last night, after an all-day painting session and a little bit of writing at the end, i started thinking about Sylvia Plath. actually, i had thought about her, off and on, all day. about The Bell Jar- what it is. i mean, in terms of genre. it's autobiographical. it's a novel. it is listed as "fiction".
and i started thinking about tags and terms and how every label has a drawback. and it seems like, in spite of their popularity (or because of it), the tag "memoir" or "autobiography" draws a lot of angst from the literary community. it is accused of being "easy" and "lazy". and i think that's really sad and very strange. it presumes that documenting real events, injecting the emotions and fears and anxieties of the time, is an easy task. it also assumes that a person's life has been picturesque, that the problems they faced were no big deal. it's very minimizing. and that's without saying anything about a writer's skill: the dedication required to wrap the reader up in your own history and let them live it as you lived it. the honesty that that requires. and bravery. the whole process is an act of overcoming humiliation. and doing so with beautiful words. or ugly words. whatever is necessary, craft is employed.
but nevertheless, the assumption that memoir and creative non-fiction are some how easier than other forms of writing. i say, skill is skill. and so i wonder... is that why The Bell Jar is in the fiction department? yes, names have been changed to "protect the innocent", but if that's really the only difference between your history and your story, is that a big enough change to call it fiction? i'm sure this is a question that gets wrestled with a lot.
and so i got out of bed and got my copy of The Bell Jar (it's always out on the shelf, not tucked in a row) so i could remind myself how the story begins.
first-person narrative. personal emotional response to an impending execution of criminals. and then the narrator gives us her name. that's the shift. that's what makes it fiction. the name has been changed. and i'm sure certain details have been left out... which assures that other details are (intentionally or not) magnified, brought to the fore-front, drawn more clearly. bias is embraced. and maybe that's the big difference too. The Bell Jar tells a story from one person's perspective and that perspective is embraced with totality. it is not compromised by the charge to explain the emotions or decisions of the other characters. it does not worry itself with ideas of "fair". it tells one story, not all stories, and it does not get sheepish about it.
and that brings up a question i've had for awhile. issues of fairness in art... especially writing.
it's common knowledge that writers end up angering their families. they are accused of not being "fair" to their families within the work. but our families are the first sphere in which we hear the dreadful truth, "Life isn't fair"... so why then is a work of art expected to be? religion, politics, finance, popularity, body issues, disorders of every shape and size and mode: all unfair. and so art should harness this unfairness as well. it is authentic to do so. and honest. or rather, ideas of attempting fairness should be left behind. is this what great writers know?
we know that when The Bell Jar was first published, it was published under a pseudonym. we know that this was done as an attempt to protect Sylvia Plath's mother, save her from mortification and judgement. but those are her own fears talking- the mother's. because i never felt judgemental toward the mother in the story. and granted it all took place in a different era where decorum was expected and dirty laundry was not aired and secrets, even the slightest and smallest, were kept. what a horror to end up having a writer in the family!
all this to say is i am unsure of what specifically divides fiction from creative non-fiction. because creative non-fiction is not the same thing as journalism- a mode of writing where the real names are used and the facts line up and the chronology of events is clear. and a journalist is usually recording someone else's fact and figures, not their own. they have a critical distance between them self and the life they describe. when telling one's own story, that critical distance is gone. it is obliterated. and maybe that's what makes The Bell Jar such a wonderful read- the diary quality of it.
there are so many famous, deeply loved diaries that have been published. and loved for the skill of the writing! the nuance that rises to the surface when censorship and intention fall away... when the audience is gone. some say Sylvia Plath's Journals are her best work. and they'd be just as interesting and compelling even if she wasn't also a "real" writer because the journals themselves are "real" writing. such craft and lyric and fierce desire to pin down a life in words. to make a map. to know something of the self. and diaries are totally biased. one perspective, one story, one idiosyncratic arrangement of fears and hopes and fuck-ups and achievements and struggles.
anyway. i've lost my own question. or answered it.
it's interesting though- these tags we use to describe a literary work. and when someone wants to call a spade and spade and get away with it, ANONYMOUS gets employed. or a pen-name. because we don't want to hurt our families. because we don't want to be "cruel" or "selfish". we want to be fair because the world isn't. and these are wonderful ethical concerns that i think are really important to wrestle with and so i'm glad i'm wrestling with them now, trying to clarify and expand my ideas about what are can be. and be made with. and i think there's a big difference between being honest and being a victim, and it comes down to intention. is there an intention of blame?
to my eye, there is no blame in The Bell Jar. there is the honest addition of self-blame within it - a true portrait of inner turmoil - but still not falling in to sentimentality or romanticising pain or seeking some sort of excuse. it is a crushingly beautiful example of the difference between accuracy and honesty. and i think that when a work focuses on achieving honesty, it falls outside all these useful tags (when wondering what shelf something is found on) and just swims in the big pool of Art.
2 comments:
Hi! I'm thrilled you're writing/thinking about Plath -- it's always so great to see someone thinking about an issue I'm so consumed by. I have to say, though, I think the Bell Jar is less autobiographical than you believe. She didn't write it under a pseudonym for her mother's sake -- her mother knew all about the book. There were other people in the book that might have been and were ultimately offended -- mostly by the movie versions. I see it as autobiographical fiction rather than memoir -- I think the tasks of each are very different. I think the book is strongest where it is most like fiction.
Sylvia was really, really focused on getting the right kind of public attention -- she was kind of ashamed of The Bell Jar because she thought it was a "pot boiler". She imagined it would make her a lot of money and then she could focus more on poetry.
Of course, this is just my interpretation of all the autobiographies and journals I have read. I know other Plath scholars read the situation differently. Did you know Plath wrote a sequel? It was destroyed either by her or Hughes around the time of her death. It was supposedly about her relationship with Hughes.
Sorry for the long comment! You raise such interesting issues!
christine! YAY! no no, i LOVE long comments! especially on this topic and i'm so happy to have your insights on this. i did NOT know about a sequel! and i don't know why i feel so shocked to learn that it would have been destroyed... it's happened before. :/
i agree with you that the book is strongest where treated as fiction. i think that memoir starts getting dull when the the adherance to dates and chronology become a primary concern. and that doesn't seem to happen at all inside The Bell Jar.
there is so much conflicting information about her life- i think some of it is due to the "marketing" of her suicide (i'm recalling a conversation we had), and also the fact that so so so many people came forward in to the lime light to drop off their two cents about who she was after she died. for years and years and years. i had read somewhere that, though her mother knew about the book and had read it, was unhappy with how she had been portrayed... so a deal was cut that it would be published under Victoria Lucas until after her mother's death- something along those lines. but who knows! at this point, Ariel and her Journals both had to be "restored". she is surrounded in so much myth!
but it is not at all a "pot boiler"! ahhhhhhh! writers! always picking apart their own work. always always always. ;)
thank you so much, christine! i always value your imput. and i love the way you treat sylvia- not only as an influence, but also as a subject.
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