BLONDE by JOYCE CAROL OATES MARILYN MONROE HB

Fictionalized biography of Marilyn Monroe begins with her adolescent troubles in foster homes after her mother is institutionalized and ends--after she has been disappointed by a series of hopeless men--with her squalid death at 36. In an interview in Publishers Weekly, Joyce Carol Oates says she saw in Monroe "girls of my own background....I'm from a working-class background, and everything in my life seems to have been an accident." Her aim in the novel, she said, was "to show what [Marilyn Monroe] was like from the inside....the quintessential American heroine." Nominated for a 2000 National Book Award. A New York Times Notable Book for the year 2000. 738 pages, 9" x 6" x 1" Publisher's Note In her most ambitious work to date, 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 twentieth-century American star. Industry reviews "...BLONDE is fat, messy and fierce. It's part gothic, part kaleidoscopic novel of ideas, part lurid celebrity potboiler, and it is seldom less than engrossing....Long fascinated by the erotics of dominance and submission, Oates has often tracked this interest into the territory of the Grand Guignol....With Monroe..., Oates can't possibly go too far; her subject is of Cinemascope proportions, an undisputed titan in America's mythic imagination, so she can't be too vulgar or grandiose." Miller "Despite Oates' many disclaimers, the emergent portrayal is one of scorn for Marilyn Monroe. Without denying Oates' right to convey it, one may, with equal authority, assert one's indignation." Rechy "[T]he book equivalent of a tacky television mini-series....Certainly the earlier portions of BLONDE, where Ms. Oates is describing the young Norma Jeane's coming of age, are the most persuasive parts of this book....When Norma Jeane Baker becomes the Marilyn Monroe we know from movies and news accounts, however, a note of crude voyeurism creeps into the book's narration, and we begin to wonder just how much Ms. Oates has made up for the mercenary purpose of sensationalizing her story....Ms. Oates gives us...pages and pages of the sort of heavy-breathing romance-novel prose one would think beneath a writer of her distinction." New York Times - Michiko Kakutani (03/31/2000) Add 5.00 shipping US. I accept most forms of payment and will combine shipments whenever practical.