“Hollywood is a place where they'll pay you a thousand dollars for a kiss and fifty cents for your soul.” – Marilyn Monroe.
“He was telling her, `Fifty bucks baby.” `Only…f-fifty?’ She’d envisioned one hundred. Even more. `Only fifty.’ `I thought, once – you s-said -’. `Sure. And maybe we can get more later. For a magazine feature. But right now the only offer we have is Ace Hollywood Calendars. Take it or leave it.’…. Removing her clothes with slow fumbling fingers behind the tattered Chinese screen, where on other occasions she’d changed into pinup costumes….Removing her clothes and standing at last naked except for her white sandals with a medium heel. Removing her dignity. Not that there was much dignity remaining.” In these words Joyce Carol Oates described the feelings of Marilyn Monroe while she was being photographed for her famous nude shot for publication in the Playboy magazine. Blonde is one of the classic novels written on the life of Marilyn Monroe by the celebrated author Joyce Carol Oates. Monroe is not only one of the most beloved personalities of America, but also one of the greatest figures of the twentieth century world. Blonde is extremely readable. Every stage of her life has been captured in a highly interesting and lively manner by this great author in her great work. Oates describes every details of the life of Norma Jeane Baker, from her childhood days with her grandmother to the prime of her life. Oates does not believe that the tragic end of Marilyn Monroe was due to accidental overdose, or intentional suicide. Monroe’s intelligence inspires wisdom, her tragedy is shared by all and sundry as a personal grief. Her beauty and intelligence has brought great players, writers and statesmen to their knees. Oates recounts all of Marilyn's affairs with graphic details, including her passionate affairs with President Kennedy.Oates captures a highly charged moment of this affairs - in a New York hotel room, the President pressing Marilyn's head down, down, down as he speaks with Castro on the telephone. Oates examines in details what made Marilyn so desirable and irresistible to men. She deals with this aspect of Monroe in a chronological fashion by focusing on various developmental phases of her psyche and body. Although initially Marilyn hated her body , later on she loves her body with Narcissistic indulgence. She takes care of the colour of her secret hairs to match the same with her blonde appearance, even though she had to face complications for that. Oates examines her sexuality with constant reference to Marilyn's body, her looks, her skin, her breasts,etc. She writes –“…and she kicked and thrashed as with a shout of triumph he pinned her shoulders to the bed, tugging open her housedress or peeling up her sweater, nuzzling her bare, beautiful breasts, soft bouncy breasts with pinkish-brown nipples like jelly beans, and her rounded little tummy covered in a fine pale fuzz and always so warm, and the burnished chestnut hairs, so curly, damp and ticklish at the base of her belly, a surprising bush for a girl of her age. `Oh, Baby-Doll. Ohhhh.’ Only a writer of the height of Oates can describe the sexuality of the greatest sex symbol of the twentieth century so vividly. In Blonde, one finds Marilyn Monroe as a child
craving for affection, A mother striving for a baby, a wife craving for love, and a sex symbol craving for fame and attention. It was a crude irony that she missed all although she had almost embraced all her cravings. Marilyn Monroe has attained immortality through her death, and Blonde is an
extraordinary tribute to this extraordinary woman by another extraordinary woman of our times.
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