![]() Some critics felt the subject had been dissected enough in biographies (by Gloria Steinem and Norman Mailer), memoir (Monroe’s sister), and countless films, while Michiko Kakutani, for the New York Times, eviscerated the book’s blending of fact and fiction, which she called “playing to readers’ voyeuristic interest in a real-life story while using the liberties of a novel to tart up the facts.” But others described Blonde as “scary and rhapsodic” and “epic and impressionistic,” and it went on to garner nominations for the National Book Award and the Pulitzer Prize that year. When Blonde was published in 2000, it was met with the kind of divisive literary fervor that now plays out most aggressively in 280-character tirades. “ Blonde now looks more realistic, and its feminist fury stands justified.” “Readers of Blonde today will recognize Hollywood moguls whose years of molestation, harassment, abuse, and sexual assault of aspiring actresses were brought to light in 2017,” writes critic Elaine Showalter in a new introduction. ![]() Now, for its 20th anniversary, Blonde comes roaring back with a reissue by Ecco and a Brad Pitt-produced Netflix film starring Ana de Armas as Monroe. The book offered insatiably curious fans a seductive premise: a gritty account of what might have been, rendered in sharp celluloid clarity. Twenty years ago, Joyce Carol Oates peeled back that polished veneer with Blonde, the five-time Pulitzer nominee’s fictional account of Monroe’s experiences and interior life. Though often remembered as candid, it’s actually a highly choreographed film still a glossy, happy image of a woman the world would soon learn was unraveling. ![]() Long before celebrities could “break the internet” with bare behinds and pregnancy announcements, Marilyn Monroe laid the groundwork for viral stardom with that photo: the bombshell perched atop a subway grate, dress billowing up around her shoulders. ![]()
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