This book has taken a turn that’s somehow fascinating and quite boring at the same time. I’ve started part two of the book since my last review and its all focused on how different authors and artists have portrayed Marilyn to the public after her death. It gets a little boring only reading about other authors and not reading about Marilyn herself, because that’s what you’d expect when picking up a book entitled “The Many Lives Of Marilyn Monroe”, but when you start to analyze the information yourself it becomes remarkably interesting. The book has kind of always been like this, the actual reading or the way the author writes isn’t thrilling, but she provokes thoroughly engaging thought that’s based off the information she’s gathered which makes it worth the read.
“Producing The Life” or “Part Two” of the book begins on page 71, and we can begin with how Marilyn produced her own life. “Marilyn Monroe was not completely natural. She seems to have developed out of a performance that was deliberately played”(72), this is a quote I absolutely agree with. Personally, I think Marilyn was partially responsible for not only creating her persona, but exploiting it as well. She created the character that she became (a sexed-up dumb blonde), used the character in every role for as long as it’d be successful, and even used it to her advantage in her personal life and the press. For example, there’s a famous photo of Marilyn in the backseat of a car crying and clutching a handkerchief after a press conference announcing her divorce from baseball star Joe DiMaggio. It’s quite possible that she was just really crying but she looks insanely photogenic, I think she was obviously upset but also knew she was posing for photographers. An author named Barbara Leaming wrote “the entire press conference was one of Monroe’s better performances, in which she was weeping crocodile tears to gain public support for what would be an unpopular divorce from a national hero”(76). So now that it’s clear Marilyn didn’t even make an effort herself to let the world know the real her, (at least in my opinion), we can get into how and why authors wrote about her the way they did.
You could count the authors that have written a book about Monroe by the dozen, including Guiles; Mailer; Miller; Oates; and obviously Churchwell. We’re going to focus on Mailer and Oates, who both wrote works of fiction based on Marilyn. Mailer wrote a fictional story based of Guiles biography because, according to him, “what is the point in biography if it only tells us what we already believe?”(116). That's pretty self explanatory and he never really tried to defend himself against anyone who criticized him for writing about a real woman and manipulating her life this way. He either didn't see how it was messed up or just didn't care. Oates however did care and tried to make sure that her book “Blonde” was “read solely as a work of fiction, not as a biography”(118); but that didn't stop critics from giving her (what I find to be) some harshly honest critiques. I agree mostly with a review stating she was “playing to reader’s voyeuristic interest in a real-life story while using the liberties of a novel to tart up the facts”(121).
Everything in this review that isn't a quote are conclusions I came to on my own after thinking about all of the information Sarah Churchwell presented to me in this book, kind of like a puzzle. That's why I would recommend this book to anyone who likes biographies, if you're really into any kind of fiction or adventure or thrillers this just won't work for you. This isn't necessarily an interesting book on its own, you make interesting. I personally loved reading this work but I loved Marilyn Monroe, Biographies, and books that allow free thought and provide the resources for it prior to ever picking it up, so I’d only suggest it to someone who loves those same things.
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