"It was as if what I wanted to kill wasn't in that skin or the thin blue pulse that jumped under my thumb, but somewhere else, deeper, more secret, and a whole lot harder to get at."

tea: all of the maté. because sleep is for sane people.
tunes: teenage shoegaze, e.g. Cherry Glazerr, Girls, Mr. Elevator and the Brain Hotel. also Courtney Barnett.

The Bell Jar. First off, it took me WAY too long to read this book. Ever since I saw the movie 10 Things I Hate About You (15-odd years ago), this book was on my list. That being said, I am really glad I didn't read this book when I was younger. I do not recommend it if you are not in a somewhat-stable place.

The Bell Jar is a narrative of insanity. Writer Esther Greenwood is intelligent, successful, and full of that dreaded word - potential. The novel opens in New York City, where Esther is at a prestigious internship for a women's magazine. Almost immediately upon her return to her hometown near Boston, Esther begins to lose her ability to read, eat, and sleep. She grows paranoid and suicidal. She is unable to write. She sees a frighteningly asinine psychiatrist, receives the 1960s' favorite treatment for mental illness, and attempts suicide before spending the remainder of the book in a fairly ritzy mental hospital.

One of the most striking things about this book is it's cavalier tone. As depressed as Esther is, and as truly dramatic as her situation is, the writing is extremely commonplace and dispassionate. It seemed a much more accurate depiction of depression to me. Esther talks about feeling "very still and very empty" and narrates as if she is watching her life rather than living it. I think this tone makes it all the more powerful.

I also enjoyed that - other than the psychological descent - The Bell Jar doesn't really have a throughline. It felt like a step above vignettes, which was both different/fun to read and helped give us the scattered, haphazard environment that Esther is surrounded by.

More than anything, though, I just fell in love with Sylvia Plath. Her writing is eloquent and real and poetic in an underscored kind of way.

Possibly my favorite quote from the book, other than the one I used to title this blog: "[W]herever I sat - on the deck of a ship or a street café in Paris or Bangkok - I would be sitting under the same glass bell jar, stewing in my own sour air."