Blonde by Joyce Carol Oates (with NEW introduction by Elaine Showalter)
Requirements: ePUB Reader | 1.6 MB | Version: Retail
Overview: The National Book Award finalist and national bestseller exploring the life and legend of Marilyn Monroe.
—Now a Netflix Film starring Ana de Armas, Adrien Brody, Bobby Cannavale and Julianne Nicholson
In one of her most ambitious works, 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 startlingly intimate and rich, Norma Jeane tells her own story of an emblematic American artist—intensely conflicted and driven—who had 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 20th-century American star.
Genre: Biographical Fiction
As Andrew Dominik’s Blonde hits Netflix, Joyce Carol Oates talks about the novel that inspired the film, Ana de Armas’ “spellbinding” performance, and why this is a #MeToo movie.
- Starlet, teen bride, ward of Los Angeles county, bombshell, divorcee, nude pin-up, would-be dramatic actress, FBI surveillance target, movie star, addict, platinum blonde, sex symbol, introvert, girl in a white halter-neck dress enjoying the breeze from a subway grating in the steam heat of a New York summer, acting student, avid reader, sequin-clad goddess breathlessly wishing the president happy birthday, death by misadventure, fantasy, orphan, cautionary tale, possible suicide, potential homicide; Marilyn Monroe is one of the most photographed and mythologised figures of the 20th century.
A melange of fact, folklore, and falsehood, the story of Monroe’s life has transcended the specifics and become apocryphal as her biography undergoes constant reevaluation and retelling. History evolves into legend, legend evolves into myth. What remains is a grand American narrative; more metaphor than flesh and blood.
In her acclaimed novel Blonde (1999), celebrated American author Joyce Carol Oates managed the feat of reclaiming Norma Jeane Baker from the realm of mythological archetype while preserving the ambiguity that clings to her cosmically famous alter-ego, Marilyn Monroe. Told through a medley of perspectives – from Norma’s interior voice, a plurality of people who enter her life, FBI reports and scraps of the actress’s poetry – Blonde succeeds in bringing Monroe viscerally alive. Distilling what Oates has described as the “poetic truth” of Monroe’s life, the novel retains the complexities and incongruities she embodied as a shivering, lost soul, grappling with her status as a “sex symbol” in the brutal scrutiny of the public gaze, a fiercely intelligent actor with a unique genius and luminosity, and all the other myriad manifestations of her deeply fragmented psyche and persona.
The much-anticipated upcoming film adaptation of Oates’ epic, haunting novel is written and directed by Andrew Dominik and stars AnOther Magazine cover star Ana de Armas as Monroe and Adrian Brody as her third husband, playwright Arthur Miller. In the wake of the movie’s rapturous reception at Venice Film Festival (where it reportedly received a 14-minute standing ovation).
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