Elizabeth Winder

This is the story of an electrically alive young woman on the brink of her adult life. An artist equally attuned to the light as the shadows, with a limitless hunger for experience and knowledge, completely unafraid of life's more frightening opportunities.

That none discussed their doubts, that they assumed everyone else was just having a grand time of it and felt at ease and enjoying the ride, was perhaps the most toxic element to this particular kind of noisy loneliness.

...she could not stick by the golden mean...was always anxious to experiment in extremes...to find out what was enough by indulging herself in too much." (Gordon Lameyer)

However vivid they might be, past images and future delights did not protect Sylvia from the present, which "rules despotic over pale shadows of past and future". That was Sylvia's genius and her Panic Bird- her total lack of nostalgia. She had no armor. This left her especially vulnerable in New York, where she was removed from the context of her life, severed from that reassuring arc.

Sylvia had begun her month in New York with princessy pomp and fanfare_.Her departure on June 27 was entirely different. She left New York shaken, depleted, and utterly alone.

Sylvia would have taken it seriously- so strong was her devotion to the innate intelligence of form. Those pretty tools like glue and pens, pasting together look-books _ for Sylvia it would have been like toy making or arranging jewels. Unfortunately, Sylvia__ flair for design and graphics went unnoticed by the Mademoiselle staff, who had already pigeonholed her as a __riter_.

The very act of accepting her position at Mademoiselle was an act of open defiance against Dick Norton, his entire family, and the gendered expectations of midcentury America.

Sylvia quotes Dick as telling her: "I am afraid the demands of wifehood and motherhood would preoccupy you too much to allow you to do the painting and writing you want." Dick was sharp enough to understand that the bright flame that drew him to Sylvia disqualified her from his future. He would not allow Sylvia- or any woman- to outshine him.

When I was doing the Mademoiselle application my husband would peer over my shoulder and say, "What are you doing competing with the best brains in the country? Why don't you just wash the dishes?" When the telegram came from Mademoiselle, I ran outside and shouted, "Guess who has the best brains in the country?

Sylvia possessed a deeply conditioned respect for authority. She wanted desperately to live up to the expectations of a society that viewed her as a bright, charming, enormously talented disciple of bourgeois conformity. On the other hand, she ached to experience life in all its grim and beautiful complexity. The poetic eye was always at work examining the nuance and measuring obscure detail, turning conversation into ultimatum (Steiner)

For years I wondered what was her curious power, her ability to attract all kinds of people to her and to use them for her own ends, often with their knowledge. i think it was that people liked watching and being with someone who enjoyed life as much as Sylvia seemed to enjoy it. She squeezed all the juice from the orange, or, to change the figure, drained the cup to the leaves, the very dregs.

Her romances often seemed like dalliances; she enjoyed male company and blossomed in its presence, but she did not appear to care deeply about any of the men [Steiner]

Sylvia rarely flattered the men in her life- she envied them. She was far more likely to compete with a man than a woman. In her journal she describes this jealousy of which she is painfully aware; "It is an envy born of the desire to be active and doing, not passive and listening." She craved the "double life" of men, who could enjoy career, sex, and family. "I can pretend to forget my envy," she writes, "no matter, it is there, insidious, malignant, latent.

You may discover that the very aspects which make it most unendurable are what gives New York its meaning. Its inconsistencies and anonymity, its seeming indifference to you and every other individual is really what makes it a safe haven for individuals everywhere (Maeve Brennan)

Life is amazingly simplified,_ she wrote in her journal, __ow that the recalcitrant forsythia has at last decided to come and blurt out springtime in petalled fountains of yellow. In spite of reams of papers to be written, life has snitched a cocaine sniff of sun-worship and salt air, and all looks promising._ She already adored New York.

New York is unruly, tangled. The city woos first, then mangles, then pastes back together in a fresh, dazzling mosaic.

I suppose that was an example of close attention to detail that is common to writers and artists. It is imperative, whether consciously or not, that one observe the vast as well as the infinitesimal in order to create the image or choose accurate words that ring true.

Judgement is so often a thwarted, frustrated expression of envy.