Pain Parties Work - Sylvia Plath in New York Summer 1953

Elizabeth Winder

Publisher: Harper

Summary

“An illuminating biography . . . which floods clarifying light on a chapter of the poet’s early life that Plath painted in jaundiced tones in The Bell Jar.” —The New York Times, Sunday Styles Feature

On May 31, 1953, twenty-year-old Sylvia Plath arrived in New York City for a one-month stint at “the intellectual fashion magazine” Mademoiselle to be a guest editor for its prestigious annual college issue. Over the next twenty-six days, the bright, blond New England collegian lived at the Barbizon Hotel, attended Balanchine ballets, watched a game at Yankee Stadium, and danced at the West Side Tennis Club. She typed rejection letters to writers from The New Yorker and ate an entire bowl of caviar at an advertising luncheon. She stalked Dylan Thomas and fought off an aggressive diamond-wielding delegate from the United Nations. She took hot baths, had her hair done, and discovered her signature drink (vodka, no ice). Young, beautiful, and on the cusp of an advantageous career, she was supposed to be having the time of her life.

Drawing on in-depth interviews with fellow guest editors whose memories infuse these pages, Elizabeth Winder reveals how these twenty-six days indelibly altered how Plath saw herself, her mother, her friendships, and her romantic relationships, and how this period shaped her emerging identity as a woman and as a writer. Pain, Parties, Work—the three words Plath used to describe that time—shows how Manhattan’s alien atmosphere unleashed an anxiety that would stay with her for the rest of her all-too-short life.

Thoughtful and illuminating, this captivating portrait invites us to see Sylvia Plath before The Bell Jar, before she became an icon—a young woman with everything to live for.

Available since: 04/16/2013.

Print length: 293 pages.

Other books that might interest you

To Walk It Is To See It - 1...

Kathy Elkind

In 2018, Kathy Elkind and her husband decided to take a grown-up “gap year” in Europe and walk the 1,400-mile Grande Randonnée Cinq (GR5) across The Netherlands, Belgium, Luxembourg, and France. 
At fifty-seven, Kathy has chosen comfort over hardship: she and Jim get to indulge in warm beds and delicious regional food every night and croissants in the mornings. But the GR5 is not all comfort. Walking day after day for ninety-eight days brings sickness, accommodation struggles, language barriers, and storm-shrouded mountains in the Alps. As the days unfold, however, she discovers her own wise strength and comes to the gratifying realization that a long marriage is like a long trail: there are ups and downs and it takes hard work to keep going, but the beauty along the way is staggering. 
Written with raw honesty and compassion and rich with dazzling scenery, To Walk It Is To See It will inspire you to lace up your walking shoes and discover your own path. 
“Showing us the importance of adventure and wonder throughout our lives, Elkind's wise and funny book will have you reaching for your bootlaces and backpack.” 
Kerri Andrews, author of Wanderers: A History of Women Walking 
"Full of profound personal insights and sharp observations of the world around her, Elkind's journey is a joy to follow."  
Ben Shattuck author of Six Walks: In the Footsteps of Henry David Thoreau

Show book

Dog Man - An Uncommon Life on a...

Martha Sherrill

As Dog Man opens, Martha Sherrill brings us to a world that Americans know very little about—the snow country of Japan during World War II. In a mountain village, we meet Morie Sawataishi, a fierce individualist who has chosen to break the law by keeping an Akita dog hidden in a shed on his property.

During the war, the magnificent and intensely loyal Japanese hunting dogs are donated to help the war effort, eaten, or used to make fur vests for the military. By the time of the Japanese surrender in 1945, there are only sixteen Akitas left in the country. The survival of the breed becomes Morie's passion and life, almost a spiritual calling.

Devoted to the dogs, Morie is forever changed. His life becomes radically unconventional—almost preposterous—in ultra-ambitious, conformist Japan. For the dogs, Morie passes up promotions, bigger houses, and prestigious engineering jobs in Tokyo. Instead, he raises a family with his young wife, Kitako—a sheltered urban sophisticate—in Japan's remote and forbidding snow country.

Their village is isolated, but interesting characters are always dropping by—dog buddies, in-laws from Tokyo, and a barefoot hunter who lives in the wild. Due in part to Morie's perseverance and passion, the Akita breed strengthens and becomes wildly popular, sometimes selling for millions of yen. Yet Morie won't sell his spectacular dogs. He only likes to give them away.

Morie and Kitako remain in the snow country today, living in the traditional Japanese cottage they designed together more than thirty years ago—with tatami mats, an overhanging roof, a deep bathtub, and no central heat. At ninety-four years old, Morie still raises and trains the Akita dogs that have come to symbolize his life.

In beautiful prose that is a joy to read, Sherrill opens up the world of the Dog Man and his wife, providing a profound look at what it is to be an individualist in a culture that reveres conformity—and what it means to live life in one's own way—while expertly revealing Japan and Japanese culture as we've never seen it before.

Show book

Barack Obama - In His Own Words

Lisa Rogak

New York Times Bestseller: A collection of quotations by the forty-fourth US president, arranged A-to-Z by topic. 
 
From the day he delivered his keynote speech at the 2004 Democratic National Convention, Barack Obama became a national political figure—a little-known Illinois senator transformed into the country’s first African American president just four years later. He has been admired by millions for his calm demeanor, charisma, sense of humor, integrity, and exceptional eloquence. 
 
Organized A-to-Z by topic, this book gathers his quotes on democracy, diversity, abortion, religion, AIDS, his critics, foreign policy, the Iraq war, the internet, terrorism, unemployment, gay marriage, and a host of other issues, as well as more personal subjects like his marriage, his childhood, his critics, and his cigarette habit. Informative and easy to read, this is a wide-ranging selection of commentary by one of the major figures of the twenty-first century world.

Show book

Scars and Stilettos - 2nd Edition

Harmony Dust

Scars and Stilettos: At thirteen, after being abandoned by her mother one summer and left to take care of her younger brother, Harmony becomes susceptible to a relationship that turns out to be toxic, abusive, and ultimately exploitative. She eventually finds herself working in a strip club at the age of nineteen, and her boyfriend becomes her pimp, controlling her every move and taking all of her money. Ultimately, she discovers a path to freedom and a whole new life.

Show book

Boss of Black Brooklyn - The...

Ron Howell

The untold story about the struggles and achievements of the first Black person to hold public office in Brooklyn, New York.

Bertram L. Baker immigrated to the United States from the Caribbean island of Nevis in 1915. Three decades later, he was elected to the New York state legislature, representing the Bedford Stuyvesant section. A pioneer and a giant, Baker has a story that is finally revealed in intimate and honest detail by his grandson Ron Howell.

Boss of Black Brooklyn begins with the tale of Baker’s rise to prominence in a fascinating era of Black American history, a time when thousands of West Indian families began leaving their native islands in the Caribbean and settling in New York City. In 1948, Bert Baker was elected to the New York state assembly, representing the growing central Brooklyn neighborhood of Bedford Stuyvesant. Baker loved telling his fellow legislators that only one other Nevisian had ever served in the state assembly. That was Alexander Hamilton, the founding father. Making his own mark on modern history, Baker pushed through one of the nation’s first bills outlawing discrimination in the sale or rental of housing. Also, for thirty years, from 1936 to 1966, he led the all-Black American Tennis Association, as its executive secretary. In that capacity he successfully negotiated with white tennis administrators, getting them to accept Althea Gibson into their competitions. Gibson then made history as the first black champion of professional tennis.

Baker represents a remarkable turning point in the evolution of modern New York City. In the 1940s, when he won his seat in the New York state assembly, Blacks made up only four percent of the population of Brooklyn. Today they make up a third of the population, and there are scores of Black elected officials. Yet Brooklyn, often called the capital of the Black Diaspora, is a capital under siege. Developers and realtors seeking to gentrify the borough are all but conspiring to push Blacks out of the city. Boss of Black Brooklyn not only explores Black politics and Black organizations but also penetrates Baker’s inner life and reveals themes that resonate today: Black fatherhood, relations between Black men and black women, faithfulness to place and ancestry. Bertram L. Baker’s story has receded into the shadows of time, but Boss of Black Brooklyn recaptures it and inspires us to learn from it.

Praise for Boss of Black Brooklyn

“[A] valuable addition to New York history . . . . This shines a necessary light on an all-but-forgotten black politician from the pre–civil rights era.” —Publishers Weekly

“A potent reminder that history isn’t very old . . . What makes this biography all the more powerful is that as Baker’s grandson, the author Ron Howell . . . offers a personal prism on a transplanted West Indian family and political ascension.” —The New York Times

Show book

Disfigured - On Fairy Tales...

Amanda Leduc

Fairy tales shape how we see the world, so what happens when you identify more with the Beast than Beauty? If every disabled character is mocked and mistreated, how does the Beast ever imagine a happily-ever-after? Amanda Leduc looks at fairy tales from the Brothers Grimm to Disney, showing us how they influence our expectations and behaviour and linking the quest for disability rights to new kinds of stories that celebrate difference. 
		 
‘Leduc peels the flesh from the fairy tales we grew up loving and strips them down to their skeletons to skilfully reveal how they influence the way we think about disability. She contrasts the stories we have with the ones we wish we had, incorporating her own life. Her wisdom lands like a punch in the heart, leaving a sizable dent that reshapes how we see tales we’ve been telling for centuries. She also — and this is the best part — suggests how we might tell new fairy tales, how we can forge new stories.’ — Adam Pottle, author of Voice
		 
‘A unique and dazzling study … a revolutionary approach to understanding why we are drawn to fairy tales and how they shape our lives.’ — Jack Zipes, author of Grimm Legacies
		 
‘Each chapter is a gem, but the kind of gem that turns into a knife, into a mirror, into a portal. Leduc’s real magic? That she transforms her readers as surely as any world.’ — Mira Jacob, author of Good Talk

Show book