The Unabridged Journals of Sylvia Plath
by Sylvia Plath
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Book Summary Information
Author: Sylvia PlathEditor: Karen V. Kukil
Edition: Paperback
Audio: English (Unknown); English (Original Language); English (Published)
Format: Unabridged
Published: 2000-10-17
ISBN: 0385720254
Number of pages: 768
Publisher: Anchor
Book Reviews of The Unabridged Journals of Sylvia Plath
Book Review: "She is quiet...with the O-gape of complete despair."
Summary: 4 Stars
Sylvia Plath (1932-1963) is an icon of the alienated poetic soul confronted with a world of potentially numberless Auschwitzes and Nagasakis, the soul who chooses self-destruction in the face of this existential crisis.
These unabridged journals, edited by Karen V. Kukil, are a vast improvement over the perniciously edited version published in the 1980s (for too long the only one available), whose preparation was supervised by Plath's ex-husband the poet laureate of Britain, Ted Hughes.
Hughes has been cast as the villain of the piece vis-a-vis Plath's life, having been blamed (rather wrongfully) for her suicide at age thirty, and having been accused (more rightfully) of effectively censoring Plath's work, both poem and prose, following her death, whether by legal process, blue pencil, spontaneous rearrangement, or outright destruction of material.
Comparing the Hughes edition to the Kukil edition JOURNALS is an eye-opening education. Hughes slashed vast amounts of material from Plath's daily record, and bowdlerized much of the rest. He extensively editorialized the text. The Sylvia Plath of Hughes' creation strikes the reader as remote and too measured---as if she was writing even her journals for an audience.
The unexpurgated Sylvia Plath who appears in the Kukil JOURNALS is a far more vulnerable, wistful, soft, tough, gritty, obscene and sexualized person---in short a real woman.
Unlike Hughes, Kukil avoided editorializing the text, but perhaps too zealously, thus losing sight of something important. Unless Plath speaks to specific issues, the reader is left unanchored in the 1950s, an era of vast changes whose roil and turmoil unquestionably had subtle (if not always journalistically noted) effects upon Plath. Kukil's edition is purely Plath's voice, wholly on her own.
We see Plath struggling with her inner creative processes, her emotional needs, her fears and doubts and certainties, her boyfriends' demands for sex (1950's style), her warring desires for order or chaos, the daily and mundane realities of a husband, children, career and travel, and paying the electric bill, all this in the face of her underlying lifelong flirtation with suicide.
THE UNABRIDGED JOURNALS OF SYLVIA PLATH are an absolutely essential adjunct to Sylvia Plath's writings. They gift the reader with an intimate view into the mind and creative processes of this brilliant, unbalanced, creative and self-destructive woman.
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