‘Blonde’ by Joyce Carol Oates

Who was Norma Jeane Baker? So asks the back jacket of Joyce Carol Oates’ huge historical novel Blonde. And it is a very good question indeed, for while everyone on the planet is familiar with her glamorous screen persona, Marilyn Monroe, there is still a great deal of mystery and misunderstanding surrounding the real woman beneath all the red lipstick and peroxide. Blonde is an in-depth exploration of the life of the young Californian who would go on to become one of the most iconic female stars of all time. It is important to remember, however, that Blonde is a novel and not a biography. While the timeline of events and many of the key characters are clearly borrowed from recent history, most of the dialogue and action is purely the product of Oates’ formidable imagination. When reading the book, try to think along the lines of what may have happened as opposed to what definitely happened.

Blonde is Joyce Carol Oates’ thirty-sixth (!!!) novel and it was first published in 2000 by Fourth Estate. Widely considered to be her masterpiece, it follows one Norma Jeane Baker from the age of six up to her untimely death just thirty years later. The novel is a staggering NINE HUNDRED AND FORTY pages long and divided into five parts, each one representing a specific stage in her too-short life.  The novel’s preface, a vivid depiction of death hurtling (via bicycle no less) towards Norma Jeane’s Brentwood home on August 1st, 1962, caught me like a lure on a fish hook. I don’t know that I have ever read such a dark and simultaneously evocative opening. You’d have to be made out of stone not to feel its effect. From Norma Jeane’s inauspicious beginnings as an orphan and ward of the state to the conception of Marilyn Monroe the bona fide movie star, Blonde moves along at rather a buoyant pace for a novel of its length - no stalling, no drudgery.

However, what really struck me when reading Blonde was just how selfless it seemed. As a writer, many of my own thoughts and experiences impact my work, even the most ‘out-there’ fiction, both intentionally and otherwise. In Blonde Joyce Carol Oates has chosen to forsake herself entirely, choosing instead to inhabit the brutal and beautiful world of her tragic protagonist. This is a work of startling empathy; an astonishing achievement.

This piece was originally published on alisonlaurabell.tumblr.com in April 2012.