It’s her birthday today. She died in 2021.
I started out with The Silent Woman, many years ago, her book on the challenges of writing about Sylvia Plath, particularly in lieu of the draconian Plath estate, run – Shakespearean-ly – by Ted Hughes’ sister Olwyn who always hated Sylvia. It’s a fascinating and troubling book about the issues of legacy, narrative, who gets to tell whose story, who “holds” the story, and – finally – acknowledging the upsetting fact that Sylvia Plath has been “silenced” by her own estate. (This is no longer the case, freakin’ 30 years later. About time.)
Many of Malcolm’s books are about the art of writing itself. She was ambivalent on the subject. Similar to Susan Sontag’s ambivalence in re: photography, Malcolm wondered if writing – particularly non-fiction writing and reportage – served any purpose at all. Malcolm’s eye was unsparing. She interviewed people, and they crucified themselves by their own words, and by her descriptions of them.
All writers should read The Silent Woman: Sylvia Plath and Ted Hughes. Malcolm’s writing was so dominating it often got her into trouble: there were numerous controversies in re: her quotations. On more than one occasion, Malcolm had to produce her original notes in order to prove such-and-such conversation took place. On more than one occasion, Malcolm could not locate said notes. She was often “in trouble” like this. Her book on “the Freud archives” is a real banger – and a continuation on her earlier book on Psychiatry: she was fascinated – and repelled – by the whole thing.
Malcolm is probably most well-known for The Journalist and the Murderer: her most brutal book. Malcolm was incensed by Joe McGinniss’ best-selling “true” crime book Fatal Vision, about convicted family annihilator Jeffrey MacDonald. What angered Malcolm was McGinniss’ trickery. The writer pretended to be MacDonald’s friend and supporter in order to gain the accused murderer’s trust, McGinniss pretended the book he was writing would be a defense of MacDonald, when in actuality it was going to be an indictment. Very unethical. Malcolm didn’t care about MacDonald’s case, but she went after Joe McGinniss hard. She was appalled, you can feel it in the prose. The book started out as an article, which caused a sensation. Her thoughts went against the almost universal accolades Fatal Vision received – and she elaborated the article into a short fiery polemic-book. I don’t think it’s an exaggeration to say that Malcolm destroyed McGinniss’ reputation. He never recovered. He’s still defending himself from Malcolm’s assault on his integrity. To Malcolm, McGinniss was a symptom of a larger issue: Malcolm’s real interest was journalism itself, which you can also see in The Silent Woman, which is about Plath, but it’s really about the challenges of literary biography. Malcolm was not afraid to go after the entire journalistic profession of journalists, calling them ALL out in these unforgettable blazing words:
Every journalist who is not too stupid or full of himself to notice what is going on knows that what he does is morally indefensible. He is a kind of confidence man, preying on people’s vanity, ignorance, or loneliness, gaining their trust and betraying them without remorse.
The Journalist and the Murderer was so influential it’s on the curriculum in Journalism programs across the United States to this day.
Malcolm was an unsentimental writer and resistant to emotion or consensus-driven pressure. It’s a great lesson, one I try to take to heart. The pressure to conform is intense. Twitter was a wild exaggeration of what already exists. I haven’t experienced such peer pressure since high school. My views often don’t line up with the status quo or the majority. I never was susceptible to peer pressure, for some reason, but I still feel it. Resisting peer pressure is essential for clarity, and crucial for writers.
I trusted Malcolm because of how far she stood back from her subject. She was transparent about how she thought, not just WHAT she thought. Her book about Plath is an investigation into the estate, and grappling with what she discovered. She thinks out loud in her writing. While her writing is crystal-clear, what she does – often – is lead you through a maze of possibilities, where clarity vanishes (this happens in the Plath book: there are no answers there, no one villain).
Janet Malcolm was – and still is – a role model for me as a writer.
I miss coming across her byline, in The New Yorker, or the New York Review of Books. I would set everything aside to dive in.
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