Heather Clark (1) (1974–)

I feel like I’ve been dragging this biography around like a millstone for three weeks, and I’m not even talking about the hardback, which I was gifted for Christmas a few years ago! I’m all for ‘definitive’ accounts but research is supposed to support the text, not suffocate the subject. Sylvia Plath was thirty when she died but Heather Clark’s biography runs to 1000+ pages (and I’m not even counting the notes) – that’s nearly a page per week of Plath's life, and I felt every passing hour, believe me!

Even though I’m not a fan of poetry, I am still sort of drawn to Sylvia Plath, possibly because she is buried in nearby Heptonstall but also because of her incredible talent and relatable personality. I have read previous biographies and The Bell Jar, of course, although only recently, but a ‘six degrees’ personal connection to the author inspired me to pick up Clark’s recent tome – in hardback – and then put the heaviest book in the world back down and wait for the Kindle edition to drop in price instead! Even then, getting through Plath’s brief life took up most of March. Clark certainly packs in every last poem, journal, letter and interview, including new sources, but honestly, shorter biographies say exactly the same thing (apart from the book co-authored by Ted’s hateful sister, don’t read that one). Fewer statements from people who knew Sylvia from five minutes and then wrote a book about her, and a general cull of inserting [sic] into quotes (just say that Sylvia wasn’t a fan of capital letters and move on, woman) would have tightened the text no end. And for all that Clark dots her i’s and crosses her t’s, some of her claims are still suspect, from apparently attributing the First World War song ‘Pack Up Your Troubles’ to Sylvia (‘Her accompanying illustration of a wounded man with a bloody, bandaged head stands as a sobering counterpoint to her original ditty that instructed soldiers to “pack up” their troubles in their kit bag and “smile, smile, smile”’) to claiming that ‘President John F. Kennedy sent his wife, Jackie, for electroshock treatment after a particularly brutal fight about his infidelity’ (REALLY? Where’s the footnote for that one? I’ve read countless books about the Kennedys and never picked up on that spurious rumour!)

Sylvia shines through the verbiage, however. She really was an incredible woman, fighting the multiple ists and isms of 1950s America (hateful place and time) to write in her own way, including considerable poetry and prose, which surprised me. I agree with Heather Clark on that note – ‘She ought to be remembered for her transcendent, trailblazing poems, not for gassing herself in her kitchen.’ I love Sylvia’s passion and pride in her writing, her self-deprecating honesty, her bitchiness (calling Assia Wevill ‘Weavy Asshole’ made me snort), and her thwarted desire to have it all, just like the men in her life. I’m surprised that Clark didn’t speculate on Plath’s mental health, however, especially after this quote: ‘It is as if my life were magically run by two electric currents: joyous positive and despairing negative—whichever is running at the moment dominates my life’. Depression or bipolar/borderline personality disorder? Perhaps as we’ll never know, it’s wiser not to attach labels, but I couldn’t help thinking about how she would be diagnosed – and treated – today.

There should be an award for getting through this biography, but Clark hasn’t put me off – I’m going to visit Heptonstall again this year, and read Sylvia’s poems in the meantime.… (mere)

There’s no consensus on whether Sylvia Plath was a great poet. But both detractors and admirers agree on one thing: her fame rests more on how her life ended more than sixty years ago than on her writing.
Heather Clark, an admirer, seeks to redress this with this biography. Yet an eleven hundred page tome to document a thirty-year life seems ironic if the aim is to turn attention from Plath’s life (and death) to her literary achievement. I felt Clark came closest to her purpose in chapter 31, “The Problem of Him,” with her close readings of the poems in Ariel. I had mixed feelings about the collection, but Clark argues persuasively for their greatness. And yet, I guess I can’t entirely shake the fact that I studied back when New Criticism was still the dominant school. So while Clark does an excellent job of reading the poems in light of what was going on in Plath’s life when they were written leaves me less than totally convinced. I’ve no doubt that knowledge of life and times (as so many biographies are entitled) of an author can enhance our understanding. But it’s another thing if a poem needs the context of biography to convince us of its greatness.
Clark attempts the same in chapter 34, “What Is the Remedy?”, in which she argues for the greatness of Plath’s novel, The Bell Jar. When Clark quotes from the letter Plath’s editor at Knopf wrote when that publisher passed on the book, it accorded with my memory of reading it. Yet Clark calls it a “brutal” rejection. Indeed, given the state of her mind at the time, the effect on Plath was overwhelming and unfortunate.
But let’s turn aside from the question of whether Clark is successful in arguing that the interest in Plath should center on the excellence of her writing. How is this book as a biography? It is excellent. Clark appears to have had access to everyone worth talking to (an exception seems to have been Frieda Hughes, since she’s not listed in the acknowledgments. In addition, she had access to troves of unpublished Plath-related documents. She handles the task of relating all that she recounts understandably, broadly chronological, with little of the repetition that often plagues such works. I was sorry that her publisher’s services didn’t include more-thorough fact-checking (one example: Khrushchev was not Soviet foreign minister, p. 788).
I admired Clark’s balanced treatment of the charge of spousal abuse and her navigation of the complex and shifting feelings of mutual and self-recrimination among those close to Plath after her suicide.
While the book’s heft may put off many readers, for those who are fascinated by the brilliant person that Sylvia Plath was, this book is worth the time invested in reading it.… (mere)

Red Comet is an in-depth biography of Sylvia Plath's short life based on her journals and letters. A thorough analysis of her poetry and other writings is woven into her story. Plath was the daughter of hard-working immigrant parents (the book goes into detail about her parents), and maintained an intense work ethic throughout her life. She was a brilliant overachiever, a bit of a hypochondriac with extreme mood swings, and fully devoted to her husband, the poet Ted Hughes. Women poets were not held in the same light as their male counterparts and Plath's place in history was not fully realized during her lifetime. Having graduated from Smith College, I loved reading about her time in college and am looking forward to re-reading the Bell Jar and deep-diving into her poetry. The book is long - it took me 2 months to listen to the audiobook.… (mere)