30 Books Before I'm 30: Blonde

Blonde by Joyce Carol Oates

"Impossible to know the simplest of truths. Except that death is no solution to the riddle of life."

This book is a fictionalized version of Marilyn Monroe's life, but the problem is that Oates did (presumably) a lot of research, so I was a little unclear about which parts were legitimate fiction. But maybe that's the point? That no one can ever truly know the whole of a person, even if that person is wildly famous. I liked that at the end of the book I still didn't know whether Norma Jean/Marilyn was a smart woman who knew how to please people (mostly men, though Oates points out that Miller's parents like her-- a detail that falls into the "I don't know if this is actually true but I wish it was" category) or a dumb woman that was popular because she capitalized on her sexuality. I know I am super clichéd by commenting that it's possible no one knew her, and even that she had no idea who she was or what she had to offer to people. (Yuck. By making that observation, I feel like I'm back in Intro to Literature my freshman year of undergrad).

Before reading this book, I knew practically nothing about Monroe, except that her real name was Norma Jean Baker and that she was married to Joe DiMaggio and Arthur Miller (who was apparently really tall, which surprised me because I always imagined him as a teeny man with coke-bottle glasses) and that she probably slept with JFK. I do, however, know that Oates often writes about women who are victimized or brutalized by men, so I guessed what the tone of this book would be. And it was. The stupid psychologist in me kept imagining what it would be like to have Norma Jean/Marilyn as a client, and I kept thinking of how her outcome made perfect sense if even half of Oates' fictionalized history was true. 

Things I Liked: I think this book is a page-turner. Although it dragged on at times, I was at times amazed to look at the page number and find myself 20 pages from where I started (which is a gigantic difference from The Madness of Mary Lincoln which was nearly 1/7th shorter but took me four times the time to finish). 

I liked that sometimes I liked Norma Jean/Marilyn and felt like she was sympathetic, and at other times I hated her and thought she was a self-centered monster. I always find it to be a sign of a good book when I have an emotional reaction to it (an emotion other than boredom, that is). 

Things I Didn't Like: The book is 738 pages long, and Oates is, I feel, unnecessarily verbose. She uses the same metaphors, similes, and adjective multiple times (though I didn't think to make note of it to use as an example). It made me wonder about Oates' editor and what the novel looked like before it was edited. How much more could there have been?

The book is also sometimes nonlinear and disjointed. Oates incorporates conversations that I wasn't quite sure were real (by "real" I mean, non-fiction in the sense that the people could have had them rather than being dead or nonexistent). She also used odd nicknames for people, such as the first initial of their last name. My guess is that she did it so the reader wouldn't be taken out of the story thinking, "Tony Curtis really hated Marilyn Monroe!" (despite his real-life assertion that he fathered a baby that she then aborted). It was just annoying because I kept having to look things up on Wikipedia. 

This Book Would be Good to Read: Before bed (the chapters are short), though if you don't read much at a time this book will take awhile.

I Would Recommend This Book to: Anyone interested in film or Hollywood during the 1950s (spoiler alert: there was much use of the "casting couch").

If This Book Sounds Interesting, You Might Also Like: The movies Niagara (1953), Gentlemen Prefer Blondes (1953), or The Misfits (1961). The latter was written for Monroe by her then-husband Arthur Miller. The former is a shockingly good performance (for me this means minimal breathy baby voicedness) and is on Netflix streaming right now. If you're not sure you want to put in the time for this book but are intrigued by Oates as a writer, I recommend the short story "Where are you going, where have you been?" 

P.S. I carted my paperback of Blonde with me for six moves and before two weeks ago it was in book-store-returnable condition (the spine wasn't even broken!) but ONE DAY of carting the book around with me at Disneyland (hence the picture) the book got wet on Pirates of the Caribbean and half of it expanded to twice its original size. Despite spending half an hour in the bathroom blow drying it, it took almost a week for it to actually dry off. True story.

Up Next: Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte-- another Kindle book. Is it shocking that I don't know anything about the plot? I've never even seen a film version (not even from the BBC)!