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Title: The Unabridged Journals of Sylvia Plath by Karen V. Kukil, Sylvia Plath ISBN: 0-385-72025-4 Publisher: Anchor Pub. Date: 17 October, 2000 Format: Paperback Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $18.00 |
Average Customer Rating: 4.44 (18 reviews)
Rating: 4
Summary: Just as Good as the Original.
Comment: As the Journals host at BellaOnline, I first heard about this publication a year ago, and my interest was peaked. For years, I wondered, I speculated, what would happen to The Journals of Sylvia Plath once Ted Hughes passed away. For those familiar with the original publication of her journals, the foreward by Hughes (her estranged husband) mentioned that some of her journals which continued the story where the first published edition left off had been either "lost" or "destroyed" by him. Other parts of the journals had been edited. Now that he is no longer able to "hold back" the information, would their be a change to the content of the journals? Yes, but not in an important way.
The Unabridged Journals gives us the same vision of life as the original publication, but with more details included. No, the "lost" or "destroyed" journals have not resurfaced, and most of the details Hughes left out were details about him -- Plath's obsession with her husband, that is. Nothing horrible was left out, painting him as a monster. Instead, her fixation with her husband, embarassing tidbits about her desires for him, are what he had edited out. For die-hard Plath fans, such as myself, this is a nice edition to a collection with some very facinating tidbits. However, if you're just using the journals for a paper or report, the original edition will do just fine.
Rating: 2
Summary: Disturbingly Beautiful Writing; Horrible Layout & Editing
Comment: Along with every other devout fan of Sylvia Plath, I was thrilled and excited to finally be able to read the words that she wrote in their true & beautiful form, untouched or manipulated by Ted Hughes or the rest of her family. And these journals lived up to my every expectation. In them, the pure beauty, slashed by such violence and utter genius, is projected in ethereal simplicity. It is everything that I anticipated, and more.
However, I found Ms. Kukil's attempts to present Plath's words in their 'pure' form- grammer, spelling, and every other mistake intact- a big nuisance. The attempts on my part to interpret and find depth in Plath's words was impeded, at a certain extent, by her grammerical/spelling errors. I'm not admonishing Plath for making those errors (it is, after all, just her diary), but rather, Ms. Kukil for not correcting them. Another annoyance was the arrangement of the journal fragments- their being placed after the intact journals, instead of in between them in chronilogical order, required me to use two or three extra book marks so as to flip between several journal segments, and the notes at the end of the book. The notes posed another problem, as they were so numerous, and instead of being placed at the foot of the page on which they occured, were placed in their own section, in order of how they appear in the book, with no notation fo page/appearance. This makes coherent, random reading nearly impossible, as you have to go about locating which notes are where in the notes section, and each note only appears once. Also, the inclusion of Plath's worknotes/observations clutter the meat of her real entries, and should have also been left out. They have no relation to the rest of the work, and most of the time aren't even interpretable.
Those problems aside, I definately recommend the reading of this book; I just wish the editor had done her job better.
Rating: 5
Summary: BEAUTIFUL
Comment: Her writing is beautiful. She does show remarkable growth in thought after college, and as she reaches her suicide, her writing is unbelievably stunning.
mike
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Title: Ariel : Perennial Classics Edition by Sylvia Plath ISBN: 0060931728 Publisher: Perennial Pub. Date: 01 March, 1999 List Price(USD): $12.00 |
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Title: Collected Poems Reissue by Sylvia Plath ISBN: 0060909005 Publisher: Perennial Pub. Date: 25 December, 1981 List Price(USD): $17.95 |
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Title: Birthday Letters : Poems by Ted Hughes ISBN: 0374525811 Publisher: Farrar Straus & Giroux Pub. Date: 30 March, 1999 List Price(USD): $12.00 |
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Title: Her Husband: Hughes and Plath, a Marriage by Diane Middlebrook ISBN: 0670031879 Publisher: Viking Press Pub. Date: 09 October, 2003 List Price(USD): $25.95 |
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Title: Letters Home: Correspondence, 1950-1963 by Sylvia Plath, Aurelia Schober Plath ISBN: 0060974915 Publisher: Perennial Pub. Date: April, 1992 List Price(USD): $20.50 |
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