So I've read about a billion books this summer- some have just been brain candy, fluffy stuff to keep my mind busy, and some have turned out to be really good. Right now I'm re-reading The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath. I have no idea why I decided to read it the first time, I'm a little bit of a book snob, so I probably found it on some classics list somewhere and wanted to add it to my literary trophy collection. I got the audio version from the library and I remember listening to it as I was weeding. My memory is generally terrible, so the fact that I have any recollection of this at all is simply astounding, but I remember being truly fascinated. Plath has a quirky writing style that sucks you in- she describes things in a way that makes your brain wander off to determine if you really believe her, then you decide after riding the mental subway for while that she has in fact described so perfectly what you have been attempting your whole life. For example, I have tried to think of the most accurate way to describe the feeling when you recognize something- rather, when your soul recognizes it. When someone asks you what you are going to do with the rest of your life, and you say, "travel the world," and you know that even though it's the first time you ever said it, that it's true, and you have no real reason or evidence, it just IS. See? I can't describe it. In the book I have this passage marked with "YES!!" written by it:
"It sounded true, and I recognized it, the way you recognized some nondescript person that's been hanging around your door for ages and then suddenly comes up and introduces himself as your real father and looks exactly like you, so you know he really is your father, and the person you thought all your life was your father is a sham."
Perfect. She has an uncanny knack for doing just that through the book. Perhaps it's creepy and a bit macabre that I relate to a somewhat-autobiography about a woman who you are watching slowly descent into madness. The real life Sylvia had a pretty rough go- She had a history of mental instability, her poet husband had an affair with another poet's wife, they had a kid, meanwhile she and Ted the Jerkface Poet split, leaving her with 2 little kids, and she ended up committing suicide by gassing herself via head in the oven. Mistress To Ted killed herself and her daughter the same way a few years later fyi. Very tragic all around. So...it seems even worse to like the book knowing that the descent was actually lived by the author. But I do. I like it a LOT.
A few more bell-ringers that have spoken to me:
"There is something demoralizing about watching two people get more and more crazy about each other, especially when you are the only extra person in the room."
"He was the type of fellow I can't stand. I'm five feet ten in my stocking feet, and when I am with little men I stoop over a bit and slouch my hips, one up and one down, so I'll look shorter, and I feel gawky and morbid as somebody in a side-show."
"I thought it would be the way I'd feel if I ever visited Europe. I'd come home, and if I looked closely into the mirror I'd be able to make out a little white Alp at the back of my eye. "
"There must be quite a few things a hot bath won't cure, but I don't know many of them. Whenever I'm sad I'm going to die, or so nervous I can't sleep, or in love with somebody I won't be seeing for a week, I slump down just so far and then I say: 'I'll go take a hot bath.'"
"Then my ears went funny, and I noticed a big smudgy-eyed Chinese woman staring idiotically into my face. It was only me of course."
"There is nothing like puking with somebody to make you old friends."
Later today:
Just finished it. I cruised through the beginning, but the 2nd half I really had to push myself through. The big red sign in my brain kept popping up, "Trespasser-Private Property." I felt like an undetected voyeur to this woman's life, and as I was watching her mind disintegrate, I wanted so badly to slowly slip away before I witnessed any more damage. I thought maybe I should put it down and come back to it later, but it's like driving by a car accident. It's absolutely horrid, but curiosity pulls in every passerby as gawking traffic slows down. It's a sickening reminder of the results of a few choices made in split seconds especially when life is on the line. The 'crazy' part of the book exposes thoughts that people aren't supposed to have, which made me very uncomfortable- but in the way you know your brain is stretching. I don't mean to say I want to get comfortable with suicide, but rather, the concept of grappling with the gross underbelly of our thoughts and feelings that inevitably exist. I think the repulsion or attraction we find to perceived unpleasantries forces us to ask questions of ourselves- which makes us acknowledge and deal with reactions or responses outside the realm of simple emotional hierarchies. Bla bla bla blabla. Excellent read.
