Sylvia Plath

I just reread The Bell Jar for the first time in thirty-plus (gasp!) years and then read Plath's biography in Wikipedia. I have to say this: Ted Hughes, the big shot Poet Laureate husband who left her and her two children for another woman is a very, very hard man to like.

Yeah, I wasn't there, I didn't know what was going on, blah blah blah. I hate him.

I asked one of my daughters if she ever had to read The Bell Jar in school, as it was assigned reading back in my day. She said no and asked me what it was about. I told her that when I was in school people described it as kind of The Catcher in the Rye for girls . . . which is a pretty simplistic way of putting it but you can see the comparison. Then she asked me what The Catcher in the Rye was about.

I grieve for this generation.