my body will be my billboard

i will activate the books i read as they have activated me.

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(i am) ESTHER GREENWOOD
personal banner project
crochet
2010


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i will definitely wear this ALL around this fall.




p.s. also- check out that sweet piece up top! graphite baby! ;)

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.

literary pursuits

last night, i read the first 100 pages of The Catcher in the Rye again. i haven't read this book in years and years and years. i forgot how funny Holden Caufield is. HILARIOUS! the book actually made me laugh out loud as i sat in bed, curled up in my quilt, trying to wind down after a long and very draining day. it actually accomplished the very opposite. it woke me up. hahaha! and there i was, laughing like a crazy person at a book, and it dawned on me that, the first time i read this, it didn't at all strike me that Holden Caufield is insane. other people have told me the character is nuts, but i don't really pick that up from the story. at least not at this point 100 pages in. and i don't remember anything about how the book ends so i guess and just wait and see if he gets crazy all of a sudden. although... there are similarities actually between The Catcher in the Rye and The Bell Jar... the main character's distraction and obsession... distracted obsession. getting derailed by small appearances in the world and turns of phrase and the way someone moves... they get locked up by small things. thwarted. it's like The Bell Jar for dudes. hahahaha! because i don't think The Bell Jar is all that crazy either even though it is the story of a young woman's decent in to madness. the description of the narrator, how she perceives things, don't seen crazy to me. they seem sensitive. a deep sensitivity that is easily harmed by the world... prone to feeling "outside" or Other. soft-hearted and sharp-minded can be a painful combination. it leads to a lot of confusion and agony. but i don't think that it spells crazy. there's still 100+ pages to go though so maybe my opinion will change. i thought it'd be good to re-read it since Mr. Salinger died recently... a way to pay my respects. and also, temper the information i've been letting in to my brain since the start of the year. i've been very focused on female writers and i thought it'd be a good idea to get some men in the bunch. J.D. Salinger seemed a perfect fit.

page after page

i am reading The Bell Jar again. this is round 3. it's been about 2 years since the last time i read it, and 14 or so since the first. when i read it the 2nd time, i didn't remember anything about it other than i remembered liking it when i read it when i was 14 or 15... somewhere around there, the common age for the first time read of this particular work, it seems. HA! and so when i read it again at 27, i was startled by it completely. it unhinged things in me, let long hidden things float to the surface. or come screaming up, tearing up, bleeding to the surface.

the language and the tempo of the book are easy in a lulling kind of way. slowly, slowly, we (i) follow the guide of the words, chapter after chapter, and when the break happens, when the collapse of function occurs inside our heroine, we (i) collapse as well. something unhinges. and in that gap, the text of this book begins to pool.

yesterday i slid back and forth between my graphite pages and the pages of this book. i'd draw for an hour or two and then go read. draw for an hour or so and, again, go read. and then i took a late afternoon jog through the vineyard and noticed spring has arrived. daisies and vultures out everywhere and the thirsty evening clouds of gnats. it was a relief to see these signs of a new season. the waking-up of the land. and when i came home, i made a big dinner, took a shower, and got in bed again with my book. i read until i fell asleep. i don't remember having dreamt. and i woke, sore-eyed, to the aroma of fresh hot coffee.

this day will mirror yesterday in my activities but this strange, daily education and practice is taking shape, clicking in to place, and it simply just feels right. my life contained and expressed and breathing across so many sheets of paper. the soft texture. the mark of graphite. the smudges of type on my thumbs. the gray that shadows up my forearms from drawing and ends eventually on my cheek.