Blonde

"Blonde" is not, and is not intended to be, a literal biography of Norma Jean Baker. Neither it is a sensationalized, tabloid-style account of the scandals and misadventures that attended the career of Marilyn Monroe. There have already been scores of such books, all of which must be taken with at least a few grains of salt, and most of which should be ignored altogether. As Netflix "adapts" the book and seeks to join the perennial exploitation of Marilyn Monroe, those who would pick up the book should bear one thing in mind: this is a novel by Joyce Carol Oates — who, since the death of Tom Wolfe, is almost certainly America's finest writer. The "tell-all" tabloid books and the glossy one-shot magazines may enjoy some success, but show more "Blonde" won the Pulitzer Prize. (Even Norman Mailer's "Marilyn" [1973] was merely a speculative essay, created to accompany a book of previously unpublished photographs.) At some point, Oates should win the Nobel Prize, but she probably won't: although the Norwegian award committee rightfully recognized Bob Dylan's unique status as a poet in 2016, it never gave the nod to Wolfe, a shameful omission.

Those who (for whatever reason) admire Norma Jean/Marilyn, or are merely intrigued by her story, ought to welcome this book, but they should understand what it is before starting. Joyce Carol Oates has written stories and novels on a variety of themes, and her imagination and inquisitive nature seem strong enough to spin gold out of straw. But she has, occasionally, ventured into an area where most serious authors fear to tread: she has written novelizations of famous or infamous people, always changing their names, but finding truths that conventional biographers overlook. Her "Zombie" (1996) was based on the crimes of Jeffrey Dahmer; "My Sister, My Love" (2008) was a daring treatment of the JonBenét Ramsey case. "Blonde" was written in the years between these two books.

"Blonde" is, by turns, emotionally wrenching, infuriating, and sometimes depressing (how could it not be?), but it is never boring. Oates can be discreet, but she is never coy: she refers to Joe DiMaggio only as "The Former Athlete" and Arthur Miller as "The Playwright." But she is bold enough to name Charles Chaplin Jr. and Edward G. Robinson Jr. as Marilyn's "friends" and eventual rapists. The author regards Baker/Monroe's lifetime quest for a "Daddy figure" as the product of a mysterious, absent father, a mentally unstable mother, and a series of men who either knowingly abused her or simply misunderstood her. Oates acknowledges those few men who attempted to cherish Norma/Marilyn in a "normal" way, which was not an easy thing for them to do, because of her fears, neuroses, and restlessness. As for the men who victimized and exploited her, Oates does not mince words, and sometimes describes the abuse in uncomfortable detail. Oates has written some wonderful books for children: this is not one of them.

The Netflix presentation may be very good, or very bad. But it has nothing to do with this book.

Recommended, with reservations, because it's Joyce Carol Oates. show less

This is a novel about Marilyn Monroe and is written by Joyce Carol Oates which tells you pretty much all you need to know about it, except it's also pretty long. And the length did something to me as I read. Oates's ability to dig into the unsavory corners and to lean into the uncomfortable, combined with the stark facts of Monroe's life became, for me, an utterly immersive reading experience, where I thought about this book even while I wasn't reading it. I raced through it, until I neared the end, where I found myself slowing down, unwilling to let go of the hope that the novel ended with Monroe living happily in a farmhouse with lots of babies, doing some community playhouse as her hobby. And of course I knew all along that that was show more never going to be the ending, but Oates had drawn me so deeply into this damaged woman's life that I couldn't help but hope.

The facts of Monroe's life are well-known and so Oates plays with them, changing the story in ways small and large, to show the long-term effects of unaddressed childhood trauma. But JCO is also looking at all the ways Monroe was used and victimized, and how she refused to see herself as the victim, working relentlessly to make a place for herself, until the sheer weight of it all dragged her under. There's a new sub-genre of books by women, about women who ruin their own lives and it strikes me that although this book is two decades older than that trend, it wouldn't be out of place among them. show less

I have conflicting emotions about this book, and it goes something like this, “The book is about Marilyn, so what is there NOT to like about it, right? Warts and all, it is a powerful book written by a powerful writer.” But the song that keeps playing in my head, the words that keep haunting me, comes from the voice of another writer, This is the story of a rape.

“This is the story of a rape, of the events that led up to it and followed it and of the place in which it happened. There are the action, the people and the place; all of which are interrelated but in their totality incommunicable in isolation from the moral continuum of human affairs.” (Paul Scott, [b:The Jewel in the Crown|146746|The Jewel in the Crown (The Raj show more Quartet, #1)|Paul Scott|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1328872722l/146746._SY75_.jpg|2103139].)

There is something so ugly and disturbing about Joyce Carol Oates’s interpretation of Marilyn’s life that if one were to take away the author’s name, one would suspect it was written by a loathsome mysogynist, hell-bent on destroying every last vestige of humanity in Marilyn Monroe, movie-queen, and Norma Jeane Baker, innocent dreamer.

I fell into a trance in the first few hundred pages, falling subject to Norma Jeane’s unquenchable spirit. Even tossed about by the vagaries of her early years, the reader sees how Norma Jeane was destined for some kind of greatness. She was an indefatigable optimist; a resilient life force that did battle with her mother’s depression and burgeoning insanity, and from under which she sprang out stronger still. It was only later, after the little fighter had grown into a vibrant woman who had been knocked down one too many times that the inherited depression finally consumed her and dragged her into hell. In the intervening years she fought -- and fought like hell -- to hang onto the dream of “getting out alive” and making something of her life. The reader can’t help but feel an overwhelming sadness, and fatalism, because unlike the young Norma Jeane, we know how the story ends.

So far, so good, despite its all-consuming sadness.

Then, Oates’s fangs come out. She reveals to us her secret loathing for Marilyn, sub-consciously played out in the voice of the men who hated The Blonde Actress: cow, cunt, stupid cunt, mammalian bitch, tramp, slut, WHORE, sucker of cocks, depressed whacko bitch, stupid cunt, stupid cunt, stupid cunt. OK, we hear you. But that’s the point: I don’t hear the voice of the men so much as I hear Oates’s voice in my head: you whore, you bitch, you cunt. The sub-text screams to me so loudly, it’s like a punch in the face by Oates, every slander uttered.

This is nothing but a vile peep show, it occurred to me half way through the novel. Here I am, engaging in the tearing down of the movie-queen, complicit in the act of rape. No one is forcing me to read this book, just like no one forced Oates to write it.

The voyeuristic quality is enhanced by the protracted use of the third person: The Blonde Actress, The Ex-Athlete, The Playwright, The President. We, the readers, are standing in the red light district, leering into the dimly-lit and dirty window where the young woman lies exposed and vulnerable. No one looks away, either out of decency or revulsion. A human being is being torn apart, and we continue to be complicit in her excoriation.

You won’t write about me, will you, Daddy? You won’t write about me, will you? You won’t write about me?

Knowing this -- knowing how much Norma Jeane abhorred being written about in her Marilyn persona -- Oates revels in ignoring her plea. Like the paparazzi who swoop like carrion birds, she licks up every last intimate detail and splatters it luridly for our consumption.

Disturbingly, Oates seems even more obsessed with Marilyn’s body than the raving fans: dwelling, obsessively, on skin and excretions and secretions, ad nauseam. She is pre-occupied with Marilyn’s sexual intimacies and her miscarriages and her womb. She is so consumed by Marilyn’s womb, in fact, that she leaves us with the notion she believes all Marilyn ever was, was a big gaping receptacle of vileness, hungry for as much degradation as she could possibly contain. Over and over again, we hear stupid cunt, hailed as the avenue to the stinking, infertile receptacle. Marilyn’s womb did not bear fruit, after all -- it was simply another secreting, foul failure of our movie-queen.

“I’m always running into people’s unconscious.” Those words, prophetically spoken by Marilyn Monroe in her empty-headed persona, shine quite a light on this fictional biography. Oates seems to have run smack into the middle of her own “unconscious” while trying to explore Marilyn’s.

As much as art can be an exploratory medium to expose the vileness of the world and act as a cathartic force for change, just as often it reveals the vileness or the victim within. It often uncovers our own hidden truths and reveals to us our own failings. When confronted with ourselves, it thus becomes easy to say “this is just art” when we really should be admitting “this is me.”

As much as this was an authoritative book then, it was an equally forceful indictment of the things that should not be said. Certain secrets should not be violated. Add to that, there are some books that should never have been written, despite the truths they hold. This is one of them.

So many will disagree -- because it was written by an influential writer, and it’s art. show less

[Blonde] by [[Joyce Carol Oates]]

[Blonde] is an epic fictional biography of the life of Norma Jean Baker, better known as Marilyn Monroe. The book covers her life from birth to death in great detail, creating a compelling picture of a woman whose troubled childhood and then abuse by the film industry led to her downfall and death.

I knew very little about Marilyn Monroe, and now I realize that nobody, maybe even not Norma Jean herself, knew Monroe. JCO's portrait reveals a woman so used to being constructed by everyone around her that there ends up being almost no person underneath to know.

This is incredibly sad and hard to read about. I thought a lot about the intense sexism and control that men had over women, even famous and show more supposedly powerful women. There is also a focus on how a troubled childhood leads to a damaged adult.

In some ways, I loved this book. But I also was somewhat bored in sections. It is a really long book - over 700 pages of a small font - and in certain sections I felt like I didn't need to read more because I already got what JCO was going for. But, then again, it ends up being an incredibly convincing portrait and in that way is masterfully written.

I didn't like her version of the ending, i.e. Marilyn's death. show less

Blonde by Joyce Carol Oates is the author’s portrait of an American icon, Marilyn Monroe, and while the author illuminates her life, it’s biggest impact is how she was able to get inside her subject and deliver interior dialogues that felt visceral and real. We know Marilyn Monroe through her appearance and her work in film, she’s the dumb/smart blonde, the sexy bombshell. We have also read enough about her in the past to see her as a lost soul, a self-destructive diva, a star that was used and abused by Hollywood.

In this novel, Joyce Carol Oates brings her to life and gives her a voice on these pages. Using the facts of Marilyn Monroe's life and blending in the author's insights, we learn that Norma Jeane Baker was doomed almost show more from birth. She was damaged by her single parent mother and she grew up never knowing her father. By the time she was eleven, her mother was in a psychiatric hospital and Norma Jeane was in an orphanage and later foster homes. Her first marriage was at fifteen and she appeared to be searching for a father figure most of her life. Although today she is remembered as the leading sex symbol of the 1950s this engrossing novel gives us not only Marilyn but is an epic story about the dangers and pitfalls of becoming a celebrity. We experience her triumphs and her downfalls, her troubled private life, along with her addictions and mental disorders.

Blonde plays upon mythology of Marilyn Monroe but also delivers a story of a character that is imaginative, engrossing and complex. I had become a fan of this author through her short stories and this was the first full-length novel of hers that I have read, and although I have to admit I did find this novel of over 750 pages to be overly long, my admiration for Joyce Carol Oates has grown. show less

“In life, the woman was hell and in hell; on film, divine.”

-Billy Wilder

“Beauty is a question of optics. All sight is illusion.”

This is a fictionalized account of Norma Jeane Baker, aka Marilyn Monroe. From a stuttering, neglected, little girl, to a drugged out, burned out starlet. It is not an easy read. This woman is relentlessly abused, exploited, raped and scorned for 700 pages. Nightmarish and hallucinogenic. What makes it captivating and readable, is the author's terrific writing skill and wildly ambitious approach. She has surely done her homework too, capturing many facets of the film industry and her complex relationships, with her many husbands. Do not take this as a true biography, but if your stomach and brain can show more handle the abuse, give it a try. show less

Though long, I found this book to be very readable and really quite entertaining.

But.

This is a fictionalized version--a VERY fictionalized version--of Norma Jeane Baker/Marilyn Monroe's life. Things that ARE known, like the fact that she did not live with her grandmother as a child (her grandmother died when Norma was younger), were changed by Oates. Why, exactly, I don't understand and I do not like. No, not everything about her life is known, but why change what IS known, other than to make "reasons" for her behavior. But they're not reasons if they are fake.

She also never calls DiMaggio or Miller by name--but we all know who they are meant to be. Why is DiMaggio's Sicilian mother obsessed with properly cooked risotto? Risotto is a Po show more Valley food--rice does not grow in Sicily! Is this sloppiness, or is Oates trying to "hide" the true identities of the "characters" to avoid being sued by descendants?

Why not just write a novel, an original story? Why take a real person's life and change their childhood, put words in their mouth, thoughts in their head, use aliases for others (study execs all get letters), to make a fake biography? It annoys me, and as both a genealogist and historian it pisses me off.

Mostly I found this to be a very frustrating read. I feel like I need to read actual MM biographies to clear my head. I find this sooo hard to discuss because am I discussing a life or a story? I CAN'T TELL. show less