I’ve seen people talk about actors and artists that had a terrible time.
My own would be Anne Rice. She wrote Interview with the Vampire after her young daughter died of Leukemia. Then her husband suddenly died of a brain hemorrhage. I suspect her Christian, anti-fanfic phase was a result of mental illness and manipulation from the publishers, although I don’t think she ever apologized.
Sylvia Plath. My understanding is that the Bell Jar is semi-autobiographical. The deep depression she experienced is something most of us will never know. She came back from it, wrote an incredible novel, and then still succumbed to depression, killing herself in what sounds like an absolutely agonizing way to go.
This is the one I came to say. I felt a connection to the character dealing with my own issues in life. Even though I’m good, reading that brought me back to that feeling of being functionally depressed and outwardly fine to everyone. I felt bad finding out about the author after and comparing it to the book after I didn’t feel like it was fictional.
I highly recommended another read if it’s been a few years. The story ages with you in a way.
it’s one of maybe 3 books I’ve been able to breeze through in a single day in the past decade. something about it just drew me in like that. thank you, I should read it again.
If you’re interested, check out her published diaries. It’s pure Plath, which is to say it is a beautifully rendered image of depression
She also wrote diary entries that sound like poetry when you read it. It also shows the struggles of her mind, her intellect, and loneliness. However, the entries in the last few days or weeks of her life were destroyed by her husband Ted Hughs. He burned them, and refused to reveal what was in them.
That’s okay—we can guess…
The Bell Jar is one book I identified with so much it was very difficult to read, but also cathartic in a way? It was a feeling of “oh wow, I feel seen,” but in a very raw and vulnerable way.
I love her poetry, too. One that stuck with me was “Tulips,” specifically this verse:
I didn’t want any flowers, I only wanted
To lie with my hands turned up and be utterly empty.
How free it is, you have no idea how free——
The peacefulness is so big it dazes you,
And it asks nothing, a name tag, a few trinkets.
It is what the dead close on, finally; I imagine them
Shutting their mouths on it, like a Communion tablet.
Came here to say the same thing!
the first time i read the bell jar i was nineteen and had just moved out to live by myself in a city. i had read her poetry before and it really stuck with me, but so much of the bell jar felt like it came from my own mind. i wish we had more from her. people make jokes about how she died but honestly it’s such an awful way to go
the way sp has been dehumanized and reduced to her death is astoundingly sad. i’m working my way through a deep dive on her, reading red comet alongside her complete journals and other works, and ive already learned so much about her psyche and circumstances - she was brilliant, ambitious, loving, felt so deeply and articulated that pain in such a unique, revolutionary and everlasting way
I read that book every few years. As a woman who has had hard bouts of depression that almost cost me my life, reading her at 17, at 19, and then again at 25 gave me new insights into myself each time.
I had a AP lit teacher that lent me her copy at 17 when my mood visibly shifted. I am so grateful.
That book destroyed me. I can’t imagine living in that tortured mind.