Against Completism: On Sylvia Plath’s New Short Story
In Elisa Gabbert’s new column Mess with a Classic, she revisits canonical works of literature and addresses the anxiety of confronting the art of the past (and the past in general).
Sylvia Plath in April 1954, as a student at Smith College (Photo: JUDY SNOW DENISON)
When I heard that a previously unpublished Sylvia Plath short story would appear in January 2019, I requested an electronic galley and then let the file sit unopened in my inbox for several weeks. I felt apprehensive, even frightened of it. I love Plath’s poetry, but what if I didn’t like this story? I read The Bell Jar so long ago, when I was fourteen or so, that I couldn’t remember anything about it. But I read The Catcher in the Rye at around the same time, and I remember that book clearly. Had I only meant to read The Bell Jar, and never finished it? Oh God, I thought, what if none of Plath’s fiction is good?
I decided to read again before addressing the new old short story. The first, striking sentence—already suffused with death—gave me hope: “It was a queer, sultry summer, the summer they electrocuted the Rosenbergs, and I didn’t know what I was doing in New York.” By the end of the first paragraph, I was nervous again: “It had nothing to do with me, but I couldn’t help wondering what it would be like, being burned alive all along your nerves.” Then, a hard return and a single-sentence paragraph: “I thought it must be the worst thing in the world.” Plath’s journals and letters are often unintentionally
