The prose is uncertain, and occasionally atrocious. It wanders from the “turgid-poetic” (“Mirage-grey at the bottom of their granite canyons, the hot streets wavered in the sun, the car tops sizzled and glittered, and the dry, cindery dust flew into my eyes and down my throat”), to the homely aphoristic (“There must be quite a few things a hot bath won’t cure, but I don’t know many of them.”). The general effect is one of emptiness, awkwardness and banality.
-- rejection letter from Knopf for Sylvia Plath: "The Bell Jar," 1962-63