I always liked the idea of getting into Sylvia Plath; she is someone whose personal mythology as a writer has maybe overshadowed her work in the public eye, leading to simplistic interpretations of her fiction as purely autobiographical while overlooking her talent as an observer of human behavior. I liked The Bell Jar, so I read her complete poetry front to back and didn’t get much out of it not because it’s without merit but because I don’t usually “get” poetry. Then reading her extensive journal, though I’ve barely cracked it, I found what I was looking for. 

Throughout these journals, Plath refers to her various successes and failures getting short stories and essays published, but I realized I had never read any of her short fiction before. Johnny Panic and the Bible of Dreams is by no means a comprehensive collection of her prose, and some editing decisions are questionable, but Penguin’s most recent edition is the best we’ve got. The stories themselves are nothing short of genius, a genius that is denigrated by even the condescending introduction to this volume, which I realized only halfway through was written by that man — “Her ambition to write stories was the most visible burden of her life,”; “She couldn’t understand why it was so difficult for her, when other writers seemed to find it so easy,”; “But in spite of the obvious weaknesses, they seem interesting enough to keep, if only as notes toward her inner autobiography.” Ted found his own fame eclipsed by her death, so he doubtlessly wrote this trying to prevent her work from eclipsing his. 

As I said before, the short stories in this volume are impeccably crafted and top tier, but I did not understand the inclusion of diary entries, seemingly at random and devoid of context. The one most interesting interaction between Plath’s journals and her fiction was the juxtaposition of “Widow Mangada”/“That Widow Mangada” (1956). In her journals, she details lodging in Spain with an ex-aristocratic widow who only cooks and cleans behind closed doors to keep up her image of status. Then, immediately following, she distills every little detail into a short story. Plath and Hughes were looking for a quiet place to write in Spain, and I guess that is what she did. 

Among other highlights include “Mothers” (1962), “Day of Success” (1960), and the title story from 1958. Some are strongly rooted in autobiography, like “Day of Success” (probably the strongest story in the collection, glaringly recalling Hughes’ affair with Assia Wevill) but every story shows a strong observational impulse, a fly-on-the-wall distillation of human behavior. And even though I didn’t understand every story (“Stone Boy with Dolphin” completely eluded me, but it’s allegedly a fragment of an unfinished novel), none of them felt like exercises the way most literary fiction that gets published these days does. Everything felt complete, like there was an effort made to tie up every loose end. It’s depressing how low a standard that is, but if authors who write well weren’t appreciated in their lifetime, I don’t think anything has changed for the better.