A Literary Day

The rain pours down today. It’s still muggy, though, which is highly disappointing. The sidewalk in front of my apartment is littered with fallen chestnuts, hard, shiny, and yet still: muggy warm soup-air. Uhm … ready for the autumn chill? I’m going nuts.

Two things on the books today besides rehearsing and treadmill: two things I am SO excited for:

First up:

Allison and I are going to The Grolier Club to see the Plath/Hughes exhibit.

For the first time ever!! The papers of Sylvia Plath and the papers of Ted Hughes – in the same place!!! Ooh, bet the angry feminists must HATE that one! “How DARE you let that villain’s stuff near our martyred heroine’s stuff? This would be like putting a Nazi’s memorabilia through the Anne Frank house!” (Or insert any other inappropriate analogy that you can think of) Etc. Loons. It’s actually rather amusing. Ted Hughes and Sylvia Plath were, contrary to popular belief, just TWO HUMAN BEINGS. Mkay?

Here:

Here’s my favorite photo of the two of them (below). Sure, it went horrifically bad much later on … the relationship was destroyed completely … but I like to think of them like this, in their earlier days. Working together, supporting each other’s work, companions.

They were not living symbols of the oppressor and the oppressed. They did not fit into pre-constructed roles. They were just two people. Talented dedicated poets. In love with each other. For a while. Then he cheated on her, they split up, and she killed herself. Well done you. The mythology built up around them both is kind of astounding – and I admit, as a huge Plath fan, that I bought into the mythology for many years. That’s another big post I’d like to do someday – my changing relationship to Sylvia Plath. I’ve been into her stuff since I was 16, and my relationship to it keeps changing. I feel like now that I’ve gotten away from the mythology – I am in a much clearer space to really appreciate her poetry, and how astonishing she is in her later work. I mean, it’s really amazing. And I’ve recently gotten into Ted Hughes. I stayed away from him for years because … you know … he is the bogey-man to Plath freaks. The evil male. Etc. But I’ve grown up a bit, and am not at all attached to the mythology anymore. I think he’s incredible. But all of that is neither here nor there.

The piece in The Times says:

it is a little bit like sitting down with two highly gifted, impossibly loquacious, relentlessly driven and (admittedly) self-dramatizing people and having them try to speak to you over the heads of the biographers, the moviemakers, the conjecturers and the cliché-spinners. Look at us unmediated, they, or their artifacts, seem to be saying. Make up your own minds about who we were and what we did – if you dare.

I am so so excited for this exhibit – have been looking forward to it for WEEKS – and Allison is my perfect partner-in-crime. A huge Plath fan, someone as obsessive as I am … she and I went to go see the film Sylvia together when it came out (it’s quite fantastic, by the way, although obviously not a barrel of laughs. Originally, I was like: Gwyneth as Sylvia? Oh give me a BREAK. But no. She was absolutely perfect. A wonderful performance. And Daniel Craig is so sexy as Ted Hughes that I can barely think about him directly.)

And after we spend a couple of hours browsing through Syvia and Ted’s papers – we are going to go see Capote – which I have heard is fantastic.

The director of the play I’m in right now said that Hoffman is beyond good. It doesn’t look like an acting job – it seems as though he has actually inhabited Truman Capote.

Man. I am so excited for that one as well.

Rain. Chestnuts. Sylvia Plath. Ted Hughes. Truman Capote. Treadmill. Already sounds like a great day.