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

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

What collections of her criticism should I read?

NYRB has helpfully collected the best stuff.

Finished Louise Fitzhugh's The Long Secret (as discussed on the literary treats thread) and pleased to discover it's just as goddamn wonderful as everyone said it was. Different pleasures from the first book, but just as good. I love

Foiled, Harriet stood in the middle of the group. Everyone looked down at her. She felt like a spilled drink.

Such a perceptive, funny, original writer.

Got all my library books extended to the start of the new year. So can relax and read at my own speed. Got Raymond Queneau book We Always Treat Women Too Well out too. So will read that over next few days and hopefully get bell hooks Ain't I'm A Woman as an interlibrary loan in a few days too.

Enjoying the Steven H Gardner Another Tuneless Racket cos he's covering bands I don't know well.

Also the book Sway on unconscious bias.

Finished Holly Melgard's "Divisions of Labor," a small conceptual poetry abecedarium of language used by people giving birth.

More notably, finished Dodie Bellamy's "Bee Reaved." If you're into Bellamy at all, it's pretty amazing— very moving and thrilling and also frustrating! Here is an excerpt from the jewel of the book, its final essay: https://www.moussemagazine.it/magazine/we-run-for-our-lives-dodie-bellamy-2021/

Don't know what I'll be on next. Maybe another Rabih Alameddine.

Oh yeah, great TNY essay on Bellamy too, thanks for the link, tables!

xxx[post one thing about EH's criticism I wondered about:
She seems to be projecting a lot in that profile's quotes (again, context invites me to think this, but profiler seems to think so too,though not in a negative way) Also as described, seems that Hardwick was big on author's origins, background: thought Plath suffered from no definite regional identity? The Almanac of American Politics observed that of Poppy Bush in 1980, and did seem to figure into enduring-recurring Conservative suspicions of him as Beltway careerist weasel, lacking "the Vision thing," as he put it---but Plath? Oh well, that's the approach of these New Yorker pieces too, good gateways.

She may have meant that Plath didn't have that aspect of definition to counter, the way Hardwick herself is shown vs. Southern conformity, incl. the usual rules, roles for and of girls and women.

(She may not have had opportunity to see Plath's letters, diaries; I don't know how the publication dates jibe w Hardwick's span as critic)

i read both harriet the spy and the long secret several years ago on alfred's recommendation and adored them both. both harriet and beth ellen are wonderful characters. i dearly wish there were more louise fitzhugh books to read!

something fitzhugh has in common with plath: both wrote novels that somehow disappeared after their deaths. fitzhugh wrote an adult novel called amelia that was rejected by a publisher and apparently got lost, and plath at least started writing two other novels besides the bell jar that haven't survived.