Faculty of Arts, Chulalongkorn
University
The
Bed Book
(1959)
Sylvia Plath
(1932–1963)
Beds come in all sizes— |
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Single or double, |
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Cot-size or cradle, |
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King-size or trundle. |
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Most Beds are Beds |
5
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For sleeping or resting, |
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But the best Beds are much |
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More interesting! |
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... |
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Sample Student
Responses to Sylvia Plath's The Bed Book
Response
1:
Anchalee
Kamnoedkaeo
2202234
Introduction to the Study of English Literature
Acharn
Puckpan Tipayamontri
June
3, 2009
Reading Response #1
Beds
that Fly
In
the movie Basic Instinct (1992), the character Catherine
Tramell, played by Sharon Stone, notoriously invokes
Coleridge’s idea of “suspension of disbelief” as an alibi.
“You make it up,” she says, “but it has to be
believable.” Tramell
is being interrogated as a murder suspect and her defense is a
literary pact between writer and reader.
“I’d have to be pretty stupid to write a book about a
killing and then kill him the way I described in my book.
I’d be announcing myself as the killer.
I’m not stupid.”
In effect, she can’t be the murderer because she wrote
about the murder. That
the story is convincing shows her skill as a fiction writer, not
as perpetrator. Putting
your disbelief on hold is why you can enjoy Harry Potter.
You are willing to ignore your disbelief for the moment
of reading that paintings can talk, that sprinkling powder over
your head can get you from one place to another across town in a
flash. Put another
way, if you want to enjoy reading, you should be willing to
believe. This is
the demand of Sylvia Plath’s The Bed Book which offers
us such fantastic notions as Snack Beds with automatic
dispensers “Just a finger to stick in / The slot, and out come
/ Cakes and cold chicken” (39–41).
We are not stupid.
Plath’s
poem asks us to “see if the Big Dipper’s / Full of stew”
(173–74) and dares us to revel in springing “From a
Bounceable Bed” even though “You bounce into the blue—”
(l. 163–64). I
did not feel lost in that open blue.
In letting go of my preconceptions and inhibitions, I was
too busy entertaining new combinations of things, actions and
ideas, and the outcome is better than cakes.
For me, having traveled with Plath from Timbuktoo to Aunt
Joan’s and enjoyed every minute of it, reading is believing.
Works
Cited
Eszterhas, Joe. Basic
Instinct. 1992.
Screenplay. Daily
Script 3 June 2009 <http://www.dailyscript.com/scripts/basic_instinct.html>. |
|
Response
1 (revised)
Anchalee
Kamnoedkaeo
2202234
Introduction to the Study of English Literature
Acharn
Puckpan Tipayamontri
June
3, 2009
Reading Response #1 (revised)
Beds
that Fly
Suspension
of disbelief is what makes fiction come alive.
This pact between writer and reader coined by Coleridge
is notoriously invoked as an alibi by the character Catherine
Tramell played by Sharon Stone in the movie Basic Instinct
(1992) when being questioned for murder: “You make it up, but
it has to be believable.”
Fiction can be made to seem real but it is not reality,
Tramell reminds her interrogators, “I’d have to be pretty
stupid to write a book about a killing and then kill him the way
I described in my book…I’m not stupid.”
The writer agrees to verisimilitude, the reader agrees to
put their disbelief on hold, and the fictional world is enabled
for our enjoyment: thriller dramas where writers can kill
without being killers, fantasy series like Harry Potter
where sprinkling floo powder can get you across town via
fireplaces, and, in this case, Sylvia Plath’s The Bed Book
where Snack Beds come with automatic dispensers “Just a finger
to stick in / The slot, and out come / Cakes and cold chicken”
(39–41). We are
not stupid, and our enjoyment does not come at the price of
intelligence.
The opposite is true.
Plath’s poem shows us “An Elephant Bed” that can
give “A trunk-spray shower” (129, 139), asks us to “see if
the Big Dipper’s / Full of stew” (173–74), and dares us to
revel in springing “From a Bounceable Bed” even though
“You bounce into the blue—” (163–64).
I did not feel lost.
In that wide open blue, I let go of my white little
preconceptions of beds and of my jam rambling inhibitions and
was fantastically busy eating up new combinations of things,
actions and ideas, and the outcome is better than cakes.
For me, having willingly suspended my disbelief in
traveling with Plath from Timbuktoo to Aunt Joan’s and enjoyed
every minute of it, reading is believing.
Works
Cited
Eszterhas, Joe. Basic
Instinct. 1992.
Screenplay. Daily
Script 3 June 2009 <http://www.dailyscript.com/scripts/basic_instinct.html>. |
|
Some books on Plath at Chula
Barnard, Caroline King. Sylvia
Plath. Boston: Twayne, 1978. (CL 811.54 P716Bs)
Bassnett, Susan. Sylvia
Plath: An Introduction to the Poetry. Basingstoke: Palgrave, 2005.
(Arts PS3566.L27 B321S)
Bloom, Harold, ed. Sylvia Plath.
New York: Chelsea House, 1989. (CL 92 P713S)
Butscher, Edward. Sylvia
Plath: The Woman and the Work. New York: Dodd, Mead, 1977. (CL 92 P716B)
The Cambridge Companion to Sylvia
Plath. Ed. Jo Gill. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 2006. (Arts PS3566.L27 C178 2006)
Holbrook, David. Sylvia
Plath: Poetry and Existence. London: Athlone, 1976. (CL 811.54 P716H)
Lane, Gary. Sylvia Plath: A
Bibliography. Metuchen, NJ: Scarecrow Press, 1978. (CL ref 016.81154 P716L)
Rosenblatt, Jon. Sylvia
Plath: The Poetry of Initiation. Chapel Hill: U of North Carolina P,
1979. (Arts PS3566.L27 R813S)
Wagner-Martin, Linda. Sylvia
Plath: A Biography. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1987. (Arts PS3566.L27 W134S)
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