Sylvia Plath: Method and Madness: A Biography
by Edward Butscher
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Book Summary Information
Author: Edward ButscherEdition: Paperback
Audio: English (Unknown); English (Original Language); English (Published)
Published: 2003-10-01
ISBN: 0971059829
Number of pages: 408
Publisher: Schaffner Press, Inc.
Book Reviews of Sylvia Plath: Method and Madness: A Biography
Book Review: An unflichingly analysis of Sylvia Plath , brilliant and beautifully written
Summary: 5 Stars
This superbly written biography of Sylvia Plath completely threw me. Sylvia Plath has been a poetic heroine of mine for years. I thought that reading about her life would bring me closer to her and her poetry, but it actually pushed me away. I found myself having difficulty relating to her zealous ambition, Puritanical work ethic and neurotic need to impress others.
Sylvia Plath was extremely intelligent (her IQ was once measured at about 160!); but Sylvia was no lazy genius. She was a perfectly punctual, continuously straight-A student, from grade school through college. Plath was a classic perfectionist and an over-achiever. She worked tirelessly and with a single-mindedness that boggles me. Her biographer Edward Butscher argues that Plath's neurotic need for public approval was created by the loss of her father, Otto Plath, who died when she was only eight years old.
While the popular conception of suicidal people is often as emotionally unstable individuals who are "out of control," Sylvia Plath had an extraordinary amount of self-control. Much as she crafted her poems, with persistence and precision, Sylvia constructed a `surface self' in order to please and impress the public. She certainly succeeded in impressing people, and still does, decades after her death.
I was particularly disturbed by Butscher's description of the collegiate Sylvia writing her poems with "the same joyless persistence she gave to her studies." (49) He considers her early poems "socially acceptable artifacts, crafty, superficial vehicles of linguistic excellence created almost solely for the purpose of gaining recognition and attention." (49-50) From what I had read of Sylvia Plath's poetry, I had believed that she wrote from the same passionate necessity that drove my own writing. This cold, calculating Plath that Butscher presented was a stranger to me, so unlike the poet of my imagination. Later, as her poetry developed and became a sustaining force, buoying her through her depressions, I saw more of the Sylvia beneath the surface, the vulnerability that drove her to work so tirelessly.
In order to understand and appreciate the real Sylvia Plath, I had to let go of my romanticized version of her. Edward Butscher's insightful, meticulous biography forced me to do just that; and I thank him for it.
Summary of Sylvia Plath: Method and Madness: A Biography
This is the first full-length biography of Sylvia Plath, whose suicide made her a misinterpreted cause celebre and catapulted her into the ranks of the major confessional voices of her generation.Authors Books
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