Sylvia's Library

Who the hell takes a VIDEO of a bookshelf? Peter K. Steinberg at sylviaplathinfo, that's who.

His blog is awesome, smart, and well researched. It always surprises me with a new facet of Ms. Plath- some new insight to her non-suicidal self that never fails to inspire me during this May of Mayhem revision!

I love that he geeked out and went to the Mortimer Rare Book Room at Smith College and took an action-packed VIDEO of Sylvia's personal library shelves. I felt compelled to share it here. Parts 1 AND 2. ENJOY! Fun to play simultaneously...

Books/writers I could make out were: Blake, History of the Bible, German Dictionary, Dostoyevsky's Diary of a Writer, Henry James, The Golden Bough, Freud, The Poems of Robert Frost, Botany Books, Hawthorne short stores, Dubliners, Finnegan's Wake, Kafka, Goethe poems, The Writer's Handbook, Chaucer... D.H. Lawrence, Death in Venice, Christopher Marlowe, Oxford Book of Sixteenth Sentury Writers, Rimbaud, Anne Sexton (!), Baby and Child Care (!), Collected Poems of Wallace Stevens, Plato, Shakespeare, The Painted Caravan, Yeats, Richard Wilbur. If you can see anymore without going blind, let me know! And THANKS, Peter K. Steinberg at Sylvia Plath Info for all the hard work!

Lorin Stein: Overacheiver

Have you heard about Lorin Stein? Talented, ambitious, French-speaking bastard. 37 years old and to be the new editor of the Paris Review? So young! So accomplished! But has he ever written a first person young adult novel and nourished 2 babies for 5 months straight on breastmilk ALONE? Long ago, when he was alive, I got wasted on white wine at a book party at George Plimpton's house. The walls were dripping with whimsical caricatures drawn by oh, probably Picasso, Hirshfeld or W.C. Fields. The kitchen (where the wine was) was gigantic and filled with expensive pots and pans and thick white dishes. There were writers everywhere and some of them knew my name and couldn't wait to hear about what I was "working on" and who I was "studying with" and if I wanted "another glass of chardonnay." I thought that my life would be filled with hundreds and thousands of better and even more literary nights of debauchery. Little did I know that tipsy on a little corner couch, listening to him plink plonk on a baby grand, equally drunk with a fellow student would be a highlight of my so called literary life I would share, hardly ever, with anyone. Until now. Cheers Lorin- you firecracker.

The Balm of Environment

I just read this great little piece on Paris' Shakespeare and Co. bookstore and it was all about the balm of environment. We are moving, that's right- moving- to a new apartment any minute now and I am overwhelmed with choices and prices of furniture and rugs and window shades, beds and rugs, chairs and bath mats, headboards and potholders. We need a new vacuum cleaner. How many books should we take out of storage? I work at home and bathe at home. Sleep, love, feed my family and play with my baby all in the same space. I want it to be inviting and calm, creative, and beautiful, timeless yet unique. A real home that takes the anxiety from your shoulders the moment you walk through the door. Oh dear reader, how the fuck do I pull it off? Say it with me- the balm of environment- Let's start with a bed for the 3 year old and take it from there.

Writers

How I love them. I love how you can take a poetess, a romance writer, a Penthouse Letters writer, a Young Adult novelist, a memoirist, and dare I say a medical textbook writer- sit them all at a kitchen table with a pot of coffee and they will bond- bond I tell you!- over deadlines, point of view, inspiration, and their quest for immortality through the written word. For realz. Speaking of writing, I'm itching to get started on my next book but feel like it would be cheating on BELL JAR SUMMER until the edits are finished, my editor/s are beside themselves with glee and their eyes are glazed over with dollar signs. Now all I need is time time time time time time time time time time time time... Oh! And I FINALLY Got my Shelfari to work (Thanks Java script!) so if you have any books of note that I need to read or am forgetting all about remind me! And- if you have a question about any of them let me know... And if you want to buy a copy you can click on any book on my shelf and it will take you to a Shelfari page with an Amazon link at the left hand side of the page...

Suzie Townsend and Adrian Mole

Suzie Townsend is my agent extraordinaire. Hmmm... You are thinking why is that name so oddly familiar? Is it because she is an amazing agent attached to some of the biggest YA deals of 2009 and 10? Is it because she has a wonderful reputation far and wide for her savvy, taste, and love of lilac? Yes! AND It is also because Sue Townsend is also the very same name of the author of one of the most amazing YA books of all time: The Secret Diary of Adrian Mole, aged 13 3/4. This may seem like a coincidence but the universe is paying very close attention. I think it is this book that subconsciously convinced me that it was OK to marry a Scotsman and now that I look at the whole thing, it had a major impact on my perception of YA, my love of teenager-dom, and the diary- all which inform so much of BELL JAR SUMMER. An orange soda toast, then to Suzie (and Sue) Townsend! CHEERS~!

Hardcovers: The Glory and the Horror

I have a hardcover book (yes, it's Going Bovine, yes I am loving it) that is about 800 pages long. I take it on the subway. I put it in my purse. I lug it from bedroom to living room to laundry room only to read 10 pages at a go. It's like take your brick to work week and I've had about enough. Oh, it's good. I love the cover. I love that I was so excited to read it I simply could not wait for the paperback edition that was sure to follow the hardcover release. I love how I feel like a 10 year old girl reading the library's copy of Little Women. But seriously. It's become my albatross and I'm itching to finish it, just to give my triceps a break. Oh, the kids today are all about the paperbacks, slide a copy into the back pocket of your dungarees on your way to the drag race or sock-hop and as a modern girl how can I blame them? I also seem to remember getting hardcovers from the library and they often had tiny paper-colored mites on them that you were never quite sure were real until you lightly smashed one with an index finger. And that they smelled like vanilla and the desert. Oh dear readers (all 3 of you), what was the last hardcover YOU read? I'm dying to know...

Coffee, Inspiration, and the Roloff Dwarf Mom

We bought the cheapo $3.99 French Roast in a bag coffee from Trader Joe's last week instead of the $6.99 Fair Trade Bolivian Blend in the can and, dear reader, learn from my cautionary tale. It's like drinking toasted gasoline and because we only have skim milk in the house I can take no refuge from its bitterness in butterfat. (One of the only things that the dwarf Roloff mom on TLC's Little people, Big World and I have in common is our loathing of skim milk.) I'm trying to get in the mood here to like, write, for Christ's sake and the coffee just isn't doing it for me. All I can think of is half and half and dwarves and laundry. And all the people I know who have published books. And Prince. And the low battery in my mouse. And what to make for dinner. You see? This is what the coffee situation has reduced me to.