Sylvia Plath and the Art That Flows From Rejection
A new edition of her poems shows how a young writer became a literary force through constant revision and relentless creative self-improvement.
By CARL ROLLYSON
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Mr. Rollyson is the author of The Life of William Faulkner and The Last Days of Sylvia Plath. He has published fourteen biographies and has written about biography for the Wall Street Journal, the Washington, Post, the San Francisco Chronicle, the New Criterion, and other publications.
A new edition of her poems shows how a young writer became a literary force through constant revision and relentless creative self-improvement.
By CARL ROLLYSON
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Two new books show how overcoming racial injustice in baseball required both moral courage and business calculation.
By CARL ROLLYSON
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The 29th president’s charm and streetwise spirit won over men, women, and animals.
By CARL ROLLYSON
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A new biography makes the case that James Mason, drawn to parts he called ‘strange fancies,’ was among Hollywood’s most underrated stars.
By CARL ROLLYSON
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Joseph McBride and Robert Kroll both show Orson Wells to be a figure far more complex than the familiar image of the betrayed cinematic genius.
By CARL ROLLYSON
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A photographer who felt overlooked in life and led a messy private life, but whose pictures endure.
By CARL ROLLYSON
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Biographers are still reckoning with the complicated legacy of a president shadowed by romantic scandal.
By CARL ROLLYSON
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‘The claim that Aristotle sold drugs is less nefarious than it seems,’ writes his latest biographer Philip Freeman.
By CARL ROLLYSON
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The author returns to the Motor City four decades after leaving, only to find that its people and place still need to know one another better.
By CARL ROLLYSON
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Marcia Biederman meticulously reconstructs a gripping tale of cultural displacement and family secrecy.
By CARL ROLLYSON
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According to a new biography, Jack Cole was Broadway and Hollywood’s greatest choreographer, yet he is unfairly overlooked today.
By CARL ROLLYSON
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Kai Bird and Susan Goldmark forensically chronicle Roy Cohn’s trouble with the truth, but his childhood and hunger for proximity to power make him comparable to George Washington.
By CARL ROLLYSON
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