The Silent Woman: Sylvia Plath and Ted Hughes - Janet Malcolm

If you asked me about what I thought about Sylvia Plath and Ted Hughes, my view was formed at 16 and hasn’t moved on much since. I loved Plato’s poetry intensely for the two years I studied it, but I admittedly haven’t thought of her much since, although I own her collected works and still find great enjoyment in them. So a few weeks back, I was talking about how my entire English class haaaaated Hughes, because of him cheating on Plath and then both Plath and Assia Wevill’s suicides, xyzzzz__ mentioned this book, which I’ve never heard of.

What a book, though. Malcolm picks her way carefully through the stuff we all know; the work, the deaths, the rumours. Somewhere in reading this, I came to feeling almost sympathetic towards Hughes, which Malcolm freely admits is her bias in writing this book.

The book delves a lot into the other biographies about Plath and Hughes. Hughes himself is the great unseen in this; he is never directly interviewed by Malcolm, but instead is glimpsed through letters, stories and most of all through his sister Olwyn’s passionate advocacy. But his presence towers over everything. It is hard to forget his anguish about being treated as though he is dead by biographers, in terms of what they see fit to speculate about. When Malcolm writes about Wevill’s suicide, and in passing says (of Hughes), that his pain must have been unimaginable, it startled me. It’s a totally obvious point to make, of course, but I had been so set in the image of this couple that I’d held more or less untouched for the last 18 years that it shocked me.

Malcolm picks her way through Plath’s own words, in the form of her poetry, letters and journals. Between this and the various coverage of people who knew her, she tries to sift down to some kind of truth, but freely admits at all times the difficulty in doing so. Although she confesses her bias towards the Hugheses, I still felt sympathetic towards Plath. It is clear that she was in a lot of pain in life, pain that perhaps none were equipped to help her handle. Malcolm notes the casual cruelty of even Plath’s supposed defenders in this life towards her memory, and is sharp about what they gain from it. In this, her view is very much aligned with that of the Hughes siblings.

Memory and its failings as a method of establishing some kind of objective truth are a theme visited and done well here. Malcolm is skilled in the way she releases information at key points, so I was surprised when she is surprised, and the ending of the book is sublime.

What did I most like about this? Her portrayal of, and various entanglements with, Olwyn Hughes is up there. The meeting with Jacqueline Rose is a highlight. The careful piecing together of the story - for it is a story, as much as it was also people’s lives - is incredible, and I find myself thinking about certain phrases from Hughes’s various letters excerpted throughout.

A truly amazing book, and one that I will return to time and time again. Thank you so much for recommending me this xyzzzz__!

Lol that Plato is obviously meant to be Plath.

Excellent book. It got me to read Anne Stevenson's (okay) poetry.

👍👍👍 xp

xp I have a lot of thoughts about this book but absolutely zero curiosity about her work. I was more interested in Malcolm’s thoughts about her.

Even from a distance of two years from reading The Silent Woman, Malcolm's stance on Hughes still feels radical to me. As in received opinion is such, and the urge to pathologise Plath and Hughes so strong (and, to a lesser extent, Wevill), that it almost has to be a process of ongoing revision to hold the possibilities Malcolm constructs present in one's mind. If it's at all relevant, I think, if anything, I've come to admire Plath's work more and Hughes' less, though this may not all be entwined with Malcolm's book.

I'm reading Robin Wall Kimmerer's book Gathering Moss. She's a professor of forest biology so it's a specialist text but presented to a lay audience; it's that crossover that I'm struggling with a bit as each chapter is framed with what can be quite pronounced containing metaphors. It's also oddly edited in places, with a frustrating amount of repetition. It's convinced me to get a hand glass though, so there is that.

xp I really liked her repeated characterisation of Plath’s work as extreme - I never thought of it as such but those sharp sentences and zero punches pulled, of course it is. I found the anecdote that the book’s title is from fascinating. Couldn’t stop thinking about it.

Is there a thread for posting random connections between consecutive books that you've read? I just finished Virginia Woolf's Orlando and am about halfway through Jim Thompson's The Kill-Off and both have characters named Marmaduke.

Judging by reviews and excerpts I've read, collected letters of Plath to her mother seem to have incl./consisted of very detailed candor, at least regarding some topics and experiences. Also the diaries. Will try to read all of that before going back to any more biographies, though Malcolm's sounds worth a look. Somehow you're reminding me of A. Alvarez's take on her in The Savage God, his study of suicide and art. He was her and Ted's friend and neighbor, also published some of her poetry or other things, i think. Talks about that, and (says why he) thinks she meant to be found while still alive. Guess that would fit with interpretation of "cry for help," (that's what he seemed to think, as best I recall), and/or "being provocative," difficult," "fuck you."

Dammit, can't find my copy of his book right now---but he's candid here, about how he thinks he failed her, and on context:https://www.theguardian.com/books/2000/mar/19/poetry.features

Wow, review by Joyce Carol Oates no less, NYTimes '72, sympathetic to his then-oddball syncretic approach, which she says will get "harsh criticism," also she paraphrases his views on Plath's suicide w far more nuance than I remembered, in NYTimes, '71: says will be controversial because a book like no other, at that point, and
...The most compelling section deals with Sylvia Plath, who committed suicide in 1963. Alvarez was acquainted with her and her hus band, the poet Ted Hughes, and was evidently one of the last people to see her alive. Her death is analyzed in terms of her poetry; Alvarez believes she attempted to “exorcize the [subject of] death she had summoned up in her poems,” that her suicide was not absolutely deliberate, not a totally conscious choice. Ted Hughes and others acquainted with Sylvia Plath have objected to Alvarez's writing on this point, but since I have no way of knowing what is fact and what is speculation, I will assume that Alvarez reported the events as honestly as he could. In any case it is his theory about the relationship of certain poetic subjects and the self‐destruction of the poet that is really significant. Alvarez raises some disturbing questions. Is art therapeutic? Is the Aristotelian idea of the cathartic function of art perhaps mistaken? Does the poet instead involve himself more and more deeply, fatally, in the morbidity he tries to expell from his system through a formal construction of images and arguments?

It may be objected that the suicidal artist chooses morbid images be cause he cannot choose others, that he is rehearsing his own suicide, or perhaps feebly postponing it, through his art. Or, what is
more likely, that certain artists project the deathliness within them, which then seems to “predict” their own suicides, and that certain other artists become too involved with their own subject‐matter and perhaps with their own mythological concept of what they (as “artists”) must be, so that it is too late for them to turn back. There are no final answers. But Alvarez's questions are superb, for they cause us to wonder not only about ourselves— not only about isolated individuals— but about our entire culture, which exhibits so proudly and, indeed, so lavishly, public images of violence, death and comic horror in such billion‐dollar industries as the movies. If art has no power to do evil, then it has no power to do good either; it is, then, powerless. And few liberals would want to believe this.
Gotta serve somebody! Did I mention it's by Joyce Carol Oates? Whole thing is worth checking, not paywalled yet:
https://www.nytimes.com/1972/04/16/archives/the-savage-god-a-study-of-suicide-by-a-alvarez-299-pp-new-york.html

Though in the xpost 2000 Guardian quotes, seems like he may be saying that she did seem more conscious of what she was about to do---judging by that last visit, that poem she brought---and that he didn't want to face it back then, incl. while writing about it?

Judging by reviews and excerpts I've read, collected letters of Plath to her mother seem to have incl./consisted of very detailed candor, at least regarding some topics and experiences. Also the diaries. Will try to read all of that before going back to any more biographies, though Malcolm's sounds worth a look. Somehow you're reminding me of A. Alvarez's take on her in _The Savage God_, his study of suicide and art. He was her and Ted's friend and neighbor, also published some of her poetry or other things, i think. Talks about that, and (says why he) thinks she meant to be found while still alive. Guess that would fit with interpretation of "cry for help," (that's what he seemed to think, as best I recall), and/or "being provocative," difficult," "fuck you."

I also recommend Diane Middlebrook's Her Husband: Hughes and Plath – A Marriage.

Just finished African Popular Theatre which I've had out for way too long. Think I got it between lockdowns last year and should have got to it sooner.
It is very interesting i think i just let getting sidetracked by other stuff. Gives a history dating back to precol9nial tradition and up to time of publication in the mid 90s.
Want to read more on the subject and definitely more on African film which it gives one chapter to.

Back to Black Kehinde Andrews
I read his New Age of Empire last year or the start of this and that is supposed to be a prequel to this. I like his writing so got an interlibrary loan of this. I'm reading a lot of anti racism stuff still.

Audrey Lord Compendium
3 books by black lesbian feminist. Mainly seems to be short pieces.
I think I need my own copy since this is a library interloan

Another Tuneless Racket Vol1 Origins.
Steven H Gardner.
American writers history of Punk. Interesting. He's looking into the prepunk bands that influenced things so far. I read about Count Bishops yesterday who I hadn't known the timeline for. Knew the singer from Buffalo was in them at one point as well as the singer from The Cannibals but wasn't sure who replaced who and hadn't listened to them really. Did check out something with each singer on Spotify yesterday. May return to that again.

Ngl, totally uninterested in anything seeking to redeem Ted Hughes. Shitty poet (especially in comparison to Plath) and shitty human, period.

yeah but he sure knew how to bite

you mean bite from Sylvia's poetry?

(Really, it's his editing of the original collected poems that makes him an unforgivable character to me, on top of all the other known horrible things he did— to edit your suicided ex-wife's poems to make yourself look better and not culpable in any way for her desperation is pretty fucked)

No, as in bites! During their first hookup Plath and Hughes bit each other hard enough to draw blood.

I'm mostly indifferent to his poetry; it's D.H. Lawerence's animal poetry but studied and self-conscious. I did like his translation of the Oresteia.

i read malcolm's book many years ago and absolutely loved it. i remember being quite surprised and at least sort of convinced by her more sympathetic take on ted hughes. that said, it came out a few years back that hughes was apparently physically abusive to plath during their marriage, so I’m not sure how i would feel about malcolm’s take on him now.

ftr Malcolm doesn't at al try to redeem Hughes. His presence is defined as absence: he doesn't speak, he has emissaries. Instead, she suggests -- an unassailable point based on the surviving letters and testimony from contemporaries -- Hughes did love Plath and was destroyed by her suicide.

Ngl, totally uninterested in anything seeking to redeem Ted Hughes. Shitty poet (especially in comparison to Plath) and shitty human, period.

Sort of sounds like it is, tho, based on what everyone is saying.

"Oh he loved her"

Then he should have treated her with more dignity and respect, end of story.

The Malcolm book explicitly picks its way through the evidence of what he published and left in, in order to make the case that he was torn between the real two impulses of telling the truth and protecting himself and their kids. It’s a very interesting analysis.

At the time of Malcolm's book the letters in which Plath alleges physical abuse hadn't emerged yet.

ftr Malcolm doesn't at al try to redeem Hughes. His presence is defined as absence: he doesn't speak, he has emissaries. Instead, she suggests -- an unassailable point based on the surviving letters and testimony from contemporaries -- Hughes did love Plath and was destroyed by her suicide.

At the time of Malcolm's book the letters in which Plath alleges physical abuse hadn't emerged yet.

It seems we're not going to agree on this point— the more you describe the book, the more it seems like apologia for Hughes and his atrocious decisions.

(Not you doing the apologia, but Malcolm).

An apologia for Hughes would've been, "He did these terrible things; let me explain why you should bear X, Y, Z."

The Malcolm book is closer to, "He did these terrible things; here's how his sister and her war on biographers has shielded him."

I’m not really interested in going into this further, but there was none of that in this book, and nobody has posted itt alluding to it as such.

Hughes is never directly interviewed in the Malcolm book. He is at turns silent and then torrents of ferocity through his letters to intermediaries or his sister.

She might've titled it The Silent Man.

The title I thought kind of alludes to what the book is really about, the gaps in between what is known, as well as the telling memory of Plath that Olwyn had.

gyac, you yourself mentioned Malcolm's sympathy toward Hughes and his siblings *twice* in your initial post, which is what got me worked up in the first place.

Sympathy isn’t apologism.

A vast biography of Plath appeared last year. Not mentioned here.

Only one sustained discussion on ILB about Hughes as poet, as opposed to 'ogre-husband of Plath'. He got very mixed reviews, a few of his poems admired, but most of his output not. What think you of Ted Hughes?

I finished R.F. Foster's biography of Yeats, vol 1: THE APPRENTICE MAGE. The best biography I've read.

I finished Steven Connor, THE MADNESS OF KNOWLEDGE. Dazzling opening; the rest of the book not quite at the same level; but many hilarious self-referential moments.

I read Daniel Corkery, SYNGE AND ANGLO-IRISH LITERATURE: the most sectarian work of criticism I've ever read, but terrifically entertaining and rich.

I read J.M. Synge, THE ARAN ISLANDS: simply written, but a bit of a slog because, to be honest, rarely exciting. But a pretty good and significant piece of travel writing or exploration.

I've started Jonathan Coe, MR WILDER AND ME: a novel about meeting Billy Wilder. Very readable. I wonder a bit about Coe's tendency to over-emphasise things when it's not necessary.

ay yi yi I don't know if I'm smart, educated or English enough to read Ian Sinclair. Really enjoy his prose but there is probably an average of a reference to something I don't know in every other paragraph

Isn't his whole thing psychogeography? That can be rough going if you're not living where it's written about...

'He could joke very happily in those days when his sentence was a straight young thing that could run where it liked, instead of a delicate creature swathed in relative clauses as an invalid in shawls' - from Rebecca West's acrid little book on Henry James.

finished Small Island (where the Before bits were always more insteresting than the 1948 bits). only heard about it on the Imagine episode, which also acted as an obit given that she died before it aired.

started Accidental Tourist re-read. probably my favourite Tyler. (a slipping down life?)

Yeah, a slipping down life for me (also the novel). Liked Searching For Caleb too.
Life x works of Elizabeth Hardwick in The New Yorker---in this context, I can infer maybe why she committed to the notorious Lowell, despite all warnings and protests---mainly, I'm intrigued by description and quotes of Sleepless Nights---is it good??

(Also, she's described as thinking it could be Lives of the Artists, though she did all business of living so he could write.)

She's a far better critic than fiction writer, but that one had moments