The Bell Jar

I didn't go to high school.

When I was in the sixth grade, my life was unstable and it reflected in my relationship with school. Add that to the fact that I was undiagnosed ADHD/OCD, not to mention dyslexic, and I didn't have a great time with school. I remember clearly the conversation my parents and the principal and my sixth grade teacher Mr. Vick had in the principal's office. I was just sitting there, listening. In it, they told me that my grades were all Fs except for English and Art, and that my grades weren't good enough to let me go to the seventh grade, however my test scores were all extremely high for my age. Because of that, they were going to pass me and let me go to Jr. High anyway.

What I didn't realize at the time was that it wasn't so much that they were giving me an opportunity to excel even though my grades didn't seem to warrant it, but that they didn't want to deal with me. Let me be Hook Jr. High's problem. And I definitely was.

So I went onto seventh grade. Did that twice. Barely did eighth grade. Eventually, when my sister was born and my dad went to Japan, my mom was a single working mother of four. I switched from school to something they called "independent study" which meant that I stayed at home, did a packet of homework, and took care of my sister while my mom went to work. I never really did the packet of work and nobody particularly cared. I'd made my choice.

When my dad got back from Japan and my parents got back together for a little while, we moved to Idaho, and I was no longer the "stay at home babysitting guy" I had been for the first three years of my sister's life. So I had to figure something out for school, since I hadn't been to school since the eighth grade. Apparently you can't just jump back into the stream like, three years later, and roll up to the ninth grade in your car and mustache. I guess they don't like that.

I ended up at this school for drug addicts and pregnant girls called Academy 2000 in Mountain Home, Idaho. Basically, it was a school for people whose life was such a shitty place that they weren't suitable to be around normies. I was one of those people. I wasn't a drug addict and I certainly wasn't getting anyone pregnant, but I was basically a lost cause.

At that school, I took Art and English classes. I know I took other classes, but I'll be damned if I remember anything about any of them. It was structured so that you did two classes a day, every so many days a week, depending on your schedule.

I hated it. The only thing I liked was that my English teacher was this cantankerous old beatnik named Jose. He used to tell us stories about going to see Lenny Bruce in Greenwich Village and Bob Dylan and that kind of thing. Anyway, he used to give me so much shit for the fact that I was obsessed with Jim Morrison. To him, Jim Morrison was the epitome of American trash masquerading as a poet. He said to me, one day, after I asked him if I could borrow his copy of Riders on the Storm by John Densmore, the drummer for The Doors, "I just wish you would come to me and ask me what you should read!" He was so exacerbated by my choice of book. Before that, I was reading Wired by Bob Woodward, which is about John Belushi, and this too he found extremely distasteful.

(to be fair, that book is trash)

He was constantly making fun of me for my choices. I remember giving him a copy of the Batman book Arkham Asylum: A Serious House on Serious Earth to look at because it had a lot of literary references, especially to Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, which we actually shared an affection for.

I remember him making fun of me with one of the other teachers because I called it a "graphic novel" and he thought that was so cute and stupid. He was kind of an asshole.

Anyway, when he said that he wished that I'd just ask him what to read, I said "Fine, what should I read?" and he said "The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath" and I said "Isn't she a poet?" and he said "Yes and she wrote about about being depressed and feeling alienated from people and I think you'll like it a lot. I'd much rather have a conversation about Sylvia Plath than Jim Morrison" and so I read it.

Then I read it about 20 more times, because it completely changed my world. It changed how I think about books. At that point, I was mostly a Stephen King, Clive Barker, Anne Rice guy. I didn't really look for books about depressed fashion magazine interns, but here I was. That lead to me reading Hunter S. Thompson, Kurt Vonnegut Jr, John Irving, Ken Kesey, Richard Matheson, Harlan Ellison, and a whole mess of other amazing writers.

I became obsessed with Sylvia Plath. I related to that book so deeply and personally, that when I finally got access to the internet, one of the first things I did was make a Sylvia Plath fansite on Geocities. It was, at one time, the premier source of Sylvia Plath poety, articles, essays, and a lively message-board where I, completely without any qualifications, ended up helping a lot of teenagers with their homework. That was my relationship with Sylvia Plath.

Now, something you should know about me: I know exactly fuck all about poetry. I don't get poetry at all. I don't understand meter or stanzas or any of that stuff. What I know is that Sylvia Plath wrote things that I felt hard. Both poetry and that novel. Especially the novel. I talked at length with a lot of high-schoolers about Sylvia Plath.

Keep in mind, I was about 19 to 21 at this point. It's not like I was 30 years old helping kids with their homework. Just in case it sounded weird. It wasn't.

One thing I very badly wanted was to make a film of The Bell Jar. I thought I thought I understood that story in a way nobody else possibly could, and I wrote a screenplay and everything. I might even still have it somewhere. I didn't quite finish it. I got almost to the end, but that's the problem with The Bell Jar, the way it ends is kind of a lie. Because we know how it ends for Sylvia. So we can guess how it ends for Esther, the lead character of The Bell Jar, as well.

At one point, I even cold called Meg Ryan's agent trying to get the chance to pitch her my idea of how a Bell Jar movie could be made. I didn't get very far, but I was told that I had a lot of spirit.

Now, 48 years old, and I'm seeing for the first time the pictures from the set of Sarah Polley's adaptation of The Bell Jar, staring Billy Eilish of all people.

When I heard that she'd been cast as Esther, I was pretty disappointed. I haven't had a great impression of her lately. She's been sharing her opinion that anyone who eats meat is a psychopath, and that's a little hard to get past for me.

So seeing these pictures is a little weird for me, because I actually dig it. I like her look. I like seeing the period clothes and I think she's got a particularly effective dead eye stare that I think would work well for that character. She's got lifeless eyes, black eyes, like a doll's eyes.

I'll give it a chance. Sarah Polley is a an excellent choice for this material and I expect it'll be a well made movie. It will be a little bitter sweet for me, but mostly sweet. I do still love that story. Maybe I should reread it.