Sinister: Not all those who wander are lost.

[Jillian Locke]

dear sinister,
i know... so far i have been more than invisible on
this list, lurking around, being half-assed about my
membership, but in light of the 'Sylvia is a
prig/notprig' conversation, i just had to say...
"The Story of Sylvia and Ted: A Novel" by Emma
Tennant, a former lover of Ted Hughes, is poised for
release in may 2001 - an attempt at 'fictionalizing'
the marriage, etc. Supposedly Tennant caused an uproar
with her inclusion of the 'affair' bits in some bio
she wrote earlier, or so my all-knowing book-crazed
boss tells me. The bad news is that this 'novel'
supposedly isn't going to be published in the UK, to
feign controversy.
iiinnteresting... isn't it?
And now for my opinion. Yes Sylvia was a bit of a
flake, if you read her journals it becomes blatantly
obvious, but if anyone read my journals, they'd get
the same impression, which is why i wonder about the
ethics behind publishing someone's journal, but i'm
hypocritical and nosey and will read them anyway! 
Some of her poems were good, some were crap. She just
tried too hard to be 'astute', and respected, and
successful, and it came out rigid and contrived most
of the time. She never thought anything she did was
good enough - a self-consiousness which was probably
fueled by living with ted, and typing his manuscripts
up for him, and other things...
'Ariel', i think, is Plath at her most emotive, and if
she hadn't killed herself she may have matured, and
learned how to hone this. Then again, who knows how
much praise it would have drawn in her presence, or
how much she may have cut it up - obscuring the work.
She did publish the quite autobiographical novel 'the
bell jar' under a pseudonym, after all. 
**In conclusion!** i appreciate both of them for their
contributions, and enjoy their work, but i find
neither of them particularily exciting anymore - in a
lyrical sense... however they do serve to satiate my
voyeristic tendancies from time to time, and needless
to say i will be reading the Tennant novel when it
comes out in Canada!
thats all!

jillian
  


__________________________________________________
Do You Yahoo!?
Get personalized email addresses from Yahoo! Mail - only $35 
a year!  http://personal.mail.yahoo.com/
+-------------------------------------------------------------------------+
        +---+  Brought to you by the Sinister mailing list  +---+
     To send to the list mail sinister at missprint.org. To unsubscribe
     send "unsubscribe sinister" or "unsubscribe sinister-digest" to
     majordomo at missprint.org.  WWW: http://www.missprint.org/sinister
 +-+       "sinsietr is a bit freaky" - stuart david, looper           +-+
 +-+  "legion of bedroom saddo devotees" "peculiarly deranged fanbase" +-+
 +-+    "pasty-faced vegan geeks... and we LOST!" - NME April 2000     +-+
 +-+  "frighteningly named Sinister List organisation" - NME May 2000  +-+
 +-+               Nee, nee mun pish, chan pai dee kwa                 +-+
+-------------------------------------------------------------------------+