Read an Excerpt

"Blond Norma Jeane spoke in exclamations to hide her growing
anxiety! Was she being watched? By hidden eyes? Behind the restless
klieg lights scanning the crowd? At times, raked by the light? V's
handsome face appeared bleached out, a fine-wrinkled parchment
mask. His eyes were just sockets. What was the purpose in being
here? A sweat droplet, coarsened by talcum powder, inched downward
between Norma Jeane's big beautiful breasts in the snug red dress.
Always there is a script. But not always known to you."

The life of Marilyn Monroe is pretty well-stoked territory, if you
ask me. The blonde goddess icon with the silversweet smile and
figure that drove the world wild is brought back to you courtesy of
that remarkably prolific author of the American novel. Joyce Carol
Oates' BLONDE is a tour-de-force that attempts to take us inside
the head of the actress who suffered the slings and arrows of
Hollywood life in full view of the postwar public who alternately
adored and despised her.

This treatment, a novelistic approach to the celebrity biography,
takes us inside the pretty head of the great star and spends its
first hundred pages laying out the reality of life with a crazy
mother, living close to the poverty level --- immediately, we feel
for this girl. Granted, anybody who has read any of the many other
tomes on Monroe's life will find this familiar territory. However,
the introspective aspect of this inner monologue going on inside
the girl's head, the honesty of what Oates contemplates were
Monroe's feelings about her lovers, husbands, friends and
associates, makes BLONDE something we haven't exactly read before.
It is like the new BEOWULF, a more contemporary telling of an old
story.

Monroe's life is the stuff of American legend and, as she has done
with the Kennedys and serial killers, Oates mines this territory
with great confidence and aplomb. In the hands of a lesser writer,
this would be a silly book. But Oates understands the importance of
the confessional element of the book and how it fits into our
therapy-honesty-obsessed culture. Although long, the book is
completely compelling --- but what else do you expect from the ripe
mind of our most hardworking novelist? BLONDE is a very
contemporary book about the ageless story of a starlet who was
martyred by the town that created her in order to make money. How
much more American can you make a story?