Marilyn, a biography

Rating:
Summary: Norman Mailer's meditation on the life of Marilyn Monroe
Review: "Marilyn, a Biography" was Norman Mailer's first attempt at biography, but this is really much more than a meditation on the woman who was the major sex symbol of 20th Century American Popular Culture. Mailer's goal is to attempt to understand a beautiful, complex, and tragic woman, and he is particularly taken with the contradictions Monroe's life presents to us. He also presents her as a symbol of the bizarre decade of the 1950s in which she made her impact. What you have to keep in mind it that Mailer makes no distinction between fact and speculation as they are merged his mind. Mailer has the novelist's desire to connect the dots and complete the picture, and certainly the splash the publication of this book made, a quarter-century after the publication of "The Naked and the Dead," would appeal to the author's legendary ego.

However, in addition to being a biography this volume is also a pictorial retrospective of an actress whose greatest love affair may well have been with the camera. During the 1950s Marilyn Monroe was the most photographed person on the face of the planet. During that time Lawrence Schiller was a young photographer who would take the celebrate color photographs of a nude Monroe frolicking in and around a pool on the shot on the set of "Something's Got to Give," the film from which she was fired shortly before her death. Years later Schiller arranged a photographic exhibit from the stills of many major photographers who had worked with her, such as Richard Avedon and Bert Stern. The exhibit was called "Marilyn Monroe: The Legend and the Truth," and toured the United States and Japan. The photographs arranged arranged here as a photograph essay to offer a counterpoint to Mailer's text.

The resulting combination is certainly provocative, and, one can hope, insightful on several points. The problem is that we have no way of really knowing which points are the valid ones in this speculative biography. This is not a book to be read to know about the life of Marilyn Monroe, but rather an attempt to capture her essence and have it make sense. "Real" biographers and historians will dismiss "Marilyn" as mere sophistry; but the Sophists maintained that truth could not be known, if known it could not be understood, and if understood it could not be communicated. Ergo, all biographies and histories are sophistry, and Mailer's "Marilyn" just blatantly embraces the charge.

Rating:
Summary: Excellent!
Review: I loved this book. Norman Mailer wrote this book like poetry. I could not put it down.

I am so glad you found it for me even though it was out of print. I would have hated to miss reading this book.

Also, the book was used but was in perfect condition. Thanks for everything.

Everyone who loves Marilyn Monroe should read this book.

Rating:
Summary: Excellent!
Review: I loved this book. Norman Mailer wrote this book like poetry. I could not put it down.

I am so glad you found it for me even though it was out of print. I would have hated to miss reading this book.

Also, the book was used but was in perfect condition. Thanks for everything.

Everyone who loves Marilyn Monroe should read this book.