thinking thinking thinking

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.

the wage...

hmmmmmm... it could be too soon to jump into her diaries. yesterday, i spent a pretty hefty chunk of the day with them, off and on between projects, and by 4 in the afternoon i was beginning to feel more than slightly disillusioned and sad about life. no good. but the writing is just so beautiful and i can run around in it because i know these things she's describing... and reading her work makes my writing better- more intricate, more subtle, more meaningful. i don't want to back away from her art just because it might make me sad. my work does the same thing to people sometimes and i've always counted that as a good quality... that the work can be responded to emotionally, intensely... not that i am comparing my paintings to a Plath poem, just that the experience of sadness isn't something i should use to run away from good work- work that sparks and flies around the room and makes you look at your own life from a new and different angle... work that makes your own work grow and turn.

i will have to take the diaries in doses though, i think. they're pretty intense. the last time (the first time) i read them, i was in my last year in college and had other things to read so it took me about 4 months to read them all. i read it on the train to school and back home everyday. i read it on the weekends after my projects were satisfied. sometimes i even left the house to do "errands" so that i could sit somewhere and read them without any interruption or outside expectation. it's when i started writing again. seriously writing. my love of poetry woke back up because of this collection and i've been hot for it ever since. it's a slightly painful form of inspiration, i will admit. it takes a lot out of me. i've always thought that poetry is harder than painting. a landslide harder. a piece of writing seems to ask more from the person with the pen than a painting does. paintings seem to have an outside opinion that, at some point (for me anyway), i can relinquish control to and the work becomes itself. it stops being my work. it's its own work.

in the end, the work takes care of me... not the other way around.

for your reading pleasure...

two very cool things i forgot to mention yesterday:

the new issue of FOU is up and it contains such a beautiful and jarring poem by my beloved radish king. here.

and the new issue of ANTLER is out too! check it out. especially if you've got a penchant for "pretty porn". you'll definitely get your fix. :) and the ANTLER blog is shaping up to be quite a gem as well.

and as for my own reading, i finished the little murder mystery i'd been toting around last night and the very second i finished it i thought, "go get the journals". Sylvia Plath's Journals. i don't know why it's such a good follow up but it is and i read pretty far in to it last night in bed. this is my second go around with them. they are beautiful and sad and, even though it scares most people when i say this, it feels like reading my own diaries... only much more well written. ha! but i understand her work in a way that i've understood few others. she is one of my biggest influences. her work simultaneously made my world bigger and more intimate the moment i found her. her work is as clear to me as talking to myself in the mirror. exactly so. it makes me both sad and angry that so many people only see her death when they hear her name. so many people jump directly to the whole "she baked her head" crap and they've never even exposed themselves to her work. and what a huge loss. huge. her work was, and IS STILL, brilliant. beyond special and beautiful. beyond, beyond, beyond. poets today are still trying to catch up with her. she's just that damn good.