Blonde: the classic novel about Marilyn Monroe, now a major Netflix film: xiv

A wonderful book on MM - I've read a few - this is easily the best - a real tour de force - so imaginative - hooks you from the first page - highly recommended..

Sorry, but I could not continue with this book which is so well written and written without prurience. I could not continue to read of how Marilyn was so degraded by the Hollywood system and I know that there was to be no happy ending.This is not the fault of Joyce Carol Oates; she wrote as she found.

This book - fiction, not fact - seemed truer to me, or closer to capturing the spirit of Marilyn Monroe than the couple of biographies I've read.Characters from Monroe's "real" life are included or left out or amalgamated or recreated in various ways in order to intensify observations about her fragility and vulnerabilities and her need to please the men in her life and live up to her created image.What I found really remarkable and moving was the "voice" of Monroe that came through so strongly, and her confusion and the ever-increasing speed of her descent into the maelstrom of star-status or icon-status, and her helplessness as the current of need etc. tugged her down, however hard she tried to resist.There was one minor stylistic idiosyncrasy that irritated me, and that was the way that, towards the end of the book the word "and" is sometimes expressed as "and" and sometimes as "&". I couldn't understand that, and there seemed to be no logic or sense in the variation which did not belong to one character or narrator, but just jumped around in a distracting way.But that apart, this is a five star book for me, an imaginative triumph,very movingly so, and reminding us (in a similar way to Don Delillo's "Libra") that fiction can be truer than fact.

I’m a fan of Joyce Carol Oates, a writer whose ability to write dark literature and fantastical horror makes her perfect for this reimagining of Marilyn Monroe’s life. The book is long but never boring. Monroe is conceived as a true artist, absorbed by the meaning of life. Her striving for higher connection becomes a spur to her acting. In this, she is far more perspicacious than her male co-stars, who are mostly intent on technique and their next sexual conquest. Monroe’s drive for a bigger vision, for love and for motherhood, leaves her confused by the media’s relentless focus on the trivia of her life. She increasingly seeks solace in drugs as the weight of her exploitation by men and The Studio – and the neglect of her mother and absent father – bear down on her. Her fame eventually puts her into contact with the top echelons of American society, where she is violently and tragically abused. The ending leaves you in tears – although it’s worth knowing that this is almost certainly not how she died. Chilling, brilliant, recommended.

The "hardback " edition is in French! Actually, it's not even hardback.I need to return but the book is actually pretty amazing so Im reordering the English version

Wonderfully written and gives such an endearing image of Marilyn.Fascinating to read about these famous studios and Hollywood life in the fifties, not very commendable to say the least. One problem is that one doesn't always know wether everything is really related to M's life, since JCO writes at the beginning that this isn't a biography, but a novel. But whatever, it's like a biography that the book is read. Looses most of it's interest if it isn't.

Brilliant book lots of great reading

Very sad, very dark, very engrossing.

Americans have long had a love affair with our original sexy blonde icon, Marilyn Monroe. Even Billie Eilish these days is channeling Marilyn. After her untimely death in 1962, interest in Marilyn's story peaked again in 1974 when her unfinished autobiography, My Story, was published. The book is an easy, straightforward read from beginning to end, and it details her constant battles with the studio bigshots who unsuccessfully kept trying to get her into bed with them. She called them all “wolves.”Joyce Carol Oates writes the fictional biography, Blonde (2000), in which JCO exhaustively researches the person Norma Jeane Baker and the icon that was 'Marilyn Monroe,' and then tells her story with great imagination and psychological insight. The underlying question in Blonde, and on all the minds of those of us who are obsessed with 'Marilyn Monroe,' is why do Americans still love this busty, flirty woman with the breathy voice and voluptuous hips? Norma Jeane as 'Marilyn' created her own style of stardom, and her movies showcased her casually flaunted sexuality with her seeming inattention to the uproar she created simply by walking onto the movie set. Bus Stop (1956), Some Like It Hot (1958), Let’s Make Love (1960), with Yves Montand, her co-star and apparently at the time her lover, and her last movie The Misfits (1961), filmed while her marriage to Arthur Miller was breaking up, are probably her most famous. She was ambitious and her movie characters prominently displayed that ambition. Michelle Williams was great as Marilyn opposite Kenneth Branaugh in My Week with Marilyn (2011). I'm looking forward to Ana de Armas as Marilyn in the screenplay of JCO's Blonde (not out yet as I write this.) (P.S. It's out now on Netflix, and Ana de Armas is spectacular as Norma Jean's 'Marilyn Monroe').JCO masterfully reveals the innate skill 'Norma Jean' brought to each of "Marilyn Monroe's" movie characters, showing how she inhabited her specific role as an archetypical character, each different, each easily recognizable as a living personality. JCO also reveals the inner character of each of Norma Jean's three husbands, the clueless young buck, the brutal ex-athlete, and the self-conscious intellectual. All eventually mistreated her.JCO's Norma Jean's slow descent into grave abuse of prescription drugs (amphetamines, barbiturates, tranquilizers) and alcohol didn't help matters any, as she began to suffer from insomnia, memory loss, lethargy, lack of mental focus. Indeed, the Studio provided easy access to their Dr. FeelGood for prescriptions, which Norma Jean (and other Studio actors) relied upon to manage the stress and anxiety they experienced when filming. Our pop icons of the 1950's paid a heavy price with eventual loss of their health from addiction to pills and alcohol: Elvis, Brando, Johnny Cash, Ray Charles, and others in addition to Norma Jeane's 'Marilyn Monroe.'In her Author's Note introduction to Blonde written just before 2000, JCO characterizes her monumental work of fiction as 'synecdoche'--the specific for the general--clearly meant among other things to reference the experience 'Norma Jean' had with the Studio system and its horrible sexual exploitation of the young, pretty women who aspired to be in the movies by the men holding absolute power over them. JCO anticipates the MeToo Movement and the Harvey Weinstein revelations by well more than a decade. There are very graphic scenes in the novel of such exploitation (among others, a particular scene with "Mr. Z," and we all know who she is referencing) and the acquiescence of others, including older women, who have positions in the Studio system. They all knew, but no one blew the whistle. At the time, the only way to overcome this institutional exploitation was to become such a popular star in her own right that the Studio had to bend to her will. That, indeed, was what Norma Jeane accomplished. She paved the way for generations of talented, beautiful actresses to practice their craft without having to sacrifice themselves to the creepy, pathetic lust of the powerful Studio executives.

I tried my best to finish this but it is just too painstaking to finish. Clearly focused on Monroe and the troubles Norma Jean went through to become Marilyn, it gets into so much detail and gets a bit gross at times that I could not get to the end. Maybe for others who love these type of long character life stories, but this book wasn't for me!

Magnífica novela sobre aspectos de la vida de Marylin Monroe.

Blonde não é uma biografia de Marilyn Monroe; por meio de ficção, a autora traça o perfil psicológico de Norma Jeane enquanto percorremos os acontecimentos que tiveram mais impacto em sua mente e fizeram dela a mulher sensível, talentosa, insegura e autodestrutiva escondida por trás da imagem de Marilyn Monroe. Apesar de longo, o livro é fascinante e muito bem escrito. Recomendo.

This is an odd book - successful novels wear their research lightly, in "Blonde" the researched reality-based characters and scenes were the most engaging especially when the narrative covered the production of each of her movies.The problem with the more creative aspects of the book is that this writing is most heavily weighted at the beginning of the book (when less is known of Blonde's life) and once the writing fails to convince you - then the author has lost the reader.It was unsurprising that Andrew Domink's Netflik's version also failed.The book greatly improved after the first 25%, once JCO was on more solid ground, documenting "Blonde's" career but again, each time Oates lapses into more inventive prose, she immediately loses the reader's attention.I feel that there was a good book in there somewhere but it needed a major edit - with at least 50% of the text needing to be excised.