psychotherapeutic reading

i just finished the bell jar by sylvia plath. somehow inspired to read by this. a movie trailer.

“What I hate is the thought of being under a man’s thumb,” I had told Doctor Nolan. “A man doesn’t have a worry in the world, while I’ve got a baby hanging over my head like a big stick, to keep me in line.”

maybe i was curious about a book considered a classic by most, read frequently in highschools, the only book written by an author-poet who killed herself, a book which is admittedly autobiographical.

i got discouraged in the middle, i don’t find the neurotic meanderings of a suicidal mind so palatable, but in the end it picks up. a seemingly omniscient female psychiatrist. the vaguest hintings of lesbianism. birth control as a form of power. catholics with x-ray vision.

good book. perhaps too much like one flew over the cuckoo’s nest in parts. i felt good having finished it, like i wanted to think about things, yet wasn’t sure what.

2 Comments

hmmm. i’ve been wanting to read that for the very same reason. luckily, the pesky problem of too little time has saved me. would you recommend it?

i assume that question was somewhat tongue-in-cheek? my sufficiently luke-warm last two paragraphs sum up my feelings about the book. didn’t change my life.

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