Monday, July 10, 2023

"Sybil" by Flora Rheta Schreiber: From 1970s blockbuster to 21st-century shelf-sitter

 
Source LINKcat

New York Times, 5/28/2023
Turning 50 is rarely easy for a woman, and “Sybil” is no exception. 
This tarnished classic — “the True and Extraordinary Story of a Woman Possessed by Sixteen Separate Personalities,” to invoke the most carnival-barker of its various subtitles — has since its 1973 publication been critically dismissed; wedged on the best-seller list between Lillian Hellman and Howard Cosell as if at some nightmare dinner party; made into two different television movies; workshopped as a musical; cited in psychiatric literature; debunked, dissected and defended. 
Widely reported to have sold over six million copies, she’s valiantly stayed in circulation all these years, but can’t be blamed for looking a little frayed around the edges.


"Sybil" is batting .120 in LINKcat, the South Central Library System's online catalog.

Sybil had already dropped off the Social Security Administration's Popular Baby Names chart by the time the book was published in 1973.

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