Page 172 - Malcolm Gladwell - Talking to Strangers

Chapter Ten: Sylvia Plath

“I am writing from London…he lived there!”: Sylvia Plath to Aurelia Plath, November 7, 1962,
in Peter K. Steinberg and Karen V. Kukil, eds., The Letters of Sylvia Plath Volume II: 1956–1963
(New York: Harper Collins, 2018), p. 897.
“She seemed different…never seen her so strained”: Alfred Alvarez, The Savage God: A Study
of Suicide (New York: Random House, 1971), pp. 30–31; “She talked about…how to ski,” pp. 18–
19; “the poet as a sacrificial victim…the sake of her art,” p. 40.
Plath poems: “The woman is perfected…it is over” from “Edge,” in The Collected Poems of Sylvia
Plath, edited by Ted Hughes (New York: Harper Perennial Modern Classics, 2008), p. 272; “And
like the cat…Number Three,” from “Lady Lazarus,” pp. 244–45; and “If you only knew…my veins
with invisibles…” from “A Birthday Present,” p. 207.
poets have far and away the highest suicide rates: Mark Runco, “Suicide and Creativity,” Death
Studies 22 (1998): 637–54.

“A poet has to adapt himself” (in footnote): Stephen Spender, The Making of a Poem (New York:
Norton Library, 1961), p. 45.
“She could never again…ultimately her undoing” (in footnote): Ernest Shulman, “Vulnerability
Factors in Sylvia Plath’s Suicide,” Death Studies 22, no. 7 (1988): 598–613. (“When she killed
herself…a broken home” [in footnote] is from this source too.)
“Had she supposed…laid her cheek on it”: Jillian Becker, Giving Up: The Last Days of Sylvia
Plath (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 2003), pp. 80, 291.
“The victims…the top of the cozy”: Douglas J. A. Kerr, “Carbon Monoxide Poisoning: Its
Increasing Medico-Legal Importance,” British Medical Journal 1, no. 3452 (March 5, 1927): 416.

United Kingdom suicide rate in 1962: Ronald V. Clarke and Pat Mayhew, “The British Gas Suicide
Story and Its Criminological Implications,” Crime and Justice 10 (1988): p. 88,
doi:10.1086/449144; graph “Relation between gas suicides in England and Wales and CO content of
domestic gas, 1960–77,” p. 89; graph “Crude suicide rates (per 1 million population) for England
and Wales and the United States, 1900–84,” p. 84; “[Town] gas had unique advantages…in front of
trains or buses,” p. 99; graph of “Suicides in England and Wales by domestic gas and other methods
for females twenty-five to forty-four years old,” p. 91.
“the greatest peacetime operation in this nation’s history”: Malcolm E. Falkus, Always under
Pressure: A History of North Thames Gas Since 1949 (London: Macmillan, 1988), p. 107.
Town gas to natural gas conversion, 1965–1977: Trevor Williams, A History of the British Gas
Industry (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1981), p. 190.
our inability to understand suicide costs lives (in footnote): See, for example, Kim Soffen, “To
Reduce Suicides, Look at Gun Violence,” Washington Post, July 13, 2016,
https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/business/wonkblog/suicide-rates/.
the inexplicable saga of the Golden Gate Bridge: John Bateson, The Final Leap: Suicide on the
Golden Gate Bridge (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2012), p. 8; history of suicide barrier
(or lack of it) on bridge, pp. 33, 189, 196.
wound up filming twenty-two suicides (in footnote): Director Eric Steel’s documentary is starkly
titled The Bridge (More4, 2006).
Seiden followed up on 515 people: Richard H. Seiden, “Where are they now? A follow-up study of
suicide attempters from the Golden Gate Bridge,” Suicide and Life-Threatening Behavior 8, no. 4
(1978): 203–16.
“If a physical barrier…replaced by another”: These five quotes are from a set of public
comments on the Transportation District’s proposal to erect a suicide net:
http://goldengatebridge.org/projects/documents/sds_letters-emails-individuals.pdf.