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Synopsis
Kukil, curator of the Plath collection at Smith college, edited this complete edition of Plath's journals. Spanning the years 1950 to 1959, Plath's journals reveal a young, talented woman maturing into an important poet. Her observations--whether catty, sad, or occasionally witty--contribute much to Plath scholarship, as they chart her day to day progress and struggle as a woman and a poet. The appendix collects fragments of later entries, including one describing the birth of her second child. This volume does not include journals she kept leading up to her suicide, as these were destroyed after her death.
| Size | | Length: | 732 pages | | Height: | 8.0 in | | Width: | 5.0 in | | Thickness: | 1.6 in | | Weight: | 25.6 oz |
Industry Reviews
"The most memorable of Sylvia Plath's incantatory poems...read as if they've been chiseled, with a fine surgical instrument, out of arctic ice....By contrast, the journals are a tumult of words, and they present a very mixed aesthetic experience for even a sympathetic reader....Uncritical admirers of Plath will find much here that is fascinating. Other readers may find much that is fascinating and repellent in equal measure....One can be sympathetic with Kukil's project of correcting Hughes's editing of Plath's journals while retaining some doubt as to the wisdom--and the ethics--of exposing a major writer's unrevised, inferior work. Poor Sylvia! Even her grammatical errors and misspelling are faithfully preserved....The reader is advised to seek out the stronger, more lyric passages, which exist in enough abundance through these many pages to assure that this presumed final posthumous publication of Sylvia Plath's is that rarity, a genuine literary event...."
Oates
"The publication of these journals is a watershed event. They allow us, for the first time, to see this dazzlingly, maddening, fragmented woman as an integrated being."
Salon - Kate Moses (05/30/2000)
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