4 ST THE NEW YORK TIMES, SUNDAY, APRIL 22, 2018

MATERIAL CULTURE ’s Life in Objects

A tartan kilt, fishing rod and drawn to the sale. Suzanne Demko, who lives in Silver Spring, Md., and leads clinical dragon pendant were among teams in rare tumor research at the Food items auctioned recently. WHY WOULD A and Drug Administration, paid $7,087 for DAUGHTER three well-worn wristwatches, their thin CHOOSE TO SELL leather bands cracked and fraying. By KATE BOLICK THESE OBJECTS? “I went bananas looking through the cat- For the many feminist critics who have ex- alog, and when I saw the watches I thought, coriated ’s treatment of his first ‘I have to have these,’” she said. “There’s wife, Sylvia Plath, there was poetic justice just something about them — the juxtaposi- of a sort in the auction of the poets’ belong- tion of a day-to-day object marking time, ings by their daughter, Frieda Hughes, at and marking her time, until she died.” She Bonhams in in March. Plath’s lots, plans to display the watches at home in a which included clothes, jewelry and child- vitrine, and eventually leave them to Smith hood drawings, outsold Mr. Hughes’s College, Plath’s alma mater. mostly literary remnants (which is to say, Among the Plath items the college al- books) twice over and then some, earning ready holds are her Girl Scout uniform and $551,862. prom dress, acquired in 1985 and available The pleated green tartan kilt Plath wore for the public to see by appointment. as a Smith College undergraduate, with Kiki Smith, a theater professor at Smith, blue-lettered name tape affixed to the waist- has curated the Smith College Historic band, swished home with A. N. Devers, a Clothing Collection since the mid-1970s, writer and rare-books dealer based in when it began with costumes salvaged from North London, for $3,012. (To Ms. Devers’s the theater department; today it contains surprise, it fits.) 3,000 pieces. Of special interest are what Peter K. Steinberg, an archivist in Boston she calls “women’s uniforms” — the every- and an editor of “The Letters of Sylvia day clothes that shape a woman’s life, from Plath,” paid $885 for her fishing rod. maternity clothes and housedresses to Estimated to sell for $2,838, a dragon pen- waitress uniforms and the suits female law- dant stamped Coro, a popular brand of yers wore when first appearing in court. 1950s costume jewelry, went to an anony- “It’s an archive of women’s lives told mous buyer for $14,178, “which is a lot for a through objects, offering a tangible connec- piece of costume jewelry,” said Matthew Ha- tion to history,” she said. ley, the head of books and manuscripts at Plath’s prom dress is a novella about Bonhams. promise and defeat rendered in nylon net To Plath devotees, the necklace and silver lamé. She bought it in downtown is a tantalizing totem of the py- Northampton, Mass., on Feb. 28, 1953, rotechnics generated by her marked down from $50 to $30, which we relationship with Mr. Hughes. know because of a letter she wrote to her A Maltese cross flanked by two mother: “I am most elated today, for this dragons, the baroque design is com- morning I bought the most exquisite formal pletely unlike Plath’s other acces- on sale.” sories, a mostly feminine assort- The next morning, she rhapsodized about ment of rhinestones, hearts it in her diary: “Sunlight raying ethereal and flowers. through the white-net of the new formal “The pendant has a Hughe- bought splurgingly yesterday in a burst of sian sensibility; it’s a little ecstatic rightness. Silver high heels are the edgy for the time, and even next purchase — symbolizing my emanci- has a whiff of the occult,” said pation from walking flat-footed on the Heather Clark, whose biography, “Sylvia ground. Silver-winged bodice of strapless Plath: The Light of the Mind,” is coming floating-net gown. it is unbelievable that it from Knopf next year. “Maybe Hughes gave could be so right!” it to her. Or maybe she chose it with him in By the time it appears in “The Bell Jar,” mind.” And so they went: Plath’s heavily under- dedications or signatures, while women are however, the dress is a symbol of dashed il- Plath wears the pendant in several well- lined thesaurus ($19,491); her battered gray moved by beautiful dedications and also the lusions, “a skimpy, imitation silver-lamé known photographs taken after she was leather wallet stuffed with ID cards normal wear and tear that tells a story of a bodice stuck on to a big, fat cloud of white married, including two by Rollie McKenna ($12,403); her “Joy of Cooking,” with “Ted book being valued,” she said. tulle.” at the National Portrait Gallery in London, likes this,” scrawled next to a recipe for In the skirt, she saw not only Plath’s back- Plath’s Girl Scout uniform also speaks in which she appears both knowing and im- breaded veal slices ($6,201); a yellow ground, but also the struggle of an era. “My volumes. Until May 20, it can be seen at the possibly young. checked summer frock ($1,417); the Vic- mom had that skirt. It was worn by an entire Smithsonian National Portrait Gallery in torian armchair ($1,599). generation of women who had to present as Washington as part of the eclectic “One ‘Ted Likes This’ The top lot was Plath’s signed prepublica- perfect all the time,” Ms. Devers said. Life: Sylvia Plath” exhibition. When asked Why would a daughter choose to part with tion copy of her autobiographical novel, “Plath was miserable, but she created art, why she chose the uniform over the prom such meaningful objects? Ms. Hughes, 58, a “The Bell Jar,” which first appeared in Brit- and the skirt is a representation of that dress, Dorothy Moss, a curator at the Smith- painter and poet herself, was a sleeping tod- ain in 1963, a month before her death, and struggle.” Items that once belonged to sonian, noted the plethora of badges, which dler when her mother committed suicide today is a staple of high-school English For now, Ms. Devers is wearing it around Sylvia Plath that were featured could be read as evidence that the poet was with a gas oven at age 30 in 1963, and in her classes. It sold to an anonymous buyer for the house, and in Instagram photos. at an auction included, Type A from the start. 30s when her father died in 1998, of cancer. $124,150. She hasn’t decided yet whether to sell it. clockwise from lower left, an To Ms. Moss, those badges reveal some- Her younger brother, Nicholas, a biologist, The mint green Hermes 3000 typewriter Hermes 3000 typewriter, thing more than mere ambition — that hanged himself in 2009. on which Plath wrote “The Bell Jar” fetched Watches, Merit Badges and a Prom Dress well-worn wristwatches, Plath’s curiosity and embrace of learning dresses and a dragon pendant. She declined to comment on the sale fur- $46,071 (also from an anonymous buyer). Gail Crowther, the author of “The Haunted were also bottomless. “She threw herself ther than her introduction to the auction Her husband’s Silver Reed 500 typewriter Reader and Sylvia Plath,” who attended the into experience for experience’s sake,” she catalog, in which she writes movingly that it sold for $4,977. auction preview but didn’t buy anything, said. all began with the Victorian mahogany arm- That a collegiate kilt was deemed valu- said that because Plath wrote often about Presumably, a mind so voracious might chair her father bought for Plath, originally able signals a possible paradigm shift in the her clothing, seeing the garments in person approve of her clothing going to the highest covered in “a coarse, shiny black fabric rare-books industry. When Ms. Devers en- was akin to their “leaping off the page, quite bidder. After all, Plath was once a fan her- worn through at the front edge of the seat,” tered the field last year, she immediately a powerful encounter.” self. When she lived in New York City dur- which she remembers scratching the backs noted that the sexism pervading all other Accustomed to studying papers in ar- ing her infamous Mademoiselle internship, of her legs as a child. Once she was an adult, workplaces applied there as well, resulting chives, Ms. Crowther appreciates how ob- she haunted the West Village trying to meet she had the chair reupholstered in pink, for in a gender imbalance of representation jects offer a visceral understanding of a sub- . She was thrilled to later her bedroom. and sales. ject. “You can see her physical dimensions move into Yeats’s former house. “It recently occurred to me that this chair Her business, the Second Shelf (the title in a dress in a way you can’t get from a pho- The narrator of her poem “Last Words” would vanish into the mass of other furni- is borrowed from an essay by Meg tograph,” she said. “Clothing can almost re- writes of not trusting the spirit, which “es- ture I own, and become invisible, as would Wolitzer), traffics exclusively in rare books animate someone.” She noted that Plath’s capes like steam” and “won’t come back.” the jewelry, when one day I was in no posi- by women, with the hope that paying atten- mother, Aurelia, kept everything of her But tion to explain their provenance,” Ms. tion to women’s literature will increase its daughter’s, even crumpled bits of tracing Things aren’t like that. Hughes writes. “If I wished to sell some market price in all realms. paper that Sylvia scribbled on as a child, They stay, their little particular lusters items, then others would have to go too, be- Ms. Devers has also observed a gender giving scholars unusual access to her ma- Warmed by much handling. They almost cause presented together, they made up a difference in collection habits. “Broadly terial world. purr. snapshot of a mutual history.” speaking, men want pristine copies without People outside the literary field were also

Pulp Nonfiction: Podcasts Go Mass-Market Parcast, a new network, is saturating the audio field with lurid story lines.

By JONAH ENGEL BROMWICH rarely the best story.” shows. They take advantage of a quirk of “Female Criminals” made its debut on the Apple Podcasts chart, which appears to In the last three months, Parcast, a little- March 21. By April 10, it had been down- reward an influx of new listeners rather known podcast network, has introduced loaded more than 368,490 times, according than the overall size of an audience. As Mr. four new shows. Each one has shot to the to data from ART19, a company that meas- Quah put it, “it’s a hotness meter, not a big- top 10 on the Apple Podcasts chart within a ures podcast listenership. And while a re- ness meter.” week of its premiere. cent report found that 56 percent of podcast Parcast also advertises aggressively for It’s an unusual feat in an industry where listeners were male, the audience for “Fe- its own programs, often plugging a new of- prestige is often characterized by high pro- male Criminals” was 90 percent female. fering within the opening minutes of an duction values and slow audience growth. Podcast listenership has grown steadily episode. The strategy appears to be work- With hundreds of thousands of down- since “Serial” popularized the medium in ing: Each new podcast charts high upon its loads each, three of the four Parcast series 2014. Still, converting newcomers into regu- debut, placing it in a prime position to be — “Tales,” “Unexplained Mysteries” and lar listeners is no small task. Data released discovered on iTunes. Those who listen are “Female Criminals” — have become some then ushered toward the next premiere. of the more popular new podcasts of 2018. Mr. Cutler would not disclose how much (Two episodes of the fourth, “Gone,” were Scripted tales deal with money the company has made but indi- released unexpectedly last week.) cated that his strategy was working. The All owe their success to Max Cutler, 27, a true crime and company’s revenue in the first quarter of graduate of the University of Arizona’s en- conspiracy theories. 2018 was 95 percent of what it had earned trepreneurship program, who created the through the entirety of 2017, he said. company in 2016. by Edison Research and Triton Digital last Other boutique podcasting studios put Mr. Cutler was among the many millions month showed that 124 million people in the who tuned in to the hit podcast “Serial.” significantly more time and energy into United States have listened to a podcast, When he was looking to start a media com- each show. Pineapple Street Media, for in- but only 73 million listened to at least one pany two years ago, he thought he might be stance, spent nine months producing the six every month. able to make podcasts of similar quality episodes of its blockbuster show “Missing while cutting costs on individual episodes. Parcast has based its business on making Richard Simmons” and almost a year on 10 “If a company is spending that much programs for podcast skeptics. Like the au- episodes of “Heaven’s Gate.” (The studio money, there’s money to be made,” he said. thors of paperback thrillers and producers helps to produce The Times’s “Still Process- Parcast, based in Los Angeles, is one of of cable television before him, Mr. Cutler ing” podcast.) several upstarts that are saturating the has found that stories of violence, sex, con- But Jenna Weiss-Berman, a co-founder of spiracy and intrigue are catnip for the unini- Pineapple, said that she was not too worried market with relatively cheaply produced “Female Criminals,” “Tales” and “Unexplained Mysteries,” all from the Parcast podcasts, relying on lurid subject matter to tiated listener. about competition. She pointed out that cre- network, are some of the year’s most popular new podcasts. Two episodes of the Some industry observers say the net- ators with different visions had a common draw in listeners. Mr. Cutler compared Par- network’s 10th show, “Gone,” were released last week. cast’s scripted stories about true crime and work has gamed the charts with a savvy interest in the health of the industry. conspiracy theories to “reality TV on ster- business model and tawdry topics. “If someone listens to his show ‘Cults’ oids.” for example, they cite an unnamed work by Nick Quah, who writes the industry and listens to the ‘Heaven’s Gate’ episodes, On a recent episode of “Female Crimi- the psychologist J. William Worden and newsletter Hot Pod, said he respected the they’ll be really excited to hear our multi- nals,” the hosts told the story of Bonnie wonder aloud whether Bonnie had an anti- network’s cunning but wished “we could part audio documentary about ‘Heaven’s Parker (yes, that Bonnie) using a mix of his- social personality disorder. Another Par- move past blaring death and tragedy as an Gate,’” she said. “Podcasts are still in a torical fact, pop psychology and rampant cast show, “Conspiracy Theories,” markets overt creative strategy.” place where we can all kind of work togeth- speculation. Halfway through the episode, itself with the on-brand tagline “the truth is Parcast produces 10 weekly or biweekly er.”