I wanted each and every one of them, but choosing one meant losing all the rest, and, as I sat there, unable to decide, the figs began to wrinkle and go black, and, one by one, they plopped to the ground at my feet." I saw myself sitting in the crotch of this fig tree, starving to death, just because I couldn't make up my mind which of the figs I would choose. One fig was a husband and a happy home and children, and another fig was a famous poet and another fig was a brilliant professor, and another fig was Ee Gee, the amazing editor, and another fig was Europe and Africa and South America, and another fig was Constantin and Socrates and Attila and a pack of other lovers with queer names and offbeat professions, and another fig was an Olympic lady crew champion, and beyond and above these figs were many more figs I couldn't quite make out. From the tip of every branch, like a fat purple fig, a wonderful future beckoned and winked. It goes like this: "I saw my life branching out before me like the green fig tree in the story. You, too, may have come across the "fig tree" somewhere on the great wide web, or on the TV show Master of None. I read the quote long before ever reading The Bell Jar. The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath, $13, Amazon And yet, Plath has been saddled with the reputation of being "too depressing, guys, too depressing," as one two-star review on Goodreads put it. This problem doesn't seem to affect male authors nearly as much-Ernest Hemingway also died by suicide, but we rarely roll our eyes at A Farewell to Arms as a sad book fit only for sad teenage girls. The fact that she eventually died by suicide has all but overshadowed her life. Sylvia Plath, after all, is known for her death as much as for her writing. ![]() And yet we're always quoting it out of context. The Bell Jar shows us immense pain, but it also shows us recovery. It's not a book that romanticizes mental illness, though. It's harrowing too, of course, as it chronicles young Esther Greenwood's struggle with depression and soul-crushing summer internships. But that wasn't what I got (although I did still read it in the bathtub, out of principle). I'd been hoping for the sort of terrifically sad book that I could read while sobbing in the bathtub. Pete Frame is to be congratulated on the amount of work & research that went into compiling these 'family trees' and then collecting them together in this one volume.When I first read The Bell Jar, I was shocked to discover that it is not, in fact, a huge bummer of a book. ![]() It never ceases to surprise when 'dipping' into this book to discover just who played with whom in their 'early days' and to see how the group/artist that became successful evolved through the changes in personnel. What a joy to reacquaint myself with the original 'trees' and learn an awful lot from the newer ones. ![]() Little did she know that I had seen this edition, effectively volumes 1 & 2 combined, and ordered it as a replacement. She was surprised recently when she saw my much cherished copy in a pile of recycling during a bit of a clear out. ![]() My original copy got its spine chewed through by a very young Jack Russell pup (who survived the trauma) but I kept it anyway, much to my wife's disgust. He is also author of Rockin' Around Britain.īought the original many years ago and found it to be a source of great detail about the artists both before and after their 'moments of fame'. He was also an A&R man for B&C Charisma Records, and manager of Starry Eyed and Laughing.įive volumes of his Rock Family Trees have been published, and the first two were joined as The Complete Rock Family Trees. He founded the English Alternative rock magazine ZigZag in April 1969 and acted as its editor, from its beginning until February 1973, and again from March 1976 until July 1977. Pete Frame is an English music journalist, who produced outlines of the history of rock bands for various magazines (Sounds, NME, Melody Maker and Rolling Stone). His hand-drawn rock trees have appeared in Melody Maker, NME, Rolling Stone, Q and Vox, as well as in numerous tour programmes and on record sleeves. Here for the first time, Volumes one and two of Rock Family Trees are bound into one complete edition.Īmongst others, Frame traces the development and history of Eric Clapton, Led Zeppelin, The Rolling Stones, Fleetwood Mac, Madness, Genesis, T-Rex and The Police in his own inimitable and extraordinarily detailed way. As seen on BBC TV, Pete Frame's Rock Family Trees are world famous and his books have become classics of rock literature. The Rock Family Trees have been described as a National Treasure.
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