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Thoughts on Marilyn, Ulysses, and Poetry

Vintage website Flashbak has compiled transcripts of Marilyn’s poetry, as well as a list of the 430 books she owned (first posted here on ES Updates, of course!) They have also included a quote from the English novelist Jeannette Winterson about Eve Arnold’s famous photos of Marilyn reading Ulysses.

“This is so sexy, precisely because it’s Marilyn reading James Joyce’s Ulysses. She doesn’t have to pose, we don’t even need to see her face, what comes off the photo is absolute concentration, and nothing is sexier than absolute concentration. There she is, the goddess, not needing to please her audience or her man, just living inside the book. The vulnerability is there, but also something we don’t often see in the blonde bombshell; a sense of belonging to herself. It’s not some Playboy combination of brains and boobs that is so perfect about this picture; it is that reading is always a private act, is intimate, is lover’s talk, is a place of whispers and sighs, unregulated and usually unobserved. We are the voyeurs, it’s true, but what we’re spying on is not a moment of body, but a moment of mind. For once, we’re not being asked to look at Marilyn, we’re being given a chance to look inside her.”

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Reading Marilyn: A Cultural Fetish

In her review of Reading Women, a new exhibit by multi-media artist Carrie Schneider at the Haggerty Museum in Marquette University, the Milwaukee Record‘s Marielle Allschwang references Eve Arnold’s endlessly analysed portrait of Marilyn reading Ulysses.  (Incidentally, Stefan Bollman’s 2009 book, Women Who Read Are Dangerous – which explores the same subject in art history – will be reissued in April.)

“Last week, I was shown a photograph of Marilyn Monroe reading James Joyce’s Ulysses. She is near the end, seemingly lost in Molly Bloom’s punctuation-less, sensual reverie, immersed in the flows and throes of memory and pleasure that finally submit to sleep. This is the famous soliloquy that transforms ‘no’ into ‘yes.’ It is the chapter of the ‘mountain flower,’ the ‘sea crimson,’ of ‘breasts all perfume yes and his heart going like mad.’ Those familiar with the passage may imagine it as a sort of mirror to Marilyn and the inscrutable world within her mythologized body. Others may find a mesmerizing dissonance. But there are more—many more—photographs of Marilyn Monroe reading. A Google search yields 1,490,000 results. She reads American classics, scripts, plays, magazines, newspapers, and a self-help book called How To Improve Your Thinking Ability.

There is a general thirst to know what and whether Marilyn Monroe read. Articles include, ‘The 430 Books in Marilyn Monroe’s Library: How Many Have You Read?’; ‘Marilyn Monroe’s Books: 13 Titles That Were On Her Shelf’; ‘What Was On Marilyn Monroe’s Reading List?’ They are littered with doubt and objectification: ‘Did she read them all? I don’t know. Have you read every single title on your shelves?’ ‘Nerds everywhere have drooled over photos of her thumbing through books…’

Does Schneider give us the opportunity to witness women creating, like [Susan] Sontag, the texts before them? Are we creating the women as we witness them? And if so, are we not left where we began, projecting what Marilyn is thinking?”

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Unlikely Bedfellows? Marilyn and ‘Ulysses’

Photo by Fraser Penney

Why does Eve Arnold’s photo of Marilyn reading Ulysses hold such perennial fascination? In an article for literary journal Kill Your Darlings, Siobhan Lyons explores this image’s iconic power. (There is one minor error in this insightful piece: Lyons claims that Marilyn was married to Arthur Miller at the time, but she wasn’t. Their romance had just begun when this photo was taken…)

“These images fascinate us because they are so out of alignment with the pervasive understanding of celebrity culture as a vapid, visually-oriented industry, working against the ‘highbrow’ terrain of capital-L Literature. But if the iconic image of Monroe reading Ulysses tells us anything, it is more about challenging our own assumptions regarding literature, and who we believe to be the ‘right’ kind of reader.

The famous Monroe photograph was featured on the cover of a 2008 issue of Poets and Writers magazine, as well as the front cover of Declan Kiberd’s 2009 Ulysses And Us: The Art of Everyday Living. In his 2008 book Women Who Read are Dangerous, Stefan Bollman notes: ‘The question, Did she or didn’t she? is almost unavoidable. Did Marilyn Monroe, the blonde sex symbol of the twentieth century, read James Joyce’s Ulysses, a twentieth-century icon of highbrow culture and the book many consider to be the greatest modern novel – or was she only pretending?’

Monroe’s love of reading is well-known – the 1999 Christie’s auction of her personal belongings included almost 400 books, and she was regularly photographed reading. Despite this, Monroe is evidently not the first person one would consider the typical ‘Ulysses reader’. And this, perhaps, is part of the problem.

The photograph, then, allows us to re-imagine the Ulysses reader – author Julie Sloan Brannon argues that the image subverts the ‘dumb-blonde’ stereotype with which Monroe is almost always associated. The image therefore works on two fronts: it forces us to abandon elitist assumptions about what kind of people read ‘difficult’ literature, while bringing Monroe to the attention of a more literary crowd.

‘Her image remains,’ [Anthony] Burgess concludes, ‘and no amount of analysis can properly explain [its] continued potency’. The continued analysis of the image, however, shows how keenly these assumptions, about who should read what kind of book, are held. While the image helps to challenge overtly sexualised readings of Monroe, it more importantly debunks myths about literature that have been based on difficulty, exclusion, and elitism.”

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Forever Blonde: Lorelei Lee at 90

Lorelei Lee, heroine of Anita Loos’ 1925 novel, Gentlemen Prefer Blondes, was as adept at wooing intellectuals as Marilyn, who played her in the musical of the same name – despite being the most famous ‘dumb blonde’ in literature.

Writing for the Daily Beast, Nathaniel Rich reveals that authors William Faulkner, James Joyce and many others were all captivated by Lorelei’s gold-digging ways.

“It is an extremely funny book, and has remained funny for more than ninety years—almost definitely a world record. The humor sticks because the satire is not actually directed at Lorelei but at man’s lowest instincts, instincts that during the madly prosperous Twenties were allowed unprecedented indulgence. ‘I wanted Lorelei to be a symbol of the lowest possible mentality of our nation,’ wrote Loos in a forward to the novel’s 1963 edition. The men chasing Lorelei—statesmen, intellectuals, and titans of industry—are no less representative of this mentality. She does not even spare the writer who most forcefully exposed the era’s ludicrous excesses and inanities. Early in the novel Dorothy, the only girl in New York City less ‘refined’ than Lorelei, is pursued by H.L. Mencken, ‘who really only prints a green magazine which has not even got any pictures in it.’ In fact it was Mencken, a mentor to Loos, who inspired the novel in the first place. Loos, bewildered by the sight of so many of her intellectual male friends falling for ditzes, particularly blonde ones, was amazed to see that Mencken was bewitched by ‘the dumbest blonde of all.'”

While the 1953 movie’s plot bears no resemblance to the novel, the character of Lorelei remains the same. Carol Channing played the role on Broadway, but perhaps Marilyn – with her blonde allure and guileless wit – was the only actress who could do justice to Lorelei on the big screen.

Marilyn owned a first-edition copy of Gentlemen Prefer Blondes, and a copy signed by MM, with a dedication to child actress Linda Bennett, was auctioned by Nate D. Sanders in 2014. (Surprisingly, it went unsold.)

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Happy Bloomsday, Marilyn

Photo by Fraser Penney

The novelist James Joyce, who died in 1941, never knew Marilyn Monroe. But she is indelibly associated with his masterpiece, Ulysses, after Eve Arnold photographed her reading it in 1955. Today is Bloomsday, the day in which Ulysses is set, named for its hero, Leopold Bloom.

Many have raised doubts about whether Marilyn was really reading Ulysses. But at the time, she was rehearsing its final monologue – in the voice of Leopold’s wife, Molly Bloom – for her acting class with Lee Strasberg.

I suspect both MM and Joyce would find the enduring power of these image curious, yet delightful. Writing for Time magazine, Richard Conway pays tribute to the most famous picture, and the anniversary it marks, in today’s ‘Backstory’ blog.

“The 1955 shoot was reportedly done off-the-cuff: The two had traveled to the area because Monroe was visiting poet Norman Rosten, and she had brought along a copy of the book. When they stopped at a beach, Monroe whipped out the novel as Arnold was loading film into her camera. Arnold started taking pictures. During the shoot, Monroe read the book aloud and revealed that she liked to dip into it, rather than read it chapter by chapter. (The same reading method, incidentally, favored by many Joycean scholars and passionate ‘amateur’ literature fans, alike.)

That’s according to the research of Doctor Richard Brown, author of the essay Marilyn Monroe Reading Ulysses: Goddess or Post-Cultural Cyborg? and several books on Joyce. Brown discovered this when, in 1993, he received a letter from Arnold after he had contacted her asking about the photograph. Brown tells TIME that he sees the image as part of a sub-genre of Marilyn photos, quite different from the puckered, glamorous shots we are used to — namely, pictures of her reading books.

In light of this, and perhaps unfairly, many who see the Ulysses picture seem to ask — was she actually reading it? The answer is likely straightforward: of course she was.

‘We know much more about her as a reader after the [1999] Christie’s auction of her books,’ Brown says. ‘And I mean, why shouldn’t she have read it? On one level there’s a documentary fact with this image. If you see someone in a picture reading a book, then they are reading that book.’

Others have questioned if the shoot was staged — perhaps Arnold had asked her to take out the novel — but given the photographer’s professional reputation, this seems very unlikely. Arnold and Monroe had a long-standing relationship, having both collaborated from the early 1950s right up until Monroe’s last completed movie, The Misfits, before her death in 1962. Arnold is said to have been the only photographer Monroe trusted.

‘Eve wouldn’t have set this up,’ asserts Brigitte Lardinois, former Cultural Director at Magnum Photos London and author of several books on Arnold. ‘Maybe if she had been sitting in a demure dress on an antique chair, it would have had a different effect.’

‘But she’s reading in her bathing suit here,’ Lardinois says. ‘It’s all pretty natural.'”

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Birthday Tributes in the Blogosphere

Marilyn by Cecil Beaton, 1956

Over the next few posts I’m going to focus on the best fan tributes for Marilyn’s birthday. But firstly, here are a few selections from the blogosphere.

We’re all used to reading Marilyn’s own words online – though sadly, some of them are internet fakes – but Flavorwire has compiled a rather good list, 30 of Marilyn Monroe’s Smartest and Most Insightful Quotes.

Nearly all of these are genuine, in my opinion – meaning, they can be traced back to reputable biographies and interviews with MM herself. The only one I’m not sure about is the second one, regarding James Joyce’s Ulysses, which comes from the disputed Miner transcripts. (However, we do at least have Eve Arnold’s 1955 photo as evidence that Marilyn read the book – and, indeed, she later performed Molly Bloom’s closing soliloquy as an exercise for her dramatic coach, Lee Strasberg.) 

“Here is [James] Joyce writing what a woman thinks to herself. Can he, does he really know her innermost thoughts? But after I read the whole book, I could better understand that Joyce is an artist who could penetrate the souls of people, male or female. It really doesn’t matter that Joyce doesn’t have… or never felt a menstrual cramp. To me Leopold Bloom is a central character. He is the despised Irish Jew, married to an Irish Catholic woman. It is through them Joyce develops much of what he wants to say.”

Geeks of Doom posted this thoughtful tribute:

“While she didn’t have the cocksure winking swagger of a Mae West, or the sharp natural beauty of an Ava Gardner, she somehow fell somewhere in the middle of both of those ladies…In a strange way, she is old Hollywood and still remains fresh in new Hollywood.”

And finally, Kim Morgan reposts her wonderful Playboy tribute from last year over at her Sunset Gun blog.

“Because through it all, no matter what was happening in her life, Marilyn gave us that gift: pleasure. Pleasure in happiness and pleasure in pain and the pleasure of looking at her. And great artist that she was, looking at her provoked whatever you desired to interpret from her. Her beauty was transcendent. For that, we should do as Dylan instructs: ‘Bow down to her on Sunday, salute her when her birthday comes.'”

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Marilyn on ‘Stylist’ Cover

Eve Arnold’s 1955 photo of Marilyn reading Joyce’s Ulysses makes the cover of this week’s Stylist magazine, available for free around the UK. Please note, the picture complements an unrelated series on books and writing – however, there is a short article inside about the alleged sex tape which failed to sell at auction last weekend.

 

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Marilyn’s ‘Fragments’ in Translation

The French author, Tiphaine Samoyault, has spoken to Liberation France about her latest translation, Marilyn Monroe’s Fragments. (Note: this interview has been translated from French to English. I apologise in advance for any errors!)

“A strong, full experience”

Translator of James Joyce, Tiphaine Samoyault worked on “Fragments”:

By NATALIE LEVISALLES

The translation of Fragments was made by Tiphaine Samoyault, who is one of the translators of Ulysses by James Joyce, and is currently working on a biography of Roland Barthes.

You immediately accepted this project?

Yes and no, I was a little taken aback by the proposal. It was as if I were offered to meet someone ultra-famous , as if I were told: Obama tomorrow you’ll meet face-to-head, because the translation is still a ‘head-a-tete’.

After it became extremely hard to do that. The simple things she talks all the time, compared with men … It’s amazing, I translated phrases that I had to pronounce, or vice versa … but that’s an experience that is shared by any translator.

Besides what I do for the magazine Poetry, my most significant translation is Joyce’s Ulysses. It’s funny, there is in Fragments that famous photo of Marilyn reading Ulysses. There are other photos of her reading, but when she read Arthur Miller, one sees that this is a picture laid, when she reads Whitman and Joyce, she really reads.

What is special about this translation?

I was working on a manuscript not established: initially, I had a bundle corresponding to a first decryption done by the publishers. Then, everything changed much, the timing and sequence of text, even reading them … Until the end, we hesitated on reading some words.

Sometimes it was related to illegible handwriting – including notes written on paper bearing the letterhead of the Waldorf Hotel, a time when she was very desperate – and sometimes her spelling was erratic.

Being in front of a completely unstable text was very interesting so this instability corresponds to the emotional instability reflected in these texts that this made the experience quite strong, a bit full. I found that there was a profound truth: even in the solar side of Marilyn, even in its beauty, its light, there is something unstable.

How did you work on these texts?

The first, a note she wrote at age 17, is in a very hesitant English. Afterwards, when we see all the work she did on the language, the determination she had to speak and write well, her search for meaning, it was important that in the translation, I did not remove the uncertainty of her first draft.

Moreover, according to the emotional state in which it was written, the spelling changed much, and it’s very troubling, because after a while, you just have to look at the pages to see how her state is. But it is also sensitive to the attentive reader.

Among the texts that I like best, there’s this wonderful poem, “I left my house … green rough wood, and I love that journey over the bridges, which I find very powerful, very elliptical.

And the long letter to Dr. Greenson, very articulate, very beautiful. We can see how from the first note, written in a very grave concern about a possible infidelity by her then-husband, to this letter written after her divorce, she had gained a mastery.

That does not make it happier, but she has a mastery of expression, even in times uncontrollable. This ability to self-educate has heavily affected her. She was helped by people she met, but she was able to reach out to them.

At the same time that this translation, you were writing the biography of Barthes …

I started work on Barthes a year ago and a half. But I was not working on both manuscripts at once, and so I didn’t have two different texts in my head at the same time.

In both experiments, there is something very intimate. We leave a report in the text to enter into a relationship of proximity with human beings, which passes through the very concrete report to paper, writing, inks …

After, which is surprising in Barthes, is that if this spirit articulated, educated – overeducated, even – who has complete mastery of the language, gradually gives way, he was attracted by the non-mastery. You see it in his last work, his last texts, how it enters the batch.

Marilyn is just the opposite. We have a batch text by default, and a progressive quest of mastery.

Finally, what does this translation for you?

At first I did not know what to expect, I might have some little letters, it would be quite ordinary. I told myself that it’s not very serious, as if there was a gap with what I am. And along the way, it became a powerful experience.

I found that there was, both in what she writes and how that text happens to us, something powerful, we cannot fully possess, which is of the order of instability, fragility in writing, but also incomplete. Ultimately, I was very touched and very proud to have done that.