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Bottled Blonde
There is no denying that Marilyn Monroe is one of America's most beloved icons. Still, when the reader is confronted with a massive copy of Blonde, Joyce Carol Oates's fictional retelling of Marilyn Monroe's life, a question does come to mind: What could Oates possibly have written about Monroe's brief life and career that could fill more than 700 pages?
The answer? Sex.
Blonde is one long, racy read. Oates recounts every telling event in the life of Norma Jeane Baker, from her early days with her grandmother to the years spent with her crazy mother to her teenage years in an orphanage and, following her mother's institutionalization, in a foster home. After Norma Jeane's first marriage, the hagiography continues with the birth of "MM," her subsequent marriages, stardom, and the "questionable" circumstances of her death at the age of 36 (not surprisingly, Oates suggests that, rather than succumbing to an accidental overdose, or intentional suicide, Marilyn was murdered). And the thread weaving together all 36 years is sex.
Casting-couch sex is to be expected in a book on or about Marilyn Monroe, and Oates doesn't disappoint. One encounter takes place not on a couch but rather on a white rug during a visit to a famous studio honcho's aviary, which turns out to be nothing more than a few stuffed birds in his office. Marilyn—at once naive and knowing—gets busy with tons of men in Blonde. (Oates tactfully names few outright, preferring instead to use thinly veiled sobriquets like "the Ex-Athlete" or "the Playwright.") There are also countless chapters on lesser-known, yet quite torrid love affairs, including a three-way relationship Marilyn carries on with Charlie Chaplin Jr. and Eddie Robinson Jr. They live and love and drink and do drugs together. Their sex sessions, as re-created by Oates, are heated, fascinating, tangled. They even have a name for themselves: The Gemini. Oates covers all of Marilyn's affairs, including the much-rumored liaison with President Kennedy. In one memorable scene from this era, Oates has the duo shacked up in a New York hotel, the President pressing Marilyn's head down, down, down as he speaks with Castro on the telephone. In this après-Lewinsky era this scenario is neither shocking nor original. But in 1961? Boop-boop-bee-doo!
Oates roots Marilyn's sexuality strongly in her past, beginning with the men she meets while living with her foster family. A teacher. A detective. A few boys her own age. Her foster mother hates the way her husband looks at Norma Jeane's "sweet little ass," so she marries Norma Jeane off at 16 to a lanky boy named Bucky Glazer. Norma's wedding, loss of virginity, and married sex life span chapters. It is hard to imagine Monroe preparing meatloaf dinners for a husband, but Oates makes it believable. Norma and Bucky are doomed from the start. So are Norma and most men. And there are many men. Oates lists pages of lovers taken from the files of the FBI: Robert Mitchum, Eddie Fisher, Mickey Rooney, Clark Gable, Samuel Goldwyn, the Marx brothers, Ronald Reagan, etc.
Marilyn's body makes her irresistible to men. Oates makes this body a character of its own, chronicling its various developmental phases. At first, Marilyn hates her body and the commotion it causes. But gradually she learns to use it, to work it. Sometimes she embraces it. It is a body ravaged by loss, by time, by men. It weathers abortions, miscarriages, multiple drug overdoses, and bleach (the chemicals that create her signature blonde coif sting when applied to pubic hair). Oates pounds home her sexual theme with constant commentary on Marilyn's looks, her breasts, her skin, her ass. Oh, that ass! Oates is unrelenting. Her language and tales are often harsh: Marilyn can't even go to a public theater to watch one of her own movies without drawing the unwelcome attention of a man who masturbates to her image onscreen and off.
Blonde is both an unwieldy and fascinating work. Oates convincingly reduces this larger-than-life movie star to a tiny, broken girl. Oates's Marilyn is truly unwell, in many ways as disturbed as her mother was. Her sexual misadventures and inability to function in any orthodox relationship are clearly tied to her abandonment as a child. She is by turns miserable, unstable, insecure, and delusional. Ultimately, Blonde itself is impressive; an eerie, gossipy, voyeuristic experience. Enticing, but also devastating.
—Alexandra Zissu
Alexandra Zissu is a freelance writer and writer-at-large at Fashion Wire Daily. She has written for The New York Observer, The New York Times Styles section, Harper's Bazaar, Cosmopolitan, and Self.
Wall Street Journal
Grimly compelling...a portrait of Hollywood as terrifyingly hallucinatory as Nathaniel West's The Day of the Locust.
Bookpage
Jayne Atkinson's performance in this audio presentation adds enormous dimension and depth. Without overacting, without cliche or caricature, she captures Monroe's breathy, hesitating voice and with it captures both the vixen and the victim.
Nation
An overwhelmingly vivid and powerful rendering of a human being who outlived her life.
Los Angeles Times
Atkinson's voice is just this side of sultry.She deftly changes her tone and pacing for other characters in the story...
Playboy
A fascinating imagining of the hellish battles that Monroe fought with herself.
Newsday
Oates may have created the most important novel of her career.
Barnes & Noble Guide to New Fiction
Oates tackles the most enduring and evocative cultural icon of the 20th century in this "surreal" historical novel. An "engrossing," unsparing vision of Marilyn Monroe: the child, the girl, the flawed woman, and the fated celebrity, "transforming her from the familiar, flat graphic image Andy Warhol gave us into a multidimensional fictional character." "I was like a dog with a bone - I chewed away all night on the pages of this novel, burning the midnight oil." "Bravo!" "An extraordinary work." A lone dissenter said "tediously factual."
Susan Tekulve
Freeing herself from the confines of a journalistic retelling of well-known facts, Oates masterfully creates a powerful and deeply disturbing American tragedy.
—Book Magazine, March/April 2000
Publishers Weekly - Publisher's Weekly
Atkinson narrates Oates's fictional biography of Marilyn Monroe in an intense, slightly husky voice that immediately grabs and holds the listener's attention. Film actress Atkinson deftly switches back and forth between Oates's prose, a breathy Monroe (who "comments" periodically throughout the novel), Monroe's brassy mother, Gladys (who soon succumbs to mental illness), and a series of powerful, impatient men who callously exploit the vulnerable young actress. Her only false note is the dialogue of John F. Kennedy, which she reads without any attempt at the president's distinctive Massachusetts accent. Abridging Oates's epic is no small feat, but all the major events in Monroe's life remain in vivid and often heartbreaking detail. The audio also includes an exclusive interview with Oates, who talks about her impressions of Monroe as a person and as an icon, and discusses how she came to write the 700-plus- page novel, which she originally intended as a 175-page novella. Based on the HarperCollins/ Ecco hardcover (Forecasts, Feb. 14). (Apr.) Copyright 2000 Cahners Business Information.|
Library Journal
Will our fascination with celebrities never cease? Over the past few years, there has been a proliferation of Marilyn Monroe biographies. Oates, at least, is not focused on the celebrity but on the frightened, orphaned Norma Jean, a figure perfectly in keeping with other lonely outsiders who populate her fiction. Writing in short sections that carry over extremely well to audio, she's able to achieve segues that add depth to the life being explored and fabricated. Details, images, thoughts, and feelings abound, so credible we forget such insights could not have been known to any biographer. And as to facts, Oates explains in an illuminating interview (included on tape six) that, as a fiction writer, she's able to simplify, combining "several" abortions into one, merging various characters. True, there is no suspense in this audiobook, narrated by Jayne Atkinson: none of the haunting stream-of-consciousness Oates so masterfully placed into Mary Jo Kopechne's mouth in her novella Black Water, but these tapes have much to offer. Considering the book is 768 pages, even die-hard Oates fans might appreciate this adeptly abridged audio version. Recommended, especially for larger collections.--Rochelle Ratner, formerly with"Soho Weekly News," New York Copyright 2000 Cahners Business Information.\
Alexandra Zissu
Bottled Blonde
There is no denying that Marilyn Monroe is one of America's most beloved icons. Still, when the reader is confronted with a massive copy of Blonde, Joyce Carol Oates's fictional retelling of Marilyn Monroe's life, a question does come to mind: What could Oates possibly have written about Monroe's brief life and career that could fill more than 700 pages?
The answer? Sex.
Blonde is one long, racy read. Oates recounts every telling event in the life of Norma Jeane Baker, from her early days with her grandmother to the years spent with her crazy mother to her teenage years in an orphanage and, following her mother's institutionalization, in a foster home. After Norma Jeane's first marriage, the hagiography continues with the birth of "MM," her subsequent marriages, stardom, and the "questionable" circumstances of her death at the age of 36 (not surprisingly, Oates suggests that, rather than succumbing to an accidental overdose, or intentional suicide, Marilyn was murdered). And the thread weaving together all 36 years is sex.
Casting-couch sex is to be expected in a book on or about Marilyn Monroe, and Oates doesn't disappoint. One encounter takes place not on a couch but rather on a white rug during a visit to a famous studio honcho's aviary, which turns out to be nothing more than a few stuffed birds in his office. Marilyn -- at once naïve and knowing -- gets busy with tons of men in Blonde. (Oates tactfully names few outright, preferring instead to use thinly veiled sobriquets like "the Ex-Athlete" or "the Playwright.") There are also countless chapters on lesser-known yet quite torrid love affairs, including a three-way relationship Marilyn carries on with Charlie Chaplin Jr. and Eddie Robinson Jr. They live and love and drink and do drugs together. Their sex sessions, as re-created by Oates, are heated, fascinating, tangled. They even have a name for themselves: The Gemini. Oates covers all of Marilyn's affairs, including the much-rumored liaison with President Kennedy. In one memorable scene from this era, Oates has the duo shacked up in a New York hotel, the President pressing Marilyn's head down, down, down as he speaks with Castro on the telephone. In this après-Lewinsky era the scenario is neither shocking nor original. But in 1961? Boop-boop-bee-doo!
Oates roots Marilyn's sexuality strongly in her past, beginning with the men she meets while living with her foster family. A teacher. A detective. A few boys her own age. Her foster mother hates the way her husband looks at Norma Jeane's "sweet little ass," so she marries Norma Jeane off at 16 to a lanky boy named Bucky Glazer. Norma's wedding, loss of virginity, and married sex life span chapters. It is hard to imagine Monroe preparing meatloaf dinners for a husband, but Oates makes it believable. Norma and Bucky are doomed from the start. So are Norma and most men. And there are many men. Oates lists pages of lovers taken from the files of the FBI: Robert Mitchum, Eddie Fisher, Mickey Rooney, Clark Gable, Samuel Goldwyn, the Marx brothers, Ronald Reagan, et cetera.
Marilyn's body makes her irresistible to men. Oates makes this body a character of its own, chronicling its various developmental phases. At first, Marilyn hates her body and the commotion it causes. But gradually she learns to use it, to work it. Sometimes she embraces it. It is a body ravaged by loss, by time, by men. It weathers abortions, miscarriages, multiple drug overdoses, and bleach (the chemicals that create her signature blonde coif sting when applied to pubic hair). Oates pounds home her sexual theme with constant commentary on Marilyn's looks, her breasts, her skin, her ass. Oh, that ass! Oates is unrelenting. Her language and tales are often harsh: Marilyn can't even go to a public theater to watch one of her own movies without drawing the unwelcome attention of a man who masturbates to her image onscreen and off.
Blonde is both an unwieldy and fascinating work. Oates convincingly reduces this larger-than-life movie star to a tiny, broken girl. Oates's Marilyn is truly unwell, in many ways as disturbed as her mother was. Her sexual misadventures and inability to function in any orthodox relationship are clearly tied to her abandonment as a child. She is by turns miserable, unstable, insecure, and delusional. Ultimately, Blonde itself is impressive; an eerie, gossipy, voyeuristic experience. Enticing, but also devastating.
Alexandra Zissu is a freelance writer and writer-at-large at Fashion Wire Daily. She has written for The New York Observer, The New York Times Styles section, Harper's Bazaar, Cosmopolitan, and Self.
Lambda Book Report
This is a big, complex, visionary, imaginative, make-you-sweat-and-whince-while-reading book.
Mary Gaitskill
[This] book is great...it is a powerful work of art...It has the energy and locomotive force of Dickens or Hugo...
—Bookforum
Joseph
Blonde is one mighty, tremendous book...Oates has become most like William Faulkner. Every novel is a newly invented form of language, a deepening vision of America. No writer today has today has delved into the mysterious circumstances of being alive at this time in America—explored our entire social strata—to the extent that she has. Oates is perennially mentioned for the Nobel Prize. Blonde, one hopes will be the book that will convince the Swedish academy...
—The Nation
Miller
Oates's achievement is remarkable because the
immediate, visceral impact of Monroe's image is so very much a
phenomenon of film, defying the inward-looking, speculative mind of
literature... If
a novel can't deliver Monroe's beauty, a force that profoundly shaped
how people behaved toward her, it can, better than any film, give us her
interior world.
—The New York Times Book Review
From the Publisher
La crítica ha dicho...
«¿Puede ser la seducción innata ante una cámara la fuente del nacimiento de un doble? O incluso, ¿puede la imagen capturada por la cámara/espejo tomar cuerpo en la realidad, ante la mirada de deseo de los otros? Blonde de Joyce Carol Oates ahonda indirectamente en estas cuestiones a través de uno de los grandes iconos de la cultura popular del siglo XX.»-Alan Salvadó, Diari de Tarragona
«Nadie ha plasmado en palabras a Marilyn de una manera más brillante que Oates.»-Sunday Times
«Oates nos hace vivir la vida de Marilyn Monroe. Y es un verdadero infierno. Y es brillante. Porque nos querremos arrancar los ojos para dejar de mirar, y es imposible.»-Ann Patchett, The Times
«Novelistas como John Updike, Philip Roth, Tom Wolfe y Normal Mailer han luchado a brazo partido por el título de Gran Novelista Americano. Pero quizás se equivoca. Puede que ese título pertenezca a una mujer.»-The Herald
«Blonde es lo que todas las biografías de Monroe deberían ser pero no son: una reinvención fabulosa de la vida de una reinvención fabulosa, un espejo para nuestras vanidades colectivas y un libro que se devora.»-Evening Standard
«Oates no ha tenido ningún miedo a la hora de abordar un asunto que atraviesa casi cualquier aspecto de la historia de mediados del siglo XX [...]. Un libro potente e hipnótico.»-Literary Review
«Un logro épico, una obra maestra y una obra de arte concebida de un modo tan emocionante que a veces pareciera que es algo más que meramente un libro.»-Independent on Sunday
«Dramática, provocativa e inquietantemente sugerente, Blonde es tan explosiva como su protagonista, la legendaria Marilyn Monroe. En una prosa impresionista de elevada potencia, Oates crea un retrato sorprendente y conmovedor de la estrella mítica y de la sociedad que la creó y le falló.»-Publishers Weekly
«Oates rebosa testosterona, y este libro es agresivo y atrevido. Quiere que miremos a un personaje mítico con nuevos ojos, pero no con los de la cámara, sino con nuestros ojos más humanos.»-Philip Weiss, The New York Observer
«Oates se libera de los corsés de una nueva narración periodística de hechos archiconocidos y crea con verdadera maestría una potente tragedia norteamericana profundamente inquietante.»-Susan Tekulve, Book Magazine
«Una magnífica obra, escrita con parte de esa frenética inspiración con la que Marilyn Monroe vivió su vida. Si no ha leído aún a Joyce Carol Oates, no lo deje por más tiempo. Empiece aquí y ahora.»-Susan Jeffreys, The Independent
What the critics said:
«Oates makes us live the life of Marilyn Monroe. And it’s truly hell. And it’s brilliant. Because we will want to tear out our eyes to stop looking, but it’s impossible.» - Ann Patchett, The Times.
«Dramatic, provocative and eerily suggestive, Blonde is as explosive as her protagonist, the legendary Marilyn Monroe. In high-powered Impressionist prose, Oates creates a striking and poignant portrait of the mythical star and the society that created her and failed her.»- Publishers Weekly.
«Oates is bursting with testosterone, and her latest book is aggressive and sassy. She wants us to look at a mythical character with new eyes, but not with those of the camera, but with our most human eyes.»- Philip Weiss, New York Observer.
«When it came to Marilyn Monroe, the audience always stayed on the outside and looked in, but lo and behold, in this exciting new novel, Blonde, Joyce Carol Oates reverses that process by stepping inside the tortured psyche of the actress to finish off a disturbingly intimate portrait.»- John D. Thomas, Playboy.
«A magnificent play, written with part of that frenzied inspiration with which Marilyn Monroe lived her life. If you haven't read Joyce Carol Oates yet, don't put it off any longer. Start here and now.» -Susan Jeffreys, The Independent. "
