Rough Magic: A Biography of Sylvia Plath

In the early 1980s as an Undergrad English major, I did a lot of writing about Plath's work, particularly the Ariel poems. Bits and pieces of Plath's life story were slowly emerging via the campus library, and I could not stop myself from being drawn to learning about the woman who penned the most fascinating poetry I'd ever read. While her poems seemed to out-guess, out-think, and transcend every type of interpretation wrought from them, the dippy "Sivvy" of the partly published journals and meager "Letters Home" was a glaring disappointment to me. I decided her poetry was clever manipulation stemming from some type of pathological vengeance.For many reasons, I put aside the part of me in which I store Plath's incredible and stunning poetry,for twenty years. I had read about Ted Hughes' "Birthday Letters", and years later the suicide of Nicholas Hughes, but they didn't rekindle my interest in Plath. Frankly, I didn't have the strength for it. I haven't read "Birthday Letters" or anything written by Hughes, other than introductions to Plath's collections. In spite of how very well I knew Plath's work, all the real-life drama enacted by Plath's surviving relatives evaded me, and I'm glad.On February 11th this year the memories of the poetry began to haunt me. I allowed myself to realize just how much of it I memorized and how often it sneakily permeated by own points of view. It took me some time to find my yellowed, mildewed copy of Ariel buried in my garage, but in the meantime I'd searched for Plath works for my Kindle. All this "new" information! All this intrigue and mystery! I had no idea. I had seen Plath's talent as a remarkable accident that fell upon an ordinary woman who got sick of getting out of bed every morning. Learning that Ariel has been "restored" caused in me a visceral reaction, though I'm not sure why.Thanks to the publication of the "complete" journals, and biographies such as Rough Magic, I am shaken by how wrong I was about Plath, the writer. Alexander does a wonderful job of showing the chronology of the writings with events in Plath's life. His viewpoint attempts to be Plath's, and, because of this, it can seem outrageously unfair to Hughes. However, since Plath's mind produced her writing, her point-of-view as expressed through her letters and journals is very interesting, and it adds even more levels of interpretation/meaning for me. In order to avoid seeing Plath as having several "screws loose" I had to remind myself just how long ago she lived. Her poetry transcends time so completely it makes it easy to forget that Plath lived during the aftermath of WWII, in the Cold War era, among suspicions about Brasilia, and the atrocities of Concentration Camps were being exposed. The world as Plath had been programmed to understand it, was turned inside out, in a very bad way. Things like Facebook and "texting" could not be imagined, so perhaps Plath's interest in Ouija boards and 1950s-style Western astrology isn't really indicative of naivete or mental illness.If she truly believed she communed with the ghost of Yeats, and if there is any truth to the claims that she succumbed to Hughes' hypnosis of her (this book even suggests Hughes' hypnosis may have caused her suicide...)it's possible to fathom that a mind like hers' was undeniably curious.After reading her journals, and this biography, I feel a longing. Of course, I wish I could have known Plath when she was alive. She was far, far more remarkable than I could have guessed, and I realize I "sold short" on her because I was so very far behind her in wisdom. Alexander explores how Plath's work seems to be timeless in its ability to inspire more levels of interpretation. He shows how her own living of her life was self-interpreted with levels of understanding and confusion most people are incapable of formulating. Alexander reminds readers that Plath had an extraordinarily high I.Q. so most people will never "catch up" to her no matter how long they live. The scope and meaning of Plath's work is, I think, still far beyond us.Alexander's compassionate take on Plath proves she is not a poet who appeals only to Goth adolescent girls, and thanks are owed to Plath's writings because they contributed to positive societal change. Maybe these days more Daddies think before they attack, maybe more husbands ponder the outcome of empty affairs, maybe lithium is representative of human innovation rather than failure and embarrassment. Not only is it acceptable to say "f.u." to 1950s social boundaries and collective lobotomizing, it's vital, for women and men. Plath's writing supports feminism, sure, but it goes far beyond being a voice for women's rights. Her's is the voice of oppression in a world where beauty is sought and glimpsed, but it's continually destroyed. Fifty years after her death Plath's work reminds us to search for amazement in every moment.

Heard that a second edition of this biography was published in 1999, so I got it hoping for updated facts. But only the introduction has changed.

"Rough Magic" by Paul Alexander is a pure and objective account of the life of Sylvia Plath. It begins with her family history; a brief overview of her grandparents and parents, and follows with her childhood, including the tragic, influential death of her father when she was a young girl. Her years as a growing adolescent and emerging writer are retold with clarity and insight into the events which went on. Topics of focus include her intense, dramatic need for academic success and her longing to always remain a socially accepted person, two things which were embedded into Sylvia as a young child. The biography goes into great detail about the romantic relationships she experienced, with everything from a stolen kiss from a not-so-secret admirer during her teen-years, to the sad and turbulent end to her marriage to Ted Hughes.In the end, you'll put this book down with a greater sense of compassion for Sylvia and a better understanding of who she really was: a loving mother and writer who tried, through her precious poetry and prose and the safety and security of a loving family, to shake the demons that followed her throughout her life, a life she considered "blessed." And you'll probably laugh a little and cry a little, and you'll miss her, because she was the type of person that you miss. And hopefully, you'll take a step back and realize that we ourselves are blessed, in just "knowing" her; that, in the story of her life and in her work, there are whispers-- graciously spoken and lovingly heard, left for us to understand and to keep.

When it comes to straight facts, Rough Magic is a perfectly good biography of Sylvia Plath. It outlines her life, in great detail, from birth to death and includes a brief biography of her parents as well.However, it is also a heavily biased tale of Sylvia Plath's life that casts Plath in a rosy glow -- she becomes the brilliant artist, devoted and doting wife, incredible mother, and fragile genius. It comes as no surprise that Rough Magic slants in this direction; it was written without input from the Hughes' and with a lot of input from Aurelia Plath, Sylvia Plath's mother.By nature, all good biographies are biased; the biographer collects the facts about a person's life and shapes them into a coherent narrative. This involves deducing motives and making decisions. Paul Alexander chooses to portray Plath's motives and actions as nothing but pure and well intentioned, in contrast to other Plath biographies such as  Sylvia Plath: Method and Madness: A Biography , and  Her Husband: Ted Hughes and Sylvia Plath--A Marriage , which paint Plath in a more selfish and (in my opinion) human light.It's impossible to truly know someone by reading their biography, especially a person like Plath, whose life and death are cloaked in controversy. The Plath estate notoriously controls all biographies (at least the ones containing quotations from Plath's work) with an iron fist. Plath's family is tight-lipped unless the biography will portray Plath in a favorable light. The result is that it becomes difficult for biographers to gain the good graces of both sides, and most biographies skew anti-Plath (towards the Plath Estate) or pro-Plath (towards Plath's family). Rough Magic falls firmly in the latter category.Despite it's obvious bias, Rough Magic is worth a read for seasoned Plath scholars. However, if one is looking to acquire a first biography about Plath, I suggest the aforementioned  Sylvia Plath: Method and Madness: A Biography .

This is a detailed account of Sylvia Plath’s life and contains much information that I have not come across anywhere else. The reason I only gave it four stars is that it is absolutely littered with typing errors from start to finish to such an extent that it detracted my attention from the substance of the book.