Sylvia Plath: Method and Madness (A Continuum book)

I am a Sylvia Plath lover and this book is truly meaningful. The author is so fluent and empathetic but deeply historical and also quite literary. It is all I could ask for in a bio of my heroic favorite poet and more.

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.

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!

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.