Customer Reviews

Johnny Panic and the Bible of Dreams

5 star:		(3)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

This book is a collection of short stories, pieces of journals, with bits of poetry in there. Some of the stories are about her and some are just pure fiction, yet it shows the side of Sylvia that is seen in the "Bell Jar". Which means you read Sylvia in the form of stories, not poems. It's all the little things that she did all wrapped into one. However the one thing that's not in here is "The It Doesn't Matter Suit", which is a great little story, so check that out also.

I love Sylvia Plath. I think she was a brilliant, insightful writer with an incredible sense of craft. I adore The Bell Jar, her poetry is amazing, and I have read biographies on her as well as her letters home, and I am now reading her unabridged journals.

BUT... I found Johnny Panic to be tedious. The stories seemed to be lacking Plath's biting humor, and the journal excerpts were edited, and felt stilted read out of context.

I was dissappointed.

I enjoyed this book very much as a fan of Sylvia Plath but wonder whether a regular reader (not a fan) would enjoy it as much.

It has been suggested that the stories are autobiographical which I agree with and it was fascinating because as I read I could hear Plath voicing her opinions through the characters and she really spat her attitude all over the book.

The book is divided into three parts:

The more successful short stories and prose pieces

Other stories

Excerpts from notebooks.

If anyone wants to pick up this book and read a fascinating story (fan or not) then I suggest:

The Wishing Box, which explores the birth of marriage and the death to creativity

Mothers, which explores alienation and a greatly desperate attempt to fit in

And Ocean 1212-W, which is purely autobiographical and explores the loss of childhood innocence.

My favourite story was Snow Blitz. I think this is autobiographical too as it deals with a single Mother (American) living in a small flat in London with two children trying to deal with a bitter cold English winter.

I found this story rather amusing because I'm from the South East of England and snow is rather exciting and magical to us but when it starts to melt and freeze over we, in typical Brit style, start to complain.

If you only read this book for one thing then read the Introduction written by Ted Hughes. He supplies the reader with a great deal of information about the writing of these short stories as well as a lot of information about Plath herself; I certainly learnt a thing or two.

After falling in love with Sylvia Plath's works back in my high school days, I have read everything I can find on her or her work. She is inspiring and deep... keeping the imagery alive in every word she has written. I recommend Sylvia VERY highly, even her works for children are not to be missed.

I wasn't disappointed, per se, as much as surprised that this collection didn't live up to the standards I had set for her after reading the collected poems and The Bell Jar. This fault, I assume, lies more with me than Plath's work here. I consider myself a true fan, but I would suggest this only to those of you firmly interested in taking "all" her work into account. For most readers, though, the collected poems and The Bell Jar should suffice.

Some of the stories are awesome, some are tedious to finish. It feels unfair to judge Sylvia on most of these stories, since she didn't publish a lot of them while alive, but it's quite apparent why she never wrote more prose: roughly half of the stories are about the same character, herself, vaguely disguised using a variety of fake names. Still, there are some gems here, the title story is brilliant if a bit unsatisfying at the end. In fact that is a common theme here...after finishing many of these stories, I was not sure what to think, and wasn't entirely sure what even happened (Sunday at the Mintons' stands out in this way too).

High points:

Snow Blitz, a chilling (in retrospect) essay about the winter during which Plath killed herself. Without that knowledge, it would be kind of charming, and her great imagery really shines through. "Thankfully, I cooked by gas." *shudder*

Stone Boy with Dolphin. Not sure if this is autobiographical or not, but it struck a cord with me as an honest exposition of the sometimes-futility of the party-heavy college experience (even though I'm of the opposite gender as her).

The Wishing Box, about a wife jealous of her new husband's vivid dreams. I almost cried at the end...

Overall, a solid read if you are a fan of her work, but easy to skip if you are not, hence I give it 3/5 stars.

After reading "The Bell Jar", I was very disappointed that there were no more books to read by Sylvia Plath. That's why I was very happy to find this book of her other prose writings. The journal entries are fascinating and help the reader to understand the author to a more personal degree. Many of the stories resemble "The Bell Jar" in theme, like "Tongues of Stone", which tells of a young woman in a hospital. It is obvious that many of the stories were written when Sylvia Plath was very young, like "Initiation" (she won a prize for this from Seventeen magazine when she was 19). But many are very deep and complex, like "Johnny Panic" (dealing with a girl who works at a psychiatrist's office and is on the cusp of insanity herself) and "The Wishing Box" (about a young wife who is suicidal when she fears she has lost her imagination). I'd suggest this book for any Sylvia Plath fan or any fan of the short story.

Johnny Panic and the Bible of Dreams by Sylvia Plath is a sloppy, inconsistent, and drab collection of her short stories, prose and diary experts. First of all, I think Plath was one of the most gifted poets that ever lived, I love her only novel, The Bell Jar and I thought I would love this book as well but it falls short and never truly shows Plath's genius in any form. Seems like this particular book was published just because Ariel sold extremely well. Some of the material is interesting but Plath's writing becomes awkward and tends to go off topic a lot. The only reason I am giving this book 4 stars is because I believe a lot of the stories were not completed and if she were still alive, she would have re-written most of her work before it ever saw the light of day. If you want to read some beatiful and haunting work from Plath, then I suggest The Bell Jar, and all her poetry. Have fun!

I imagine that it's fairly hard to make a diary interesting and most of the diary excerpts found in this book seem to be published just for the sake of publication rather than for the actually content. I've read other diary entries by Plath outside of this book that were very interesting, so keep looking if you want to know about Plath (Wagner-Martin wrote a wonderful biography, however). The stories weren't interesting. I couldn't get into any of them.