Marilyn: A Biography
4/5
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About this ebook
An extraordinary biography of the legendary screen star Marilyn Monroe (originally published in 1973) by Norman Mailer, one of America's most important writers of the second half of the Twentieth Century. Mailer, the winner of two Pullitzer Prizes, was the first writer to explore the relationship between Monroe and Bobby Kennedy. When first published, this book was the subject of Time and Life Magazine cover stories, was on the New York Times Bestseller List and became a full selection of the Book of the Month Club.
Norman Mailer
Norman Mailer was born in 1923 in Long Branch, New Jersey, and grew up in Brooklyn, New York. In 1955, he was one of the co-founders of The Village Voice. He is the author of more than thirty books, including The Naked and the Dead; The Armies of the Night, for which he won a National Book Award and the Pulitzer Prize; The Executioner's Song, for which he won his second Pulitzer Prize; Harlot's Ghost; Oswald's Tale; and The Gospel According to the Son. He lives in Provincetown, Massachusetts, with his wife, the novelist Norris Church Mailer.
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Reviews for Marilyn
61 ratings4 reviews
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5I was a bit leery of reading a novelist's foray into biography, but having read this, I can't think of a better writer to take on such an iconic, compelling, enigmatic, and often contradictory individual. This proved to be an enjoyable, informative, and occasionally heartbreaking read.
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5With this phenomenal book of photographs, a viewer might consider Mailer's as purely supplementary, but it is most certainly an equal component mapping Marilyn in all of her mythic, if sometimes mythical, proportions. Mailer's narrative is not objective nor even entirely factual biography, but that admixture of the real and the speculated is altogether suitable for a figure like Marilyn Monroe, especially when presented through Mailer's splendidly verbose and eccentric prose.
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5I read this book many years ago. In fact, it was the first book on Marilyn Monroe, that I ever read. I've given it 5 stars because at the time of my reading it, I enjoyed it very much. Like other reviewers, I loved the photos and the general layout of the book, but I wouldn't say this is a reliable biography of Marilyn. In fact, much of the information in this book has been proven over the years to be nonfactual, or unsubstantiated, and of course controversial. Nevertheless, it's entertaining if you treat it as a fictional novel (based on fact) rather than a true full account. Even though it was entertaining and the photos are breathtaking, I can't recommend this book to the reader who is interested in a factual narrative of her life. If you're still keen, then get it for the photography and take the rest of it with a grain of salt - unless of course if you're able to swallow the conspiracy theories that Marilyn's death involved the FBI and CIA or believe that sleazy Slatzer guy was once her lover.
- Rating: 1 out of 5 stars1/5Just all negative considering he never met ms monroe