Janet Malcolm | Criticism

This literature criticism consists of approximately 2 pages of analysis & critique of Janet Malcolm.

Janet Malcolm | Criticism

This literature criticism consists of approximately 2 pages of analysis & critique of Janet Malcolm.
This section contains 550 words
(approx. 2 pages at 300 words per page)
Buy the Critical Review by Rebecca Viney

SOURCE: Viney, Rebecca. Review of The Silent Woman, by Janet Malcolm. Midwest Quarterly 36, no. 2 (winter 1995): 227-28.

In the following review, Viney contends that The Silent Woman is intelligently written but maintains that Malcolm is one-sided in her adoration of Ted Hughes and less than sympathetic to other biographers who have had dissenting views.

The Silent Woman, not a biography itself but a book about biographies, offers almost as much information about Sylvia Plath's life and death as a biography would offer. If “the biographer at work … is like the professional burglar, breaking into a house” (9), then Janet Malcolm at work is like a burglar breaking into another burglar's house.

Malcolm examines each of the five Plath biographer's methods to “bring back the goods” (10) on Plath, and each book's worthiness in general. Malcolm praises Bitter Fame by Anne Stevenson (1989) as “the most intelligent and the only aesthetically satisfying” (10). However...

(read more)

This section contains 550 words
(approx. 2 pages at 300 words per page)
Buy the Critical Review by Rebecca Viney
Copyrights
Gale
Critical Review by Rebecca Viney from Gale. ©2005-2006 Thomson Gale, a part of the Thomson Corporation. All rights reserved.