- Paperback: 408 pages
- Publisher: Schaffner Press, Inc.; Second edition edition (Oct 1 2003)
- Language: English
- ISBN-10: 0971059829
- ISBN-13: 978-0971059825
- Product Dimensions: 21.5 x 17 x 2.8 cm
- Shipping Weight: 658 g
- Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars See all reviews (1 customer review)
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Amazon Bestsellers Rank:
#563,670 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #12 in Books > Biographies & Memoirs > People, A-Z > ( P ) > Plath, Sylvia
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Product Details |
Product Description
Product Description
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.
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First Sentence
For Sylvia Plath, as even the most casual reading of her poetry demonstrates, the central obsession from the beginning to the end of her life and career was her father, Professor Otto Emile Plath. Read the first page
Front Cover | Copyright | Table of Contents | Excerpt | Index | Back Cover
For Sylvia Plath, as even the most casual reading of her poetry demonstrates, the central obsession from the beginning to the end of her life and career was her father, Professor Otto Emile Plath. Read the first page
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Concordance
Browse Sample PagesConcordance
Front Cover | Copyright | Table of Contents | Excerpt | Index | Back Cover
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Most helpful customer reviews
5.0 out of 5 stars
Stunning achievement,
By "_a_b_" (Amagansett, NY USA) - See all my reviews
This review is from: Sylvia Plath: Method and Madness (Paperback)
A stunning achievement written with a steadfast hand invoking Hitchcockian detail, dramatic irony, and dread. Edward Butscher returns the reader to the source - Plath's collection of poetry, The Bell Jar, and her entire work. With Butscher's insight into Plath's "extended suicide note", balloons will never be the same.
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews on Amazon.com (beta) Amazon.com:
4.0 out of 5 stars (11 customer reviews) 34 of 39 people found the following review helpful
5.0 out of 5 stars
An unflichingly analysis of Sylvia Plath , brilliant and beautifully written,
By Renee "poet" - Published on Amazon.com
This review is from: Sylvia Plath: Method and Madness (Paperback)
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. 24 of 27 people found the following review helpful
5.0 out of 5 stars
Works on Every Level,
By anon - Published on Amazon.com
This review is from: Sylvia Plath: Method and Madness (Paperback)
Fascinating and detailed, I read this substantial book everywhere: standing on the subway, seated on the bus, reclined on my couch, hidden under my desk, waiting at stoplights. It is beautifully written, informative in the extreme and enlightening about the ambition, drive, commitment and discipline that goes into the making of a star poet (or writer).The author is a wordsmith who truly understands, and helps the reader to understand, the creative process and the poetic voice. I did not want the book to end but still found myself rushing toward the denouement of Plath's last days as if the book were a mystery novel and, hoping against hope, the culprit or victim might yet be someone else. Butscher brilliantly connects all the dots including Plath's state of mind and the significance of the timing of her poems. My caveats are: Ted Hughes remains a less well developed figure against the glowing Sylvia. I would have liked a more developed portrait of the much maligned Ted. I still don't know how tall Hughes was (nor Sylvia for that matter), what women found attractive about him, how he came to be a poet, etc. Butscher relies heavily on a Freudian analysis of Plath's motivations for almost every twist and turn of her brilliant but blighted existence. I find mother-blame just too done! Read the book though! 7 of 8 people found the following review helpful
1.0 out of 5 stars
Condescending biographer,
By Kcpeyton - Published on Amazon.com
This review is from: Sylvia Plath: Method and Madness (Paperback)
Anything about Sylvia Plath is interesting, and I love reading about her life. But the more I read of this book, the more annoyed I became at the author because he came off as so condescending towards Sylvia Plath. His attitude seemed condescending, almost as if he was holding her in contempt. I didn't enjoy his analysis of her poems, largely because, instead of quoting the poem or even just individual stanzas, he paraphrased the poems he was discussing, only directly quoting certain lines. That is not good enough. To paraphrase a poem and then conduct an analysis of it is just not, to my mind, appropriate. Also, I like a biographer to be either neutral about the person he is discussing, or to show some admiration and fondness for the subject. In this book, I got the sense that the author didn't like Sylvia very much. He may not feel this way at all, but the way he writes and the way he approaches her poems is as if he is looking down at her, as if she were just a petulant girl. She deserves better than that. She deserves to be respected as a solid poet who created images with words no one else had ever before created, even if, maybe especially because, those images are very hard to look at. She earned a place next to Ted Hughes and Robert Lowell as a major confessional poet, and I think those who write about her life should respect her.I wound up switching to Bitter Fame by Anne Stevenson, and it's a much better experience. |
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