The Oncoming Hope

Two things I adore in this world are Sylvia Plath and F. Scott Fitzgerald (and Kate Beaton, above*) - I choose the word "things" carefully as both are human ideas shrouded in fairly impenetrable (and self-created) mystique. Both have moments where they maximise the worst clichés about themselves.

The page below, drawn from Sylvia Plath's own copy of The Great Gatsby, (the entire book is available at the University of South Carolina) demonstrates the worst of Sylvia's Plathisms.

Reading this, I had a sudden vision of Plath thumbing through classic novels and trolling them, taking long whiffs of Virginia Slims and expelling "Oh, l'ennui" onto countless pages of text that mirror Plath's youthful view of herself as described in The Bell Jar.

*Main image credited to Kate Beaton's magnificent Hark! A Vagrant! I've bought a copy of her book, and so should you.