The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath

I thought the most beautiful thing in the world must be shadow, the million moving shapes and cul-de-sacs of shadow.  There was shadow in bureau drawers and closets and suitcases, and shadow under houses and trees and stones, and shadow at the back of people's eyes and smiles, and shadow, miles and miles of it, on the night side of the earth.

I totally forgot that I had read The Bell Jar.  Well, no, I didn't forget that I'd read it, I forgot to review it, and for whatever reason, as I went back over the books I needed to write about after I got back from my trip, it dropped out of my mental list.  That's a shame, because The Bell Jar is really fantastic.  I'm sorry, The Bell Jar.

As Meagan pointed out in her review from a couple years ago, The Bell Jar is almost an autobiographical work.  Its heroine, Esther Greenwood, is a stand-in for Plath herself, who also spent a time working for a magazine (Mademoiselle, in Plath's case) and who fretted over her career and romantic prospects, and then had a nervous breakdown and had to be briefly committed to an institution.  Keeping this in mind makes reading The Bell Jar a grim exercise, since shortly after it was published Plath committed suicide.  Such knowledge blunts the sharp humor of Esther's bungled attempts to kill herself, which seem as if they are detailed with the light touch of someone with a greater sense of distance from their previous feelings.

One of the really terrific things about The Bell Jar is the way in which Plath is able to blur the line between the everyday neuroticism of the first part, which seems very familiar to anyone trying to "make it" in academia, or the creative professions, or New York City, and the kind of mental illness that strikes Plath when she returns to her New England home in the second part.  In a famous passage from the first part, Esther compares her future to a fig tree:

From the tip of every branch, like a fat purple fig, a wonderful future beckoned and winked.  One fig was a husband and a happy home and children, and another fig was a famous poet and another fig was a brilliant professor, and another fig was Ee Gee, the amazing editor, and another fig was Europe and Africa and South America, and another fig was Constantin and Socrates and Attila and a pack of other lovers with queer names and offbeat professions, and another fig was an Olympic lady crew champion, and beyond and above these figs were many more figs I couldn't quite make out.

I saw myself sitting in the crotch of this fig tree, starving to death, just because I couldn't make up my mind which of the figs I would choose.  I wanted each and every one of them, but choosing one meant losing all the rest, and, as I sat there, unable to decide, the figs began to wrinkle and go black, and, one by one, they plopped to the ground at my feet.

I love this image, and it's easy to see the stamp of Plath's poetry on it.  I was impressed by the way that Plath manages to employ the distinct, stark imagery and detail of her poems without sacrificing a strong narrative voice.  The list of writers who are equally great poets and novelists is not very long, and I wouldn't hesitate to put her on it.  (Hardy, Lawrence, Plath... ?)  But look how easily the ennui and indecision of that passage transforms into a kind of paralysis:

The reason I hadn't washed my clothes or my hair was because it seemed so silly.

I saw the days of the year stretching ahead like a series of bright, white boxes, and separating one box from another was sleep, like black shade.  Only for me, the long perspective of shades that set off one box from the next had suddenly snapped up, and I could see day after day glaring ahead of me like a white, broad, infinitely desolate avenue.

It seemed silly to wash one day when I would only have to wash again the next.

It made me tired just to think of it.

I wanted to do everything once and for all and be through with it.

We read this passage with a sense of irony, thinking that the author recognizes the strange horror of these thoughts, shares an outsider's perspective with us.  And that may be true.  It may be true that Plath, like Esther sometimes can, can see these images with an outsider's perspective, and yet they doubtlessly became unbearable for Plath in the end.  What she left behind is a great, horribly frank and terrifying novel, perhaps the greatest record we have of mental illness.

I Hardly Ever Wash My Hands: The Other Side of OCD by J.J. Keeler

"I have always imagined my obsessions to be like little demons working inside the brain: the have little faces and bodies and work inside cubicles. Sometimes, a particular demon endorsing a specific obsession will get a promotion. He will be moved to a bigger office, get a little demon secretary, and suddenly have a lot more influence."

With I Hardly Ever Wash My Hands, J.J. Keeler gives readers a glimpse inside the mind of someone with obsessive-compulsive disorder. As someone with OCD, Keeler is able to describe how the disorder has effected her on a daily basis for much of her life and how she has been able to manage.

The book is essentially a memoir. Keeler takes us through some of her experiences coping with OCD at various points throughout her life, and she manages to do so with a good deal of humor and wit. As a young child, she was obsessed with contracting AIDS and for weeks was convinced that a stuffed teddy given to her by a neighbor had a bomb implanted inside of it. As she grew older, so did her obsessive fears. They transitioned into a fear of inadvertently causing a car accident and incredibly detailed harming obsessions.

I had never heard or read of harming obsessions before this book. According to Keeler, they are not uncommon among those suffering from OCD. Keeper started fearing that she would stab strangers as she walked past them, intentionally hitting pedestrians with her car, and strangling people. She makes it clear that these are not fantasies, but rather fears. She does not wish to do these things, but is terrified that she will or in many cases, already has. Driving over a speed bump in her car meant spending the next few minutes checking her mirror and even pulling over or circling back to verify that she hadn't run anyone over.

I particularly enjoyed the chapter "A Talk with God." Keeler explains how some aspects of religion can exacerbate OCD. As she puts it, "The problem with being religious and having OCD is an underlying, and unrelenting, need to know." When her grandmother was in the hospital, Keeler started praying for her to get better. She crafted meticulous prayers that had to be said just so in order for them to have the desired effect. If she messed up, even in the slightest way, she would start over from the beginning.

Keeler isn't someone who blames the everyday worries of life on OCD. As she says, "A lot of the time, people with OCD have fears and worries that have nothing to do with being obsessive-complusive--they merely have to do with being alive."

The final chapter of the books is directed at those with OCD. Keeler imparts some advice and tricks--some of them quite interesting--that have helped her manage. Despite this last chapter, the book doesn't strike me as having been specifically written for those with OCD. Keeler wants to dispel some of the misinformation and challenge the stereotypical portrayals of the disorder in films and television. Toward the end of the book, Keeler states, "If there is one thing you take away from this book, I hope you learn that OCD is not a disease as cut and dry as people think."

07 Tender Is The Night-F. Scott Fitzgerald

I never liked Gatsby, but I like recommendations. Tender is the spectacular study of one man, Mr. Dick Diver. Told in the third person, the three sections are dominated by three characters thoughts: Rosemary, Dick, and Nicole. Tender is a somewhat autobiographical look into Fitzgerald’s own life of love and mental illness. They are expats living it up on the French Riviera during the depression. I’m remembering why I didn’t like Fitzgerald in high school and college; while reading Tender I did begin to appreciate and even love his style.

We first meet Rosemary, the young American actress that has just hit the big time in a Hollywood production. She stumbled to the French Riviera with her mother and while on the beach, happens upon a lovely young couple-Dick and Nicole Diver. She falls in love with Dick, and we learn of all the upstanding and admirable qualities that Dick possesses. The three of them get along famously, and nothing scandalous occurs.

Dick is a young American psychologist writing a book about mental treatments. In Book two, his life is explained. He married Nicole, who was a mental patient, but not his patient. She is the youngest daughter of Chicago “old money.” The love they share is a fantastic thing. They have two children. Dick grows weary of the mental episodes Nicole displays and runs away to work and write and lecture. There is nothing funny about the sadness of the love between these two. It’s meant to fall apart.

I’m willing to give Gatsby another chance, I was young, and it’s easier now to appreciate style, and not use one’s personal life as a reason to not enjoy good writing.