Sylvia Plath's roman-à-clef 'The Bell Jar' (1963)

[DuckRabbit]

Is anyone else amazed at how differently a work of art can be evaluated across different eras? Below are two contrasting responses - dismissal of vs. rhapsodies for Sylvia Plath's 'The Bell Jar':

http://mentalfloss.com/article/64891/10-facts-about-sylvia-plaths-bell-jar
5. THE BOOK WAS REJECTED BY AMERICAN PUBLISHERS.
When Plath received a $2,080 novel-writing fellowship associated with publishers Harper & Row, she must have thought that publication was a sure thing. But Harper & Row rejected The Bell Jar, calling it "disappointing, juvenile and overwrought." While British publisher William Heinemann accepted the book, Plath still had trouble finding an American publisher. “We didn’t feel that you had managed to use your materials successfully in a novelistic way,” one editor wrote.

Cf.

From various online sources:
"The 100 best novels: No 85 – The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath (1966)" ... "acclaimed and enduring masterwork, Sylvia Plath brilliantly draws the reader into Esther's breakdown with such intensity that..." ... "The Bell Jar is an extraordinary accomplishment and a haunting American classic"... "The woman clearly knew how to write, and the imagery is utterly mind-blowing"... "The Bell Jar is so carefully constructed and considered. Despite the messy tangle of subject matter, Plath never rambles; and for all it's flowery and poetic language there is not an unconsidered word in the entire book."

I guess the opposite happens too - a work that is fulsomely praised at the time then sinks into obscurity in the fullness of time. Does anyone know of any such examples?

What does this suggest? That we are unequipped to judge contemporary artworks in our own day and age? They are subjected to social-political processes that have nothing to do with their creative or artistic properties? We can only judge artworks by looking back in history? (We need the distance of time) That views of artworks are fundamentally subjective? That we project our own psyches onto whatever artworks we are judging?

One review online said they prefer "childbirth" to reading 'The Bell Jar'; I personally found it full of dry wit e.g.,

"I had read one of Mrs. Guinea’s books in the town library— the college library didn’t stock them for some reason— and it was crammed from beginning to end with long, suspenseful questions: ‘Would Evelyn discern that Gladys knew Roger in her past? wondered Hector feverishly’ and ‘How could Donald marry her when he learned of the child Elsie, hidden away with Mrs. Rollmop on the secluded country farm? Griselda demanded of her bleak, moonlit pillow.’ These books earned Philomena Guinea, who later told me she had been very stupid at college, millions and millions of dollars."
~ Sylvia Plath, The Bell Jar.

 

[Mia]

What does this suggest? That we are unequipped to judge contemporary artworks in our own day and age? They are subjected to social-political processes that have nothing to do with their creative or artistic properties? We can only judge artworks by looking back in history? (We need the distance of time) That views of artworks are fundamentally subjective? That we project our own psyches onto whatever artworks we are judging?

Wouldn't say that they were unsuited to recognizing talent, would speculate that publishers of that era were able to discern the promise of Plath, yet considered the 'voice' used an unconventional one. It must have perplexed them, a genuine somewhat on the 'edge' writer and poet haunted by the past and her attempts at conventional life.

Certainly publishers of that time did try to control writers, especially writers who wrote about unconventional subject matter. Social mores dictated certain notions of family and female and male roles and although Virginia Woolf had broken down some barriers earlier in the century, it was yet to be done as competently as it had been, outside of england. Yet writers such as Harper Lee were published, although they were certainly censored. There's a lot more at work here that personal subjectivity; conservationism, post war publishing, political environment, the need to control the social upheaval that began in that era. The entire timeline is chaotic but interesting.

 

[DuckRabbit]

Certainly publishers of that time did try to control writers, especially writers who wrote about unconventional subject matter.

Do you think this is any different today - that publishers and agents no longer try to control writers or fit them into pre-established 'genres'? I recall that some novel was published in the last few years on disability (the author and details escape me) and it was ground-breaking because apparently no agents or publishers wanted to touch the topic of disability.

Do you write by any chance?

Hopefully this evidence of fluctuating evaluations of artworks with the passage of time gives hope to those writers/ artists on this forum who may be doubting their creative efforts!

 

[Mia]

Do you think this is any different today - that publishers and agents no longer try to control writers or fit them into pre-established 'genres'?

It is evident that certain types of publishers are more conservative than others. It would seem that there is a certain standard that they uphold, yet 'old school' publishing houses often take on popular writers that will make a good deal of money for them. Evidenced by Steven King leaving his original publisher and moving on to another, in an interview he suggested that he was something of a 'cash cow' for his publishers. Now he requires a publisher to 'bid' to publish his books.

Fact is there are so many alternatives now, self-publishing, magazines, graphic books, online publishers. I would think that the now obsolete academic perception that certain books shouldn't be published has fallen by the wayside. Deciding what the 'masses' should or shouldn't have access to has become a moot point now.

 

[DuckRabbit]

It is evident that certain types of publishers are more conservative than others. It would seem that there is a certain standard that they uphold, yet 'old school' publishing houses often take on popular writers that will make a good deal of money for them. Evidenced by Steven King leaving his original publisher and moving on to another, in an interview he suggested that he was something of a 'cash cow' for his publishers. Now he requires a publisher to 'bid' to publish his books.

Fact is there are so many alternatives now, self-publishing, magazines, graphic books, online publishers. I would think that the now obsolete academic perception that certain books shouldn't be published has fallen by the wayside. Deciding what the 'masses' should or shouldn't have access to has become a moot point now.

Good to know that about Stephen King. I enjoyed his book 'On Writing' - although it contained the bias that all writers do have or ought to have thousands of stories inside them like he does. What about writers who only have one story (JD Salinger?) or only one masterpiece (F Scott Fitzgerald? Evelyn Waugh?). A single book can impact literature as much as being 'a prolific author'! The publishing houses won't stand for it though: if an author has written one good book, the publisher tries to capitalise on their name by getting the author to write another (as you say being a 'cash cow') - even though the next book may not be inspired or have any spark.

I understand that Sylvia Plath wrote one or more novels apart from 'The Bell Jar' but they were destroyed by her husband, along with her last couple of journals. Such a pity...

 

[Mia]

Agree, a single book can on its own, change perceptions forever. Ellison's 'Invisible Man' for example, or Salinger's 'Catcher' had an immense impact on their readers, some people only seem to have one book in them. They spend the rest of their time re-creating that book again and again, with a similar plot, or characters, written in a different way. Often find myself disappointed with books in series, where you can predict the outcome beforehand.

Plath should have never married, my understanding was that she may have been bi-polar or schizophrenic and deeply depressed her entire adult life, marriage and children were not something she should have attempted.

 

[DuckRabbit]

Do you think Plath could have been Asperger's?

Virginia Woolf was advised by her doctor not to attempt children and she complied. Plath was trying so hard to conform and 'tick all the boxes'. I agree with you - she perhaps should not have had children. She should have worked towards stability in her own emotional life first (if such a goal is possible). As for not being married - I rather think her creative, intellectual, not to mention romantic/sensual, life benefitted enormously from her partnership with Hughes, but at the ultimate price. And he benefitted from her - he claims she turned him into a professional. Creative inspiration and exchange notwithstanding, I rather think Ted Hughes should never have married. He was the philanderer after all. How his kids suffered from it - always wondering whether some 'friend' of their father's that they met was really having an affair with him...

 

[Mia]

I suspect that she was more of a muse to him, than he to her, their lives together seemed destined to destroy either one another or others. Often read about women who held promise as writers, artists, painters who marry for 'love' and rarely do those things again. They become enmeshed, take on all the responsibilities of child-rearing and household work, and can't devote their time to their art. Emily Dickinson comes to mind as does Anna Akhmatova and Pat Lowther. Although they wrote despite their circumstances, Dickinson was known to write poetry on tiny scraps of paper and sew them into books.

 

[DuckRabbit]

I suspect that she was more of a muse to him, than he to her, their lives together seemed destined to destroy either one another or others. Often read about women who held promise as writers, artists, painters who marry for 'love' and rarely do those things again. They become enmeshed, take on all the responsibilities of child-rearing and household work, and can't devote their time to their art. Emily Dickinson comes to mind as does Anna Akhmatova and Pat Lowther. Although they wrote despite their circumstances, Dickinson was known to write poetry on tiny scraps of paper and sew them into books.

Interesting about those female poets. It must be wonderful to devote oneself to art without having to pay the bills/ bring up children/ do household work, but I suspect a lot of the reason for 'doing art' is due to frustration and thwarting, and much of it would only be produced under pressure or suffering. As Nicholson Baker writes about poetry:

They were the first to give me the shudder, the shiver, the grieving joy of true poetry – the feeling that something wasn’t right, but it was all right that it wasn’t right. In fact it was better than if it had been right.

 

[DuckRabbit]

P.S. For the ultimate treatment of art through a social-political lens, see this Spectator article:

http://www.spectator.co.uk/2016/09/estate-agent/

The squalid afterlife of artists' estates
Legacies are usually controlled by squabbling heirs, opportunist collectors and vengeful harpies. Stephen Bayley meets the German lawyer trying to civilise the process
Stephen Bayley


A big misunderstanding about art is that it excites serene meditation and transcendent bliss. But anyone who has worked in a public museum or a commercial gallery knows that this is untrue. The moral climate of the contemporary art world would embarrass the Borgias.

Art excites peculation, speculation, back-stabbing, front-stabbing and avarice while fuelling nasty spats about attribution and ownership between heirs, relatives, executors and collectors. Nowhere is this more comically apparent than in the matter of artists’ estates. Once a private concern of family and lawyers, the ‘artist’s estate’ is becoming recognised as a tangible and valuable entity that needs professional management just like any other financial asset. [..........]

 

[Mia]

It must be wonderful to devote oneself to art without having to pay the bills/ bring up children/ do household work, but I suspect a lot of the reason for 'doing art' is due to frustration and thwarting, and much of it would only be produced under pressure or suffering.

Think perhaps some types of art are that way, done in the later years after early strife. Yet many artists spend a great deal of time on their work, it doesn't happen all that quickly. As for the 'blood on the wall' paintings, they do exist. Most who become well-known devote all their time, usually 'helped' by others who 'do' for them. People who give up their lives to 'care' for those artists. Without their caretakers I doubt that they would have been as productive as they were. As for the difficulties in their lives, I don't know if that might be so consistent a theme, many well-known artists had somewhat easy lives that segued into lucrative lives. They studied in the right places, and made the right connections.

 

[DuckRabbit]

Think perhaps some types of art are that way, done in the later years after early strife. Yet many artists spend a great deal of time on their work, it doesn't happen all that quickly. As for the 'blood on the wall' paintings, they do exist. Most who become well-known devote all their time, usually 'helped' by others who 'do' for them. People who give up their lives to 'care' for those artists. Without their caretakers I doubt that they would have been as productive as they were. As for the difficulties in their lives, I don't know if that might be so consistent a theme, many well-known artists had somewhat easy lives that segued into lucrative lives. They studied in the right places, and made the right connections.

True.

 

[Mia]

I guess the opposite happens too - a work that is fulsomely praised at the time then sinks into obscurity in the fullness of time. Does anyone know of any such examples?

I can think of many, including pulitzer prize winning novels that left me cold. All the kings men by Warren, The Late George Apley by Marquand, Executioner's song by Mailer, Black Water by Oates, Caine Mutiny by Wouk, even Old Man and the Sea by Hemingway was not his best work. The criteria for choosing pulizer prizes often leaves me perplexed almost as if it changes in each era.

 

[WereBear]

For me, The Caine Mutiny still holds up, but many books are a product of their time and lose their luster in a new era. James Fenimore Cooper springs to mind. He's essentially unreadable to me.

 

[DuckRabbit]

I can think of many, including pulitzer prize winning novels that left me cold. All the kings men by Warren, The Late George Apley by Marquand, Executioner's song by Mailer, Black Water by Oates, Caine Mutiny by Wouk, even Old Man and the Sea by Hemingway was not his best work. The criteria for choosing pulizer prizes often leaves me perplexed almost as if it changes in each era.

The Pulitzer Prize is a huge can of worms! I'd love to learn more about it. I wonder if anyone has done a dissertation on the social-political processes of that institution - who selects the judges, what the judges select. I know there is research on the 'winner takes all' mind-set of our culture - where the rewards for the winner are disproportionate while the runner-up is treated as a loser, even though their talent/contribution is not discernibly different from that of the winner. Because we over-value 'the winner', people will almost kill to be in that position.

The phenomenon of non-winners trumping the winners in the end is also evident in TV programmes like Pop Idol, X Factor and [X's] Got Talent: the person voted to win often doesn't remain as socially prominent as the runners-up cf. singer Adam Lambert vs Kris Allen; singer Susan Boyle vs dance troupe Diversity.

It is a complete lottery - like almost everything in life. Whether you win depends not only on how good you are but who the competition is, whether you're writing on a 'hot topic' (e.g., political) and the social status and political motivations of the judges/gatekeepers. As one US literary agent writes:

http://jetreidliterary.blogspot.co.uk/search/label/Query Questions
Rather than send unsolicited books to agents, why not use that money to pay for some face time at a writing conference? Find out what's wrong. It could be as simple as your books simply aren't plotlines/settings/categories that are selling right now. Or it could be that the market is glutted with this kind of book.

 

[DuckRabbit]

For me, The Caine Mutiny still holds up, but many books are a product of their time and lose their luster in a new era. James Fenimore Cooper springs to mind. He's essentially unreadable to me.

Do you think this is true of Shakespeare? I personally would rather read 'Gone Girl' than 'Henry V'. I don't know James Fenimore Cooper but could this be a case of 'the emperor's new clothes'? Where someone is hyped up for social-political reasons and everyone has to agree that they're brilliant unless they want to come across as ignorant and uncultured.

Apart from 'second-rate' books like 'The Bell Jar' ending up as 'winners' and instant winners ending up on the scrap-heap of oblivion, other categories of artworks to collect data on are:

[1] works that because popular/ recognised only after the artist has [1a] died (e.g., Vincent van Gogh) [1b] committed suicide. (Anne Sexton has written on the latter).

[2] Books which start with a bang and then fizzle out as damp squibs.
Two examples of this for me:
- 'Lucky' by Alice Sebold.
- 'Girl in a Coma' by Douglas Coupland.
The latter degenerated into some silly apocalyptic plot-line, whereas it started out with such compelling psychological realism. I got so impatient with it, I just looked for a Wikipedia plot summary to get done with it!

 

[WereBear]

I know there is research on the 'winner takes all' mind-set of our culture - where the rewards for the winner are disproportionate while the runner-up is treated as a loser, even though their talent/contribution is not discernibly different from that of the winner. Because we over-value 'the winner', people will almost kill to be in that position.

I find this almost pathologically annoying! I once booked tickets and the people would be all wound up about who was in the ice shows: "Anyone with a gold medal from the Olympics?" And I would feel impatient with their dismissal of anyone else, when you have to be one of the best in your country to even get to the Olympics. And those medals separate people by a tenth of a point, or a fraction of a second: all dependent on who was coming off the flu, had their period, or just didn't get a good nights sleep. Essentially meaningless.

I think books stick around when they still have something to say to people. The Sherlock Holmes stories are still being read, discussed, and dramatized, while other works from that period have been forgotten. In fact, what stands out to me is the horror writing of that period: writers working today still read The Moonstone and learn from it. Poe still works, from grade school to adults.

Do you think this is true of Shakespeare? I personally would rather read 'Gone Girl' than 'Henry V'. I don't know James Fenimore Cooper but could this be a case of 'the emperor's new clothes'? Where someone is hyped up for social-political reasons and everyone has to agree that they're brilliant unless they want to come across as ignorant and uncultured.

Ah, but MacBeth. I never get tired of seeing that one, and maybe no one ever will. It's not meant for reading, it's meant for being portrayed. Half of our brilliant phrases came from Shakespeare; white as snow, slings and arrows of our outrageous fortune, winter of our discontent... On and on. Those are classics in every meaning of the word. Track down the movie with Jon Finch and see what I mean.

I like to bring up Olve Higgins Prouty. No one has ever heard of her now, and she was HUGE in her time. A mentor of Sylvia Plath, in fact. But by the time she published her memoirs in the early sixties, she had to do it herself, she had been so forgotten. Were it not for the films Stella Dallas (itself somewhat forgotten) and the Bette Davis classic Now, Voyager, no one would remember anything about her.

And yet, she was good. She was among the first to have her characters go through psychological counseling. And yet she is not read today because the struggles her characters went through have been thankfully diminished. High society no longer has such a strangling grip on people's behavior. Illegitimacy is meaningless, when it used to be so horrifying "being a bastard" doomed all involved. Class considerations were worth murdering for in 1917, and Theodore Dreiser was a towering literary figure for writing about it in An American Tragedy.

I don't think anyone who isn't a graduate student reads Dreiser now.

 

[Mia]

The Pulitzer Prize is a huge can of worms! I'd love to learn more about it. I wonder if anyone has done a dissertation on the social-political processes of that institution - who selects the judges, what the judges select. I know there is research on the 'winner takes all' mind-set of our culture - where the rewards for the winner are disproportionate while the runner-up is treated as a loser, even though their talent/contribution is not discernibly different from that of the winner. Because we over-value 'the winner', people will almost kill to be in that position.

Good point, it brings to mind music as well. So many excellent musicians who are not famous, with as much capability in voice and instrument and composition.

As for the pulitzer, it's a bizarre criteria that has been reinterpreted over time:

"...The criteria for the Pulitzer Prize for the Novel changed much in the early years of the prize. Pulitzer, in his creation of the prize, said that it should be awarded to “the American novel published during the year which shall best present the whole atmosphere of American life and the highest standard of American manners and manhood.” Apparently someone at Columbia University (which administrates the awarding of the prize) changed “whole” to “wholesome” before the prize was first awarded…you can see how that would really slant the selections,"https://followingpulitzer.wordpress.com/how-are-the-pulitzer-prizes-awarded/

 

[DuckRabbit]

I find this almost pathologically annoying! I once booked tickets and the people would be all wound up about who was in the ice shows: "Anyone with a gold medal from the Olympics?" And I would feel impatient with their dismissal of anyone else, when you have to be one of the best in your country to even get to the Olympics. And those medals separate people by a tenth of a point, or a fraction of a second: all dependent on who was coming off the flu, had their period, or just didn't get a good nights sleep. Essentially meaningless.

Perhaps we use such crude heuristics as asking "Do they have a gold medal from the Olympics?", "Did they win the Pulitzer Prizer?", "Have they published anything?", "Is their work in the Tate?" in order to narrow down our field of attention - otherwise there would be too much stimulation, too many individual differences, too much data to wade through. We want ready-made 'frames' around people or their work so we know how much importance to attach to them, to save us from the hard work of deciding for ourselves. I wonder if NTs subscribe to such 'frames' to a greater extent than Aspergers do, whereas Aspergers, being more focused on details and patterns, are more prepared to form their own opinions? Or maybe we are all 'cognitive misers'. Moreover, if everyone was famous, no one would be famous.

I think books stick around when they still have something to say to people. The Sherlock Holmes stories are still being read, discussed, and dramatized, while other works from that period have been forgotten. In fact, what stands out to me is the horror writing of that period: writers working today still read The Moonstone and learn from it. Poe still works, from grade school to adults.

I think books stick around when they still have something to say (I know Ted Hughes was crazy about Shakespeare) but I also think they stick around when they have been selected out of the ocean of creative offerings for marketing and promotion. So many brilliant books do not get published and great songs do not get heard because they are not created by someone who already has some celebrity; they are unknown.

I will look out for Jon Finch, thanks. Fascinating what you say about Olive Higgins Prouty. All I know about her is that she was Sylvia Plath's benefactor (SP got a scholarship from her and I believe she paid for SP's psychiatric treatment in the US) and the subject of SP's diabolically funny caricature of Philomena Guinea, the female novelist in 'The Bell Jar' - which SP's mother thought deplorably ungracious.

I confess though that if I read OHP's memoirs, I would mainly be interested in what she had to say about Sylvia Plath. In this I am probably as guilty of crude emotional/ social-political thinking as those I maligned above for only being interested in gold-medalists etc., wanting ready-made frames around people and artworks! I remember reading Emma Tennant's memoir 'Burnt Diaries' purely to find out more about Ted Hughes. The first 70-80 pages where she rambles on about her life and background I wasn't interested in; the minute the name Ted Hughes entered the text, I sat up and was rivetted She obviously needed to provide the context and portray her own background and motivations for her account of Ted Hughes to be meaningful, but it was her insights on and experiences of Ted Hughes that I read the book for.

A book which captures this 'celebrity mindset' or 'celebrity culture' well is Toby Young's 'How to Lose Friends and Alienate People'. He recounts one incident where there was a plane crash and the conversation that was exchanged by the staff of some media outlet (paraphrased):

Reporter 1: "Anyone on it?"
Reporter2: "No, no one."

A whole plane of people had been killed! This is the language of the media: if you're not a celebrity, you're a nobody. They will only write about someone that they can get hits or internet clicks on.

What you say about Theodore Dreiser - he was writing on the politically charged issues of the time. Many writers get published or get acclaim not because they are intellectual or creative giants but because they are writing on a politically hot topic cf. JM Coetzee writing on racial issues in South Africa. People then rave about such stories because it gives them social cachet - as though they are at the cutting-edge of liberal intelligentia; remove the political (racial) threads of the story and it would be unnoticed or unpublishable. Some writers try to grab attention by writing on political, risque or shocking topics, rather than writing about what truly preoccupies and galvanises them, because they can't get attention any other way.

 

[WereBear]

I have put that Toby Young book on my list, thanks!

Perhaps we use such crude heuristics as asking "Do they have a gold medal from the Olympics?", "Did they win the Pulitzer Prizer?", "Have they published anything?", "Is their work in the Tate?" in order to narrow down our field of attention - otherwise there would be too much stimulation, too many individual differences, too much data to wade through. We want ready-made 'frames' around people or their work so we know how much importance to attach to them, to save us from the hard work of deciding for ourselves. I wonder if NTs subscribe to such 'frames' to a greater extent than Aspergers do, whereas Aspergers, being more focused on details and patterns, are more prepared to form their own opinions? Or maybe we are all 'cognitive misers'. Moreover, if everyone was famous, no one would be famous.

Everyone has need of juggling the flood of information, but I also think it is also a lot of people not trusting their own taste, and that constant need to flow with the crowd. I am at the point where I stand in line at the grocery store and know the faces on the front of the National Enquirer, but not US and People and so forth. I am that much out of the gossip/celebrity loop.

Fortunately, there isn't one system any more. I'm no longer plugging in to the mainstream. I am one of many others who hang around Goodreads to find new writers, instead of the latest literary sparkler. I have online friends with similar tastes who keep up with shared interests, and I have online movies and rarer, TV shows, that are brought to me on the Internet if I am patient. This works for me, because I have no desire to be trendy or seem to be more hip than I am.

I wrote a book about cats and couldn't get anyone to even ask to read it: because I am not a celebrity. The alternate path was previously to schmooze my way into making personal contacts (funnily enough, this is how Yeats made a name for himself) but that's no longer necessary. I started a blog, it became popular, and now when I bring out the book, myself, I will have an audience.

We are at the thin edge of the wedge that is going to splinter that former cement wall. There's going to be too many good things for people to enjoy. They will not put up with letting some edifice somewhere decide what they will like.

Which is great.