Blonde: A Novel [Paperback]

Joyce Carol Oates (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: April 10, 2001

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.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

Penzler Pick, April 2000: It is surprising and shocking to realize that Joyce Carol Oates, one of the great writers living today, has never made The New York Times bestseller list (at least not in recent memory). Far less talented (and less famous) authors have made it while she, in all likelihood not caring much, has been shut out. That could easily change with her new novel, Blonde, which may be the masterpiece of a staggeringly distinguished career.

This 700-plus-page tome is based on the life of (you guessed it) Marilyn Monroe. In fictional form, with names changed (husband Joe DiMaggio is referred to as "The Ex-Athlete," Arthur Miller as "The Playwright," John F. Kennedy as "The President," for example), this may be the most accurate and compelling portrait of this beautiful and complex woman that one is ever likely to read.

But why discuss it on the mystery page, you might well be asking yourself. It was the author's intent to structure the book as a mystery, and of course she succeeds, as she seems to succeed at everything she attempts in the world of letters. And there is a murder, apparently arranged by a secret government bureau (FBI? CIA?), although that could be the victim's hallucination. Of course, it could also be both real and hallucinated (remember, even paranoids have enemies).

If you like biographies, you'll like Blonde. If you like novels, you'll like Blonde. If you like mysteries, you'll like Blonde. And if you fear that more than 700 pages by one of the greatest of living literary lions might be tough slogging, here's a little excerpt from the chapter titled "The President's Pimp:"

Sure he was a pimp.

But not just any pimp. Not him!

He was a pimp par excellence. A pimp nonpareil. A pimp sui generis. A pimp with a wardrobe, and a pimp with style. A pimp with a classy Brit accent. Posterity would honor him as the President's Pimp.

A man of pride and stature: the President's Pimp.

At Rancho Mirage in Palm Springs in March 1962 there was the President poking him in the ribs with a low whistle. "That blonde. That's Marilyn Monroe?"

He told the President yes it was. Monroe, a friend of his. Luscious, eh? But a little crazy.

Thoughtfully, the President asked, "Have I dated her yet?"

Nothing inaccessible about Joyce Carol Oates, especially in this most readable and relentlessly fascinating study of the lovely woman with whom the whole country was at least a little in love. --Otto Penzler --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From Publishers Weekly

Dramatic, provocative and unsettlingly suggestive, Blonde is as much a bombshell as its protagonist, the legendary Marilyn Monroe. Writing in highly charged, impressionistic prose, Oates creates a striking and poignant portrait of the mythic star and the society that made and failed her. In a five-part narrative corresponding to the stages of Monroe's life, Oates renders the squalid circumstances of Norma Jeane's upbringing: the damage inflicted by a psychotic mother and the absence of an unknown (and perpetually yearned for) father, and the desolation of four years in an orphanage and betrayal in a foster home. She reviews the young Monroe's rocky road to stardom, involving sexual favors to studio chiefs who thought her sluttish, untalented and stupid, while they reaped millions from her movies; she conveys the essence of Monroe's three marriages and credibly establishes Monroe's insatiable need for security and love. To a remarkable extent, she captures Monroe's breathy voice and vulnerable stutter, and the almost schizoid personality that produced her mercurial behavior. (Emotionally volatile, fey, self-absorbed, and frightened, Monroe could also be tough, outspoken, vulgar--her notorious perfectionism a shield against the ridicule and failure that Oates claims she continually feared.) As Oates demonstrated early in her career in Them, and in many books since, she has an impressive ability to empathize with people in the underclass, and her nuanced portrait of "MM" carries psychological truth. Oates sees Monroe as doomed from the beginning by heredity and fate, and hurried to her death by a combination of cynical Hollywood exploitation, dependence on drugs and flawed choices of lovers and mates: JFK's cruel manipulation and shadowy intervention is the final blow to her fragile ego and her very existence. It is no surprise when, at the end, Oates subscribes to a controversial theory about Monroe's demise. Meanwhile, she draws a sharp-eyed picture of Hollywood during the 1940s and '50s; introduces a cast of movie-town personalities, from actors and agents to producers, directors and studio heads; creates intriguing character sketches of Joe DiMaggio and Arthur Miller; and conveys a nation's fascination with a cultural icon. The inevitable drawbacks in a book of this sort--deliberate omission of events, imaginative reconstruction of public and other events from Monroe's point of view--are problematical but not crucial. In an author's note, Oates declares that her novel "is not intended as a historic document." Yet she illuminates the source of her subject's long emotional torment as few factual biographies ever do. 100,000 first printing; major ad/promo; Literary Guild alternate; simultaneous Harper Audio; 5-city author tour. (Apr.)
Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Paperback: 752 pages
• Publisher: Harper Perennial (April 10, 2001)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 006093493X
• ISBN-13: 978-0060934934
• Product Dimensions: 6.1 x 1.2 x 9.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.8 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 3.4 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (183 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #202,879 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Joyce Carol Oates is the author of more than 70 books, including novels, short story collections, poetry volumes, plays, essays, and criticism, including the national bestsellers We Were the Mulvaneys and Blonde. Among her many honors are the PEN/Malamud Award for Excellence in Short Fiction and the National Book Award. Oates is the Roger S. Berlind Distinguished Professor of the Humanities at Princeton University, and has been a member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters since 1978.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

36 of 38 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Blonde: an honest view of a life, September 23, 2004

By 

Karen Tims (Mississippi, USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Blonde: A Novel (Paperback)

I was never a Marilyn Monroe fan. I would never even watch a movie of hers. I didn't want to jump on what I thought was a bandwagon of people who loved her because she was so tragic. I was never interested in the dumb blonde sexpot thing. I've always preferred the more exotic Joan Crawford or Rita Hayworth. I knew Monroe's story but it never became personal for me. It never spoke to me.

Oates' words spoke to me. I have a love/hate relationship with her work. I like it but it often annoys me. I also said the first couple of pages had me thinking I'd never get through the book. Well, after that I never wanted to put it down. I was totally engrossed for all 738 pages. I often read several books at once. In this case, I wasn't interested in reading books that I had just gotten in from my favorite authors. There was just no comparison.

Oates breaks some "rules". She throws in dialogue imagined and real. Sometimes, you're not sure who the story teller is. You have to "listen" as it unfolds. Sometimes, the story is told as poetry. Sometimes a chapter is a page long. A great thing about this is... she doesn't do anything to the point where it's annoying. For example, sentences without verbs--which I always notice and it personally drives me nuts. She does it sometimes, but not on every page. She does it enough that it's needed and not jarring.

If Oates wants you to feel like the character-- frightened, sad, confused, numb, glad, she weaves her words so that the experience of reading enables that feeling. You don't just view it as an outsider, you are a participant.

I could relate to the character personally. I understand being smart and wanting to be smarter and reading all you can to know as much as everyone else but always feeling inferior, always sounding like the airhead. I can grasp that, hold it in my hand and KNOW that experience. I understand being able to read philosophers and have great opinions but never being able to verbally express myself about any of it in any kind of coherent manner.

Also, she portrays Monroe as multidimensional. Lost people often don't know who they are. None of us are always one thing, are we? We are often contradictions of ourselves.

I always thought Monroe played herself. I didn't consider that maybe the dumb blonde was a brilliant talent, something she gave them, almost like a joke or a slap in the face. I also understand being able to use that, to fool people with it, allowing it to be an advantage and then being able to offer a beautiful surprise for anyone who is special, more deserving.

I've ordered all of Monroe's movies. I've got some catching up to do.

I HIGHLY recommend this book.

29 of 31 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars This heartbreaker of a book, January 22, 2001

By 

Jessica G Schreiber "JGG" (Port Angeles, WA USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Blonde: A Novel (Hardcover)

Marilyn Monroe died when I was in my late teens. It has always intrigued me why her legend lives on and on in a world where beautiful blondes are as plentiful and ephemeral as butterflies. What was it about Marilyn Monroe that has inspired the books, the songs, the photographic retrospectives decades after she's been gone? Having just finished "Blonde" by Joyce Carol Oates, I think I know.

From her first to her last breath, the fictionalized life of Norma Jeane Baker exudes tragedy. Her childhood is brutal, puberty puts her at risk, her early marriage is a fiasco, her treatment by her agent, her photographer, and the studio bosses unpardonably exploitive. When she finally achieves fame, Norma Jeane is too fragile and broken to savor it. She becomes her insecurities. Even those who love her and wish her well (husband playwright Arthur Miller) can't save her. She can only bring them down in her self destructive nose dive. If there is any truth to her treatment by President John Kennedy, he was the most dispicable of all. Oates never uses the image of a candle in the wind made famous by Elton John, but the metaphor works. Norma Jeane, aka Marilyn Monroe, never ceases to be a fascinating case study. Towards the end the writing gets a little sloppy and the reader grows impatient for the author to get on with the end, which one knows will be horrible, and yet when it happens it will break your heart . You are sorry the book has ended because you can never get too much of the central character, her amazing life story and the stormy times in which she lived.

30 of 35 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Blonde: A Novel, March 31, 2000

By A Customer

This review is from: Blonde: A Novel (Hardcover)

In BLONDE, this remarkable, epic new novel by Joyce Carol Oates, we come to understand the larger-than-life personality of Marilyn Monroe vis a vis the elusive, nearly invisible person of Norma Jeane Baker. Oates mediates between the dual consciousnesses of Marilyn/Norma Jeane, and renders a mesmerizing hybrid of public celebrity and private martyr. In the especially engrossing early sections of the book, Oates explores the devastating childhood and abandonment that Norma Jeane endured, and conjures old Hollywood in its lurid and fallen glory. Oates also offers new impressions of the men in Marilyn's life that shaped her vision of herself as a woman: Joe DiMaggio, Arthur Miller, and--to a lesser degree--JFK all feature in this book in ways that will surprise even Marilyn aficionados. What makes this book so exceptional is that Oates manages to breathe new, believable life into the technicolor figure that all of have come to know as nothing more than a celluloid fantasy. This book is truly exceptional, and is undoubtedly the crowning achievement of Oates's prolific career. I've read every one of her books, and I think her mastery is uniquely evident in BLONDE.