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One of America’s most acclaimed novelists boldly re-imagines one of America’s most enduring icons in Blonde—the National Book Award-nominated bestseller by Joyce Carol Oates. The legend of Marilyn Monroe—aka Norma Jeane Baker—comes provocatively alive in this powerful tale of Hollywood myth and heartbreaking reality. Marilyn Monroe lives—reborn to tell her untold history; her story of a star created to shine brightest in the Hollywood firmament before her fall to earth. Blonde is a dazzling fictional portrait of the intricate inner life of the idolized and desired movie star as only the inimitable Joyce Carol Oates could paint it.
- Sales Rank: #204050 in Books
- Brand: Oates, Joyce Carol
- Published on: 2009-09-15
- Released on: 2009-09-15
- Original language: English
- Number of items: 1
- Dimensions: 8.00" h x 1.21" w x 5.31" l,
- Binding: Paperback
- 752 pages
From the Back Cover
In this ambitious book, Joyce Carol Oates boldly reimagines the inner, poetic, and spiritual life of Norma Jeane Baker—the child, the woman, the fated celebrity and idolized blonde the world came to know as Marilyn Monroe. In a voice startling, intimate, and rich, Norma Jeane tells her own story, that of an emblematic American artist—intensely conflicted and driven—who has lost her way. A powerful portrait of Hollywood's myth and an extraordinary woman's heartbreaking reality, Blonde is a sweeping epic that pays tribute to the elusive magic and devastation behind the creation of the great twentieth-century American star.
About the Author
Joyce Carol Oates is a recipient of the National Medal of Humanities, the National Book Critics Circle Ivan Sandrof Lifetime Achievement Award, the National Book Award, and the PEN/Malamud Award for Excellence in Short Fiction. She is the Roger S. Berlind Distinguished Professor of the Humanities at Princeton University and has been a member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters since 1978.
Most helpful customer reviews
101 of 108 people found the following review helpful.
Blonde: an honest view of a life
By Karen Tims
I was never a Marilyn Monroe fan. I would never even watch a movie of hers. I didn't want to jump on what I thought was a bandwagon of people who loved her because she was so tragic. I was never interested in the dumb blonde sexpot thing. I've always preferred the more exotic Joan Crawford or Rita Hayworth. I knew Monroe's story but it never became personal for me. It never spoke to me.
Oates' words spoke to me. I have a love/hate relationship with her work. I like it but it often annoys me. I also said the first couple of pages had me thinking I'd never get through the book. Well, after that I never wanted to put it down. I was totally engrossed for all 738 pages. I often read several books at once. In this case, I wasn't interested in reading books that I had just gotten in from my favorite authors. There was just no comparison.
Oates breaks some "rules". She throws in dialogue imagined and real. Sometimes, you're not sure who the story teller is. You have to "listen" as it unfolds. Sometimes, the story is told as poetry. Sometimes a chapter is a page long. A great thing about this is... she doesn't do anything to the point where it's annoying. For example, sentences without verbs--which I always notice and it personally drives me nuts. She does it sometimes, but not on every page. She does it enough that it's needed and not jarring.
If Oates wants you to feel like the character-- frightened, sad, confused, numb, glad, she weaves her words so that the experience of reading enables that feeling. You don't just view it as an outsider, you are a participant.
I could relate to the character personally. I understand being smart and wanting to be smarter and reading all you can to know as much as everyone else but always feeling inferior, always sounding like the airhead. I can grasp that, hold it in my hand and KNOW that experience. I understand being able to read philosophers and have great opinions but never being able to verbally express myself about any of it in any kind of coherent manner.
Also, she portrays Monroe as multidimensional. Lost people often don't know who they are. None of us are always one thing, are we? We are often contradictions of ourselves.
I always thought Monroe played herself. I didn't consider that maybe the dumb blonde was a brilliant talent, something she gave them, almost like a joke or a slap in the face. I also understand being able to use that, to fool people with it, allowing it to be an advantage and then being able to offer a beautiful surprise for anyone who is special, more deserving.
I've ordered all of Monroe's movies. I've got some catching up to do.
I HIGHLY recommend this book.
52 of 56 people found the following review helpful.
Applause! Standing Ovation! Whistle!
By L. Hastings
I come to you PURE. A reader of Joyce Carol Oates, but never a reader of any biography pertaining to Marilyn Monroe.
I enjoy reading a book review that gets to the heart of the matter. The heart of Joyce Carol Oate's marvelous novel is Norma Jeane Baker and the wonderful illusion that she created for all to enjoy, Marilyn Monroe. If you're like me and never read a biography on the illustrious Marilyn Monroe, start with this novel. The author does an amazing job of making it appear factual and breathing life into both Norma Jeane and her good friend Marilyn.
JCO starts with a BANG! beginning when Norma Jeane was a little girl in the care of her grandmother, Della. Poor Norma Jeane is whisked away from Della by her mother, Gladys, then her life sort of goes to pieces. Gladys and Norma shared a few good times or at least that's how Norma Jeane tries to keep to the story so that she can survive her life but eventually Norma ends up in the orphanage and then at around age 12 or so, becomes a foster child of a pathetic couple, only then to find herself a child bride and then the novel really takes off! All that I've said is far condensed; JCO does a much better job of filling you in on the details, and there are many!
I was sad, fascinated and impressed by Norma Jeane's talents and I'm not talking about the gifts she was naturally blessed with, though she was quite blessed and certainly used it all to her advantage. What really stood out in the book was that Norma Jeane was intelligent, shrewd, witty, a genius in her own right, yet, she couldn't see it. She knew it lived inside of her but she didn't believe that other people knew it, so tormented was she. Becoming Marilyn Monroe could be such a tough job, a job that Norma wanted to abandon, but it would be hard to fight the force that she, herself had masterminded. Many times, Norma Jeane Baker would lose herself and live Marilyn's life when the film wasn't rolling. She'd self-medicate and drink and pop more pills and do acts that were expected of Marilyn that even Marilyn didn't have to do, but such the poeple pleaser was Marilyn, she'd do the deeds anyway, no matter how self-destructive. My head would spin at times and I felt that I was popping pills, probably JCO's intention. Sometimes, I became Norma's husbands (Bucky, Ex-Athlete and Playwright) and I was exasperated with her self-loathing and neediness, not thinking, but then thinking, hey, this woman has a problem.
Other times, I became her co-stars and wanted to quit the films because I just couldn't take Marilyn or Norma Jeane's self-indulgences, her sickness! Despite it all, I continued to turn those pages. I was committed to Norma's and Marilyn's world, JCO's intention, I'm sure. Then, I thought: Where is JCO's National Book Award for this exceptional piece of work that must have made her half crazy to write. Where was the award? I had to research who won that year, making a promise to read the winner and find out WHY JCO did not get the prize for this novel, that to date, as far as I'm concerned, is her masterpiece.
Thanks to JCO, I've viewed many a Marilyn Monroe movie and I've got a couple of biographies lined up- but I thank her for sharing the secret. When I watch Marilyn Monroe, I smile, knowing that I'm really watching Norma Jeane, the Creator.
50 of 54 people found the following review helpful.
This heartbreaker of a book
By Jessica G Schreiber
Marilyn Monroe died when I was in my late teens. It has always intrigued me why her legend lives on and on in a world where beautiful blondes are as plentiful and ephemeral as butterflies. What was it about Marilyn Monroe that has inspired the books, the songs, the photographic retrospectives decades after she's been gone? Having just finished "Blonde" by Joyce Carol Oates, I think I know.
From her first to her last breath, the fictionalized life of Norma Jeane Baker exudes tragedy. Her childhood is brutal, puberty puts her at risk, her early marriage is a fiasco, her treatment by her agent, her photographer, and the studio bosses unpardonably exploitive. When she finally achieves fame, Norma Jeane is too fragile and broken to savor it. She becomes her insecurities. Even those who love her and wish her well (husband playwright Arthur Miller) can't save her. She can only bring them down in her self destructive nose dive. If there is any truth to her treatment by President John Kennedy, he was the most dispicable of all. Oates never uses the image of a candle in the wind made famous by Elton John, but the metaphor works. Norma Jeane, aka Marilyn Monroe, never ceases to be a fascinating case study. Towards the end the writing gets a little sloppy and the reader grows impatient for the author to get on with the end, which one knows will be horrible, and yet when it happens it will break your heart . You are sorry the book has ended because you can never get too much of the central character, her amazing life story and the stormy times in which she lived.
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