Plath

Says the man who wrote Manhattan, romanticizing a grown man's relationship with an underage girl. Apparently his life's story was fine for the page.  It's a funny thing that Kerouac and Hemingway's escapades can be written and re-written about and rarely see the same scorn.  We as a culture tend to romanticize young deaths, suicide or otherwise, James Dean, Kurt Cobain, Marilyn Monroe - because of the potential that was lost, and the eternal youth we're now left with.  Amy Winehouse, Heath Ledger, and Cory Monteith will be this generation's group - Amy even joins the proverbial "27 Club" and Joan Rivers still joked about her death.  Why do people feel the right to scorn these young people, even in untimely death?  Whereas I've had plenty of people jump down my throat for saying anything il of Ms. Rivers - someone who got to live a long life and got to tear down those who were already down.  Does age allow us a level of respect not offered to (basically) kids who die?  People like Woody Allen, Joan, and others who are now older than these tragic youths feel the right to scorn them even if death?  If Sylvia had lived a long and tragic life, dying of old age - would she still be considered the hero of silly college girls?  Would her books still be sold in Urban Outfitters, much to the scorn of our parents?