The Barbizon by Paulina Bren (ebook reader browser TXT) 📕

Sylvia and Neva were waiting: Nelson, interview with the author.

“At last, obediently”: Plath, Bell Jar, 102.

“Write us a note in your own handwriting”: Polly Weaver to guest editors, May 1, 1953, NN.

Sylvia’s was the downturned rose: Andrew Wilson, Mad Girl’s Love Song: Sylvia Plath and Life Before Ted (New York: Scribner, 2013), 200.

She pulled it close toward her: Plath, Bell Jar, 27.

Neva Nelson, like the others, would pass by: Neva Nelson, email to Heather Clark, November 13, 2014, NN.

Dinny Lain and a giddy Laurie Glazer: Johnson, telephone interview.

Everyone tried to offset the oppressive summer heat: Levy, “Outside the Bell Jar,” 43.

Neva would sit down beside her: Winder, Pain, Parties, Work, 98.

Sylvia, as always, gave a positive spin: Sylvia Plath to Aurelia Schober Plath, June 3, 1953, in Letters of Sylvia Plath, 632.

The girls were herded to the park: Levy, “Outside the Bell Jar,” 44.

Laurie Totten, Sylvia’s neighbor: Winder, Pain, Parties, Work, 51.

Another five days later: Winder, Pain, Parties, Work, 85.

“All the other girls”: Sylvia Plath to Aurelia Schober Plath, June 13, 1953, in Letters of Sylvia Plath, 637.

And while Plath continued to insist: Plath, Bell Jar, 5–6.

Carol too had submitted a short story: Winder, Pain, Parties, Work, 86.

She was very blond: Plath, Bell Jar, 4.

Instead of congratulating Carol: Winder, Pain, Parties, Work, 113.

One time, unable to cross a congested street: Winder, Pain, Parties, Work, 114.

She had set her sights: Sylvia Plath to Aurelia Schober Plath, June 8, 1953, in Letters of Sylvia Plath, 633–34.

There is a photograph in the August issue: Anne Shawber to Neva Nelson, 1980, NN.

“And when my picture came out”: Plath, Bell Jar, 2.

Sylvia was irked: Sylvia Plath to Aurelia Schober Plath, June 13, 1953, in Letters of Sylvia Plath, 635.

After finishing off a third: Winder, Pain, Parties, Work, 117–19.

The next day an enormous bouquet: Winder, Pain, Parties, Work, 123.

To add insult to injury: Winder, Pain, Parties, Work, 124–25.

Days later, Sylvia was still: Sylvia Plath to Aurelia Schober Plath, June 13, 1953, in Letters of Sylvia Plath, 635.

In The Bell Jar, Sylvia, as Esther, recounted: Plath, Bell Jar, 9.

In her journal, Sylvia wrote: “Appendix 4: Journal Fragment 19 June 1953,” in The Unabridged Journals of Sylvia Plath 1950–1962, ed. Karen V. Kukil (New York: Anchor Books, 2000), 541–42.

But Neva was clueless: Nelson, interview, and Winder, Pain, Parties, Work, 146.

“It was a queer, sultry summer”: Plath, Bell Jar, 1.

“Only I wasn’t steering anything”: Plath, Bell Jar, 3.

On June 8, she wrote: Sylvia Plath to Aurelia Schober Plath, June 8, 1953, in Letters of Sylvia Plath, 633.

and then again she repeats: Sylvia Plath to Aurelia Schober Plath, June 8, 1953, in Letters of Sylvia Plath, 634.

“I was supposed to be”: Plath, Bell Jar, 2.

Writing to her brother: Sylvia Plath to Warren Plath, June 21, 1953, in Letters of Sylvia Plath, 641.

Just the day before: Wilson, Mad Girl’s Love Song, 208.

Janet Wagner, who was at the country club: Winder, Pain, Parties, Work, 176–78. Yet the veracity of this account is questionable for various reasons.

Sylvia summed up her month: Sylvia Plath to Warren Plath, June 21, 1953, in Letters of Sylvia Plath, 642.

Sylvia would return to her mother’s house: Winder, Pain, Parties, Work, 200.

In her suitcase, instead of clothes: Winder, Pain, Parties, Work, 204.

She understood that exposure: Sylvia Plath to Aurelia Schober Plath, May 18, 1953, in Letters of Sylvia Plath, 628.

Two weeks after leaving the Barbizon: Wilson, Mad Girl’s Love Song, 214.

In the days that followed: Johnson, telephone interview.

CHAPTER SIX

It was unusual: Peggy LaViolette Powell, correspondence with author, 2016.

The stewardesses, as they were called then: Joan Didion, “California Notes,” New York Review of Books, May 26, 2016.

Peggy’s mother had insisted: Peggy LaViolette Powell, correspondence with author, 2018.

The Golden Gate stopped twice: Elizabeth Rainey, “Education of Joan Didion: Her Uncollected Works and What They Tell Us,” Charlene Conrad Liebau Library Prize for Undergraduate Research, Spring 2010, 16. And Powell, correspondence, 2018.

New York beckoned as California receded: Joan Didion to Peggy LaViolette, July 1955, Joan Didion Letters, BANC MSS 84/180 c v. 1, Bancroft Library, University of California, Berkeley [hereafter cited as BLUC].

As a college senior: Rainey, “Education of Joan Didion,” 10.

(Even so, one day): Powell, correspondence, 2016.

When Peggy graduated: Powell, correspondence, 2016. Joan Didion would write to Peggy a couple of months later, congratulating her on having purchased an Olivetti: “Glad you’re getting an Olivetti—you’ll love it. (As the girl who owns one-) Even after 2 years, I still feel kind of good everytime I look at mine.” (Letter from Joan Didion to Peggy LaViolette, August 9, 1955.)

The feminist Betty Friedan: Sara M. Evans, Born for Liberty: A History of Women in America (New York: Free Press, 1997), 237.

Both wore nylon hose: Powell, correspondence, 2018.

Nevertheless, when Joan: Joan Didion, “Goodbye to All That,” in Slouching Towards Bethlehem: Essays (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2008).

Joan opened the window wide: Didion, “Goodbye to All That,” 226.

Their first sighting of the towering skyscrapers: Didion, “Goodbye to All That,” 229.

Joan had caught a cold: Didion, “Goodbye to All That,” 226–27.

Instead, she called her on-again off-again boyfriend: Joan Didion to Peggy LaViolette Powell, 1955–2004 (bulk 1955–1960), BLUC. And “To Peggy from Joan,” Vogue, November 9, 1958.

She called herself Jan: Frank Tempone, “Janet Burroway Carries On, Reinvents Self,” Chicago Tribune, March 21, 2014.

She was a self-described “Arizona greenhorn”: Janet Burroway’s letters home, letter from May 31, 1955, from the personal archive of Janet Burroway [hereafter cited as JB], generously shared with the author.

Finally, she spied a young woman: Janet Burroway, video interview with Melodie Bryant, May 30, 2013, generously shared with the author.

The bus eventually emerged: Janet Burroway’s letters home, letter, no date, 3, JB.

Once checked in at the Barbizon: Janet Burroway’s letters home, postcard, no date, JB.

The next day she elaborated: Janet Burroway’s letters home, letter from May 30, 1955, 1, JB.

She called it brother’s size: Burroway, video interview with Bryant.

Still, she had to admit: Janet Burroway’s letters home, letter from May 30, 1955, 1, JB.

Janet had arrived wearing Indian moccasins: Peggy LaViolette Powell, telephone interview with the author, October 16, 2018.

She wrote