Rating: Summary: The Not So Savage Book Review: This work is not, properly speaking, a "study" of suicide. Rather, it is comprised of patchwork, non-integrated personal narratives and scanty overviews of psychological theories, literary histories and cultural backgrounds whose lack of integration- Indeed, lack of a coherent thread-do not for a "study" make. But the most bothersome aspect about this book, aside from the disjunctive nature of its content, is its detached, arid prose style. Even the personal accounts of his friendship with Sylvia Plath and his theorizing on the etiology of her suicide (already jejune from the outset, since Plath's is perhaps the most described and theorized over suicide in the last half-century, by friends and otherwise) to his own description of his own failed attempt, there is a listless, plodding quality to the prose, which lends a certain credibility to what Alvarez intimates about this attempt, that it somehow DID kill something inside him. There is simply a lack of vitality here, which makes for rather humdrum reading, regardless of the weight of the book's subject. Plath's own autobiographical suicide-oriented novel, The Bell Jar, is a wonderful benchmark of how the subject can be treated with verve and energy.If one is looking for a solid, non-fiction, overview of the subject written with energy, erudition and even whimsy, Robert Burton's age-old The Anatomy of Melancholy (mentioned glancingly in this book) is still the best and most helpful delving into the subject, both for those simply interested in the phenomenon and, more importantly, from those, like myself, suffering from depression or melancholy and contemplating the possibility of "felo-de-se". As a reader and a sufferer, I finished this rather bland blook untransformed. And I truly don't understand how this book of limpid prose and scanty overviews ever made it into publication.----Oh yes, forgot, he was a friend of Ms. Plath!
Rating: Summary: The Not So Savage Book Review: This work is not, properly speaking, a "study" of suicide. Rather, it is comprised of patchwork, non-integrated personal narratives and scanty overviews of psychological theories, literary histories and cultural backgrounds whose lack of integration- Indeed, lack of a coherent thread-do not for a "study" make. But the most bothersome aspect about this book, aside from the disjunctive nature of its content, is its detached, arid prose style. Even the personal accounts of his friendship with Sylvia Plath and his theorizing on the etiology of her suicide (already jejune from the outset, since Plath's is perhaps the most described and theorized over suicide in the last half-century, by friends and otherwise) to his own description of his own failed attempt, there is a listless, plodding quality to the prose, which lends a certain credibility to what Alvarez intimates about this attempt, that it somehow DID kill something inside him. There is simply a lack of vitality here, which makes for rather humdrum reading, regardless of the weight of the book's subject. Plath's own autobiographical suicide-oriented novel, The Bell Jar, is a wonderful benchmark of how the subject can be treated with verve and energy. If one is looking for a solid, non-fiction, overview of the subject written with energy, erudition and even whimsy, Robert Burton's age-old The Anatomy of Melancholy (mentioned glancingly in this book) is still the best and most helpful delving into the subject, both for those simply interested in the phenomenon and, more importantly, from those, like myself, suffering from depression or melancholy and contemplating the possibility of "felo-de-se". As a reader and a sufferer, I finished this rather bland blook untransformed. And I truly don't understand how this book of limpid prose and scanty overviews ever made it into publication.----Oh yes, forgot, he was a friend of Ms. Plath!
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