Sylvia Plath

Francesca Lia Block is a Los Angeles writer with a unique voice that blends lush imagery, hip fairy tales and punk poetic lyricism. She is best known for her "Weetzie Bat" books, which premiered in 1989 and drew critical acclaim and a rapturous fan base...

On Oct. 27, 1469, Renaissance scholar Desiderius Erasmus was born in Rotterdam, Netherlands. In 1505 the Grand Duke of Moscow, Ivan III (also known as "Ivan the Great") died; he was succeeded by his son, Vasily III. (Vasily's son, Ivan IV, later became...

"Born Standing Up" by Steve Martin (Scribner) Here's Steve Martin, describing his first appearance on "The Tonight Show": "What happened while I was out there was very similar to an alien abduction: I remember very little of it, though I'm convinced it...

How Beautiful It Is and How Easily It Can Be Broken Essays Daniel Mendelsohn Harper: 456 pp., $26.95 HERE, among the flight of winged darts that pierce the critical essays of Daniel Mendelsohn: Quentin Tarantino is "incapable of saying anything about...

The poet Weldon Kees was born in Beatrice, Neb., in 1914, though what's best known about him is that on July 18, 1955, his car was found abandoned with the keys still in the ignition in a parking lot on the Marin County side of the Golden Gate Bridge....

Afloat Guy de Maupassant, translated from the French by Douglas Parmée NYRB Classics: 126 pp., $14 paper "AFLOAT" WAS originally published as "Sur l'eau," Guy de Maupassant's log of his travels along the French Riviera on his yacht in 1887. He was...

Among the major notables who passed from the scene this year, three of the most famous -- two masters of cinema and a genius of football -- died on the same day: July 30. Two others -- a historic Russian leader and a U.S. chronicler of war -- left us...

My friend Amy routinely uses humor to diminish the angst of going to see her cancer doctor. During an exam one day when he asked her to remove her shirt, she replied, deadpan: "Aren't you going to buy me a drink first?" He turned red; she cracked up....

When the time comes to play "Crazy" during a Gnarls Barkley concert, the duo's singer, Cee-Lo Green, introduces the song as "an instant classic." He sounds as if he means it, and he just might be right. Rarely has a pop single seemed to permeate the...

Julia Stiles is set to star in a big screen version of Sylvia Plath's depression classic "The Bell Jar." According to The Hollywood Reporter, the young actress will also produce the project with Plum Pictures in association with Killer Films. Originally...

WE live in a time when reality has evidently trumped fiction. The novel loses readers, as narrative nonfiction and memoirs gain in popularity. Reality television, once derided as a fad, is apparently here to stay. Young people abandon the so-called old...

The theme was "Wings of Desire," but costumes of every kind were on display at Greenwich Village's proudly outlandish Halloween parade. Ensembles ranged from the usual devils and witches to the unusual -- such as the man wearing a box of cereal punctured...