AMERICAN ISIS
I like this alluring and strong title. It gives a head-start with the image of Sylvia. The title portrays her as a goddess, meaning that she has followers, authority and power in literature.
A University of Toronto Ph.D, Rollyson has published more … (more)
A University of Toronto Ph.D, Rollyson has published more … (more)
I wonder what reviewers would have to say if the book with these two words combined in the title came out now.
Chosen title might be reflecting the way the author view life and work of Sylvia Plath, it doesn’t have to fit all the requirements of the Egyptian goddess.
It is a strong statement to call a woman an ISIS,title invites a reader to discover what was so significant about Plath.
A University of Toronto Ph.D, Rollyson has published more … (more)
A University of Toronto Ph.D, Rollyson has published more … (more)
I think the title also ties up the idea of "Slyviamania. To compare Plath to the goddess may seem like a stretch but when taken into consideration how she was viewed in her time and is still viewed in the literary world, goddess seems appropriate. Celebrities sometimes seem just as out of reach and magical as a god. I think it works.
ISIS has another meaning beyond the one that is being used in the media today. I like the title because what Sylvia did (embrace culture in her writing) makes her an almost goddess of literature (the other meaning of ISIS is Greek goddess of fertility.) Interesting play with words.
The Life and Art of Sylvia Plath
By Carl Rollyson
Carl Rollyson’s refreshingly judicious and often eloquent portrait of Sylvia Plath, the sixth major biography published in the half-century since the poet’s death in 1963 at age 30, arrives at an interesting moment. The confessional style, which Plath made famous with the searing lyrics of “Ariel,” written during the months following the breakup of her marriage to the poet Ted Hughes, is no longer dominant. Robert Lowell, credited with starting the movement and with whom Plath studied, didn’t make it into the top-10 list of 20th-century American poets recognized last year in a series of U.S. postage stamps. Plath was the only one of the best-known Confessionals to qualify, and her celebrity status as author and thinly disguised heroine of “The Bell Jar” may have helped her case.
Considering a dialogue that we had for the last assignment, I find the characterization of this biography as “judicious” interesting. While this may refer to writing style, it is strange for biographers to be called “judicious” and have it be in a positive light. It is not a biographer’s job to impose him or herself on subject matter.
A University of Toronto Ph.D, Rollyson has published more … (more)
A University of Toronto Ph.D, Rollyson has published more … (more)
A University of Toronto Ph.D, Rollyson has published more … (more)
A University of Toronto Ph.D, Rollyson has published more … (more)
It is setting up the reader to a time period of Plath, and giving the reader some general background info on who Plath is and what is occurring. (I assume most people would not know who Sylvia Plath is)
Actually I think most people would have heard about Plath and even read some of her works. Just not many people would look into her biography and story, so this works for those who never knew Plath and those that have been interested in her work, but not her life.
A University of Toronto Ph.D, Rollyson has published more … (more)
A University of Toronto Ph.D, Rollyson has published more … (more)
A University of Toronto Ph.D, Rollyson has published more … (more)
A University of Toronto Ph.D, Rollyson has published more … (more)
I think the context is that there is more to Plath than what she is famous for. It sounds like the reviewer is going to open many doors of Plath’s works and introduce her versatility.
The reviewer skillfully and briefly revealed a lot of facts in just one sentence. There were 6 biographies of Plath published before, but this one is still refreshing and persuasive. It also arrived on the 50th anniversary of her tragic death.
It reminds that the book is about one of the best known confessional writers of the 20th-century, yet this same style that made Sylvia Plath’s work and private life famous, is not dominant in the book. Suggesting fresh point of view worth reading.
Here, the reviewer is setting up a stage for a reader who is already at least somewhat familiar with Plath to delve deeper into the pinnacles that made her life and work relevant. As a person who doesn’t know much of her, the eloquence of the words in which the writer uses may move me to read more. But with that being said, this was clearly written for an enthusiast to go deeper as opposed to a introductory learner.
Plath’s confessional style and the emotional backdrop under which it flowed provide a full picture of Plath at the top of her game. Marshall also highlights a seminal work: “Ariel.”
A University of Toronto Ph.D, Rollyson has published more … (more)
A University of Toronto Ph.D, Rollyson has published more … (more)
By pointing out this emotionally turbulent period in her life a reader of Plath can evaluate her work under a new lens. Having a biographical context allows for richer evaluation.
A University of Toronto Ph.D, Rollyson has published more … (more)
A University of Toronto Ph.D, Rollyson has published more … (more)
He’s setting up the fact that change is imminent and in the biography it shows a different style than usual. Deeper, perhaps harder to understand.
Doesn’t the fact that Plath had celebrity status imply that her work was groundbreaking? Why shouldn’t she be on the top-10 list?
Both Lowell and Plath would have been surprised to find Lowell’s friend Elizabeth Bishop, whose work Plath dismissed as “lesbian and fanciful & jeweled,” in the lineup. But these days, Bishop’s style, marked by emotional restraint, sharp description and formal play, has gained the ascendancy, a victory amply illustrated in a villanelle on marital dissolution by Mary Jo Salter, a former student of Bishop’s, recently published in the New Yorker, the magazine that maintained a first-read contract with Plath during the last years of her life. Salter reveals little of herself in the poem, preferring instead to toy artfully with “complaint for absolute divorce,” a phrase extracted from a legal document, which serves as the title and refrain. Contrast that with the furious truth-telling of Plath’s reactions in verse to her betrayal by Hughes: “The Other,” “Words Heard, by Accident, Over the Phone” and “Burning the Letters.” Fifty years have wrought significant changes in literary taste, and “Sylvia mania,” in Hughes’s terms, has largely abated.
A University of Toronto Ph.D, Rollyson has published more … (more)
A University of Toronto Ph.D, Rollyson has published more … (more)
The reviewer is trying to coney the level of excessive enthusiasm there was for Plath at one time by attaching “mania” to her name.
Sylvia Plath was a brilliant writer, brave as a female of her time to reveal personal feelings through her poems. Her suicide caused quite a stir in the circle of those who were close to her and society in general. This “Sylvia mania” was unbearable for Hughes, for their son, who killed himself at the end. Even 50 years later mania still continues, the New Yorker kept their first contract with Plath; former Bishop’s student still quotes the lines about Sylvia’s divorce. This obsession with Plath’s life and death abated, but still present.
The fact that the term Sylvia-mania is even used shows that at a certain point in time, there was a vast connection with a lot of readers to the style, content and life of Plath’s work. The reviewer is trying to not only remind the reader of that time, but kind of drive home the relevance that her work had in so many lives.
I think that the reviewer is cleverly inserting the term “slyvia mania” to refer to both how troubled and ill Slyvia was and also to the mania surrounding Slyvia since she is an icon/celebrity.
“Sylvia mania” is used to describe the way in which literary fans would obsess, perhaps irrationally, over her and her work, holding her work as the highest standard. The reviewer means to say that the ‘craze’ was dwindling and Bishop would have her time to shine and prove Plath wrong.
“American Isis: The Life and Art of Sylvia Plath” by Carl Rollyson (St. Martin’s)
I enjoy the photograph chosen for the book cover. Even though living through depression and ending her life tragically, the cover opposes that and shows joy and a genuine smile. Again, arguing the most known facts about Plath’s life and showing how versatile it was.
A University of Toronto Ph.D, Rollyson has published more … (more)
A University of Toronto Ph.D, Rollyson has published more … (more)
The fact the biographer chose the picture for the book cover given to him by one of Plath’s classmates, makes a big impact on the book itself. Establishes that ‘writerly affinity’ discussed later in the review.
She is smiling on the picture, yet the blue-greyish colors add sadness. Probably because of what is known about how her life ended. A young beautiful smiling girl on the picture didn’t overcome that grey sadness that drilled her for years.
A University of Toronto Ph.D, Rollyson has published more … (more)
A University of Toronto Ph.D, Rollyson has published more … (more)
It seems something troubled her since she was little. Her complicated relationship with mother, suicide attempts in school. I don’t think it was just the separation from husband that made her choose death over life.
Knowing that the photo on the cover was from a personal collection from one of Plath’s college classmates blankets the book in sincerity. It opens the idea to readers that this biography will show the ‘true’ Sylvia Plath. The Plath before the fame, the cheating husband and the suicide. It really does give the idea of “what she was like.” Sylvia Plath the poet and not the troubled icon people may (or may not) see her as today.
And so, surprisingly to those who followed the “biography wars” that began within a few years of Plath’s suicide, there may be many readers in need of a book that aims simply, as Rollyson puts it, to tell “what she was like and what she stood for.” Even those who kept track of the skirmishes — beginning with Hughes’s destruction of a key Plath diary and continuing through the decades as the couple’s friends and family members took sides and offered up contradictory accounts — could use some sorting out.
A University of Toronto Ph.D, Rollyson has published more … (more)
A University of Toronto Ph.D, Rollyson has published more … (more)
It might establish the reader’s trust in the biographer. Enough was said already about her suicide, troubled relationship with her mother and husband. Instead of keeping track of these endless “skirmishes”, he simply wants to reveal who she was, what was important to her. It shows that this is not another cliche biography, but a new fresh look at Sylvia Plath.
The use of the phrase “biography wars” suggests that at one time there was a sort of oversaturation of biographical content coming out about the life and work of Plath. But, the phrase “there may be many readers in need of,” offers the hope of a refreshing and “simple” look at her life.
This paragraph introduces the idea that Rollyson’s biography was innovative in its cause and portrayed Plath in a way that others haven’t before. He states that, in a time of “biography wars”, many were able to publish but not so many were able to publish it as skillfully. The insight, and digging into the depth, is what made his biography so special to the reviewer.
Rollyson supplies a straight forward, objective, unadulterated biography, free of opinion or bias, about her life and how she lived it.
I like how this sentence uses “biography wars”. The context of this sentence showing how many biographies concentrate on other people influencing her life, gossip and information buried under years of history and how different the information was. It underlines that Rollyson actually wanted to write about Plath herself and her personal ambitions and thoughts.
Rollyson opens by announcing that he has “dispensed with a good deal of the boilerplate most biographers feel compelled to supply,” such as background on Plath’s parents and Smith College, where she earned her undergraduate degree as a scholarship student. He will “do very little scene setting,” choosing not to duplicate the work of previous biographers.
A University of Toronto Ph.D, Rollyson has published more … (more)
A University of Toronto Ph.D, Rollyson has published more … (more)
According to the dictionary, Boilerplate means writing that is cliché and expresses general opinion and beliefs. It also could mean a standardized piece of text. Very interesting word to use I may say.
Something that is used again without change. Meaning the author decided to drop the main text, which was used already by previous authors.
Phrases or sentences that are standard and often used. In this context meaning the standard biographical facts form Sylvia Plath’s life are present in the book.
The author uses ‘boilerplate’ to signify that it’s been overused and, as others stated, routine. This means he intends to approach writing his biography in a fresh way. This was necessary during the rush to write the best Plath piece.
This is an important distinction for a reviewer to make. It gives context to the work and demonstrates authority. Moreover, it differentiates the biography from other biographies.
Such streamlining is his usual preference: “Biography strips bare,” Rollyson wrote in a 2008 manual on the form. His approach signals a writerly affinity for Plath, whose best work achieved a tightly focused immediacy. The author of nine other biographies of subjects including Susan Sontag, Norman Mailer and Marilyn Monroe, Rollyson writes with assurance and as an advocate of this “American Isis,” as he titles the book, who “wanted to be an ideal mother and wife — but with her power, her magic, intact.” His primary interest is in conveying the quality and meaning of Plath’s relationships as they can be traced through the available journals and correspondence, as well as the published poetry and fiction, in which Plath “deliberately transgressed the separation of art and autobiography.” Rollyson adds to this written record his own interviews with Plath’s associates at Smith and others willing to talk — an unfortunately small number given Ted Hughes’s injunction to at least one friend: “The truth about Sylvia can only be told when you are dying.”
A University of Toronto Ph.D, Rollyson has published more … (more)
A University of Toronto Ph.D, Rollyson has published more … (more)
’Writerly" establishes the authority of the biographer, as someone who posses the characteristics of a professional author. And his affinity, meaning sympathy for Sylvia, liking of her, is felt throughout the book.
This characterization illustrates an affinity between the writing styles of the biographer and Plath. Both believe in getting to the point while presenting a strong viewpoint.
The reviewer refers to the authors admiration and perhaps likeness with Plath’s writing.
Rollyson’s account credibly outlines the claustrophobic effects on Plath of social, familial and marital pressures that may have proved her undoing. Rollyson cites her reading of Philip Wylie’s popular “Generation of Vipers” with its notion of the suffocating mom, which may have fed Plath’s animosity toward her widowed mother. Less convincing are his recurrent allusions to Plath’s sister-suicide Marilyn Monroe, in which he stresses similarities in their marriages to powerful male intellectuals. But Monroe’s lethal anguish was surely abetted by the knowledge that a screen actress’s career could be over at 30; a poet, even one so determinedly precocious as Plath, has time on her side.
A University of Toronto Ph.D, Rollyson has published more … (more)
A University of Toronto Ph.D, Rollyson has published more … (more)
the review states the fate of two the women are not quite “sisterly” due to the major difference in their careers. Monroe, as an actress, may have been experiencing a crisis in fear of: loosing her job, beauty and aging. When on the other hand Plath should have not been afraid of said things, because she is not a screen image that she has to keep up to, but a poet, whose age rarely defines an end of a career. Probably, yes, there are overlapping situations with their husbands, that may have caused an effect towards suicide, but perhaps the psychological aspect goes deeper into different directions for both of the women.
A University of Toronto Ph.D, Rollyson has published more … (more)
A University of Toronto Ph.D, Rollyson has published more … (more)
The reviewer is not convincing in her suggestion that Monroe’s suicide was tied mainly to her fear of losing career as she was getting older.
There are many facts, including her interviews, where she said clearly two most important things in life for her were work and love, one didn’t exist without the other. Not only losing work terrified her, but the fear of being abandoned by her husband as well. Once she read in the Miller’s diary that he was embarrassed by her, didn’t find comfortable being in the circle of his friends with her. It was the divorce from Miller that marked the decline of Merilyn’s life, erratic behavior, alcohol and drug abuse.
Sylvia ended her life following the separation from her husband,also “a powerful male intellectual.”
There is definitely a ground for comparison here.
The reviewer is generalizing and making an assumption rather than building a convincing argument in regards to why Monroe and Plath’s demise are not in any way the same.
The ending statement does bring to light the flaw of the “sister-suicide” statement, although they did die similarly and close to the same time the fact that an acting career is more stressful, since age plays a factor, I believe monroe’s suicide was more understandable rather than Plaths which was more unexpected.
The reviewer seems to believe that the author lacks credibility because he fails to account for the differences in their marriages, careers, and perhaps social lives. I believe that he is correct, in a way. It is important to not only look at marital problems, but also how the individuals life as a whole impacted them. The life of a screen actress will wildly differ from a poets. There are different standards and requirements for work, different social standards, a different reputation and set of followers, etc. All of these aspects, as well as those related to personal relationships, pull a story together. It may only be sheer coincidence that the powerful male intellectuals were present in both suicides. After all, it is no surprise that a powerful woman would attract a powerful man.
A University of Toronto Ph.D, Rollyson has published more … (more)
A University of Toronto Ph.D, Rollyson has published more … (more)
A University of Toronto Ph.D, Rollyson has published more … (more)
A University of Toronto Ph.D, Rollyson has published more … (more)
The even-handedness of Rollyson’s rendering of the Plath-Hughes relationship, which presents the volatile marriage as one made impetuously by two people of mismatched backgrounds but dangerously alike in ambition and competitiveness, breaks down in a final chapter on the aftermath of Plath’s suicide. He blames Hughes for a “dogged but futile effort to dictate the gospel of Sylvia Plath’s biography.” But here too, Rollyson offers a biographer’s sympathy: “It does not seem possible to discern any consistency or logic in Hughes’s management of his papers and Plath’s, perhaps because his view of their marriage kept changing.” Had Hughes lived to read “American Isis,” even he might have found passages to admire in this reverent work of resurrection.
A University of Toronto Ph.D, Rollyson has published more … (more)
A University of Toronto Ph.D, Rollyson has published more … (more)
I feel like this means the reviewer see’s the book as if it brings life back to Plath and her story. Meaning, it is truthful, engaging and highly accurate, allowing the reader to live a little bit by Plath’s side.
A University of Toronto Ph.D, Rollyson has published more … (more)
A University of Toronto Ph.D, Rollyson has published more … (more)
With respect. A tumultuous marriage, that ultimately ended in tragedy is a delicate matter. An author’s ability to handle this with empathy can’t be understated. Saying that even Hughes could appreciate it means that it has balance.
A University of Toronto Ph.D, Rollyson has published more … (more)
A University of Toronto Ph.D, Rollyson has published more … (more)
In this context, it is a reverent work of resurrection because of the doggedness of the author, the time and work put into the biography, and just HOW much respect and admiration he must have had for Plath to do her biography justice. It requires more than standard kudos to perform the ‘proper’ kind of resurrection, and the reviewer is saying that the author gave what was needed.
The biographer made it a duty to tell Plath’s story as close to the truth as possible. So much so, the reviewer concludes that Hughes can admire it for doing just that.
Marshall, a former student of both Robert Lowell and Elizabeth Bishop, is the author of the forthcoming biography “Margaret Fuller: A New American Life.”
A University of Toronto Ph.D, Rollyson has published more … (more)
A University of Toronto Ph.D, Rollyson has published more … (more)
The reviewer, who is herself the former student of same Lowell as Sylvia once was, indicates she has her insight into the subject of Plath’s life. Moreover, she is working on the biography of the female writer, famous as a women’s advocate of the 19th-century.
The qualifications given assert that Marshall may have knowledge and insight into Plath, Lowell, and Bishop’s lives that others may not. This adds credibility to the work because it establishes authority.
American Isis
The Life and Art of Sylvia Plath
By Carl Rollyson
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