Bloom's Guide to Sylvia Plath's The Bell Jar was recently published by Chelsea House. There is a special place in my heart for Chelsea House as they are the publisher of my biography on Plath. Any Plath title under one of the many Bloom series published by Chelsea House must be approached carefully - and even then, possibly not at all. (Unless it's my biography!)

Bloom really does not care much for Plath. In the four or five publications which he has edited and/or written an introduction, I am left each time thinking the following: 1) Why did I buy this book? and 2) Why does Bloom even bother to include Plath in any series he edits? Fortunately this title was sent to me buy the publisher to review. Unfortunately I cannot recommend it.

Bloom's introduction is barely longer than one page. Here are some representative samples:

"Though I recall being unable to get very far with it [in 1971], one learns to be more dispassionate as old age augments..."

"It seems to me not possible to discover any aesthetic merit in The Bell Jar."

"It is always a little painful, for me, to place a worthy but inadequate book in an authentically critical perspective."

"Admirers of The Bell Jar have compared it to Charlotte Bronte's Jane Eyre, a juxtaposition that obliterates Plath's book."

If one had not read The Bell Jar, why would they now? And what sort of introduction is this? It should at least resemble or hint upon the later content, no? Most of the book is heinously written - and aside from the introduction - cannot have been touched by Bloom. I have little respect for him, but I gather from what I do know that he is likely a better writer than this.

There are dozens of mistakes throughout the first 58 pages of the book, which appears to be the only original writing. I don't normally write in books, but I had to write "No" many times when the writer simply got things wrong. The biographical sketch is atrocious. One of my favorites is, "She and Hughes moved to the United States, where Plath taught at Smith College for a while..." For a while! How nonchalant. And the anonymous writer also claims that Plath ingested sleeping pills before committing suicide on February 11, 1963. This was news to me. The biographical sketch may have been written in 1989 as it concludes, "Sylvia Plath's gravestone is in Yorkshire, England, with Ted Hughes's name chipped off, the vandalism most likely carried out by one or several of her enduring fans."

I feel like I can be critical of "short" biographies such as this. At two and a half pages I ask, "Why bother?" Following this is a section called "The Story Behind the Story", a "List of Characters", and "Summary and Analysis." "The Story Behind the Story" is expanded and redundant in "Summary and Analysis".

Throughout the "Story" and "Summary", the writer states that Buddy Willard attended Yale Medical School. Buddy Willard did not attend medical school at Yale. Esther Greenwood says, "Buddy kissed me again in front of the house steps, and the next fall, when his scholarship to medical school came through, I went there to see him instead of to Yale" (Chapter 5). "Instead of to Yale" implies not at Yale.

The essays that follow page 58 are all complete or nearly complete reprints from other sources. It would be worth the effort to track these down as they originally appeared as in this book they are tainted. Each essay is headlined not by the title of the piece, but by a subjective summary or theme. This I found to be quite confusing and distracting. The book closes with a poorly edited and annotated bibliography, a list of works by Plath (hardly complete), and finally the sources for the essays.

I really wish I had something nice to say, but I just don't. Like Bloom's first attempt to read The Bell Jar in 1971, I didn't finish this book. It's Valentine's Day, but I'm just not feeling the love. The book will sit on my bookshelf and collect the stuff of Buddy's cadaver's and Esther's poems: dust. ( )