Rating: 
Summary: Oates goes Hollywood!
Review: While I have always admired Joyce Carol Oates, I read her novels infrequently because they give me the creeps. The sense of impending doom is so pervasive, so completely and artfully evoked, and so inevitable that unless you enjoy fear, you don't go there too often. Blonde meets all expectations in this regard. Ever wonder if Hollywood producers really are rapists? Well, they were in the 50's and 60's. And what do the stars do when they're not in front of the camera? All the stories you've heard are true. What's it like to be a star? It's hell on earth. JFK fan? You won't be after you read this book. Joe DiMaggio? You don't want to know.Monroe is portrayed as a hollow vessel. She let men control her, make love to her, photograph her, and marry her, but you never get the sense that she made any of her own choices. She didn't even get rich in the process, either! She made $20,000 for "Gentlemen Prefer Blondes," a movie that grossed in the millions and for which her co-star Jane Russell was paid $100,000. And why? Because the only people Monroe had around her were those who lusted after her and needed to limit her power, probably because they also feared her for her beauty, which was extraordinary. Studio physicians made sure she had plenty of narcotics. Studio executives told her she was under suspicion by the House Un-American Activities Committee and her career would only survive if she did what they told her. It was the Hollywood version of barefoot and pregnant. She had few friends, none of them women, and the closest thing she ever got to having a mentor was in Arthur Miller, whom she divorced after just a few years. Princess Diana kept coming to mind as I read this book. Maybe Oates will address that subject someday, and I hope she does.
Rating:
Summary: Fascinating, yet horrifying
Review: Joyce Carol Oates is, undeniably, one of the greatest writers of her generation. Of those who have read this NOVEL, (I emphasize, as does the author) some have found it disgusting and cruel, offensive in the way it portrays historical figures, among them Arthur Miller, Joe DiMaggio, Charlie Chaplin Jr, and Marlon Brando. Honestly, I find her portrayals a lot more accurate and real than biographical ones. It was widely known that Monroe and DiMaggio had a tempestuous marriage, and most likely he did raise his hand against her, as he was especially controlling about her career, yet loved her so deeply, he continued to place roses at her grave until he himself died. Although it was widely rumored that she had an affair with Brando, they were nothing more than just friends, as several close sourceshave attested. And many "notoriously heterosexual" men in Hollywood, like Cass Chaplin, had homosexual affairs, not that anyone will testify to it. Oates portrays Monroe/Baker as a confused, emotionally disturbed, talented actress. Which she was, without a doubt. Her own mother suffered from mental illness, and no doubt it was passed along to poor Norma Jeane, and her terrible childhood didn't help matters much either. To be an actress in Monroe's time you merely needed connections and looks to get to the top, and sometimes you had to exploit yourself. Oates insists in the actresses voice, throughout the entire novel, that "Marilyn" is an image, a creation of the studios, nothing more. "That's not me, that's Marilyn" We are hearing Norma Jeane Baker's tale, the woman behind the legend, who was as hated and persecuted as she was adored. Remember as you read this, that it's fiction, as the author reminds you in her preface.
Rating: 
Summary: Cruel novel, messily written
Review: Since Ms. Oates has boldly claimed that during the writing of this book she felt what it was like to "be" Norma Jeane, and came to feel that only she could tell her story "from the inside" (starling statements indeed, yet there they are in her own words), it's difficult not to chastise the result, a novel which is told, in places, in the first person voice, supposedly that of Norma Jeane. Norma Jeane despising herself, hating her own beautiful body, judging herself, insulting herself repeatedly as a "cow" and much worse! Ms. Oates claims she did extensive research on the life of Norma Jeane/Marilyn Monroe, yet there occur, throughout, not embellishments but total distortions, reversals. Using actual names, Ms. Oates turns two men who were notoriously heterosexual in real life into detestable gay lovers. Ms.Oates even allows glaring anachronisms in order to express her disdain. Another despicable character is a Monroe impersonator, who strips entirely on stage, turning out to be a leering, hideous man. Such stage nudity was not possible at the time. Strange reversals indeed. Beyond all that, the novel is badly written, reckless, offensively sexually violent about a woman whose actual name Ms. Oates uses--Marilyn Monroe, a woman who did lead, finally, a tragic life and doesn't deserve added horrors, however fictive. (Ms. Oates seems to want her book taken both ways, as the voice of Norma Jeane--how it "felt to be her"--and as total invention.) All the characters become only names relying for any "life" solely on their real-life antecedents. It seems to me that even Ms. Oates' most loyal fans would be insulted by this messily written book and that she will surely not gain new admirers with it. It is a cruel novel, told in pages and pages of unedited writing.
Rating: 
Summary: Genre-bending
Review: Marilyn Monroe and Ronald Reagan have several things in common: alliterative monikers, acting talent, and an American public with strong opinions about and an enduring interest in their lives and times. I mention this because I believe that in this book Oates does what another talented author, Morris, failed to do in his fact/fiction Reagan bio: pen a fictionalized biography without interjecting herself as an observer in the story and adding jarringly irrelevant information about her own half-fact, half-fiction alter ego. At the beginning Oates asserts that this is a novel--and it's just that and pretends to be nothing else unlike Morris' tome in which the reader is left wondering what is real and what is an illusion.... Kudos. (Or, bravo!)
Rating:
Summary: Just more trash...
Review: Yet again is another book that makes Marilyn Monroe out to be someone she completely IS NOT. All 708 pages written by a woman who wrote a book on boxing. What a contrast. Ms. Oates herself said that she drew most of the basis for this novel out of watching Marilyn's movies. That would be obvious, noting how she portrayed Marilyn to be this breathless, manipulative, promiscuous, dim-witted, dumb-blonde rather than the woman that she really was - a troubled, vulnerable, insecure, lonely woman who never got the chance to find true happiness. The people of the world that have negative things to say about Marilyn should just let her rest in peace. People talked and said nasty things about her when she was living - people should have enough respect to let her be! The portrayal of Marilyn is completely opposite and the maybe-she-did, maybe-she-didn't scenarios that Ms. Oates created have no basis of truth behind them. Marilyn wanted to be respected as an actress, and in many of her movies, her acting genious is apparant. I have read many, many books on Marilyn and I am an avid collecter of anything Marilyn, as well as I belong to many Marilyn Monroe groups and fan clubs, and I must say that the general consensus of all of us who really understand Marilyn agree that this is a book we will NOT be adding to our collections. If you want to know the real truth about who Marilyn REALLY was, then I recommend that this book NOT be the one that you refer to. There are many, many wonderful, insightful books about the wonderfully talented and beautiful Marilyn, however, this is not one of them.
Rating:
Summary: A GEM OF A BOOK
Review: What an amazing author and such incredible prose. The book is a fictionalized account of a famous person - what an interesting approach. This book made me examine feminity and look into myself as to what is reality and the different roles we play in life. Marilyn had to become comfortable with being Norma Jeane, transform herself into the Marilyn Monroe persona, then transform herself into the movie characters she played. What a gifted actress, and no wonder she became depressed and emotional. How many of us could handle that many personalities! I am truly impressed with the author's change in tone and tempo throughout the book. During the first chapter I felt that this book was depressing and I didn't want to read any further. Then, I picked it up again and couldn't stop.
Rating:
Summary: Reckless, over-wrought novel
Review: It's been almost two months since I read this truly awful book, and the sense of it still lingers with me like an after-taste--those horrifying scenes of sexual brutalization that Oates makes up for her fictional Norma Jeane/Marilyn Monroe; those endless ruminations on God-knows-what, rambling, incoherent; those mean-spirited passages that pretend to be Norma Jeane's judgement of herself, but are, of course, Oates' judgement of Norma Jeane. Based on what? Oates owes her fans an apology, for allowing this reckless, over-wrought book to go out like this; didn't an editor see it? Is Ms. Oates so beyond reproach (but why?) that no one cautioned her about this disaster? I can't think of another book so messy in every way.
Rating:
Summary: Unreadable
Review: The famous are victims of us all - poor Marilyn, psychoanalyzed by a great writer gone amuck. I found this book self-indulgent, excessive, unremitting and completely lacking in insight for her main character. I gained more understanding of Marilyn's personality from Norman Mailer's self-indulgent tome on this sad actress. Of course, this book gets by under the guise of fiction ... whatever, I could not finish it.
Rating: 
Summary: Disgust & Fascination
Review: I thought less of Oates for writing this book, speaking ill of the dead. I thpought less of Monroe for learning of her dark side. I thought less of myself for continuing to read it. I was too fascinated to put it down. Sad!
Rating:
Summary: total trash
Review: I thought publishers hired editors, not here. I still suspect authors are paid per word...700 pages could easily have been reduced to 300. How many times need you mention her father left, and Norma never knew him? Is it really helpful to describe the decorum of her Mother's nursing home in much depth?And what is this "ex athelte"; blonde actress", Mr W, TC? We are all aware as to the referal. Ms Oates even refers to Ms Monroe by her screen names roles. It always bothers me when imtimate conversations, and emotional feeling are conveyed as though this is based on....interviews with the dead? One would be mislead to believe Ms Monroe was an acting genius able to influence her directors. Perhaps, this is based on Ms Oates own ability to convice the editor to publish this trash. Any future for Ms Oates exists in the tabliods. Martlot
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