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<text> <front> <tPage> <dTitle>The Bell Jar <byLine>by <dAuthor>Plath, Sylvia </dAuthor></byLine> <dImprint>New York: Harper and Row, 1971 1961-1962<dImprint> </tPage> <pb n=1> <body> <div> <p>IT WAS A QUEER, sultry summer, the summer they electrocuted the Rosenbergs, and I didn't know what I was doing in New York. I'm stupid about executions. The idea of being electrocuted makes me sick, and that's all there was to read about in the papers -- goggle-eyed headlines staring up at me on every street corner and at the fusty, peanut-smelling mouth of every subway. It had nothing to do with me, but I couldn't help wondering what it would be like, being burned alive all along your nerves. <p>I thought it must be the worst thing in the world. <p>New York was bad enough. By nine in the morning the fake, country-wet freshness that somehow seeped in overnight evaporated like the tail end of a sweet dream. Mirage-gray at the bottom of their granite canyons, the hot streets wavere . . .