what is the first picture that comes to mind when you think of marilyn monroe? the subway grate photo of sam shaw, or the image of superstar eve arnold on a playground in amagansett reading james joyce’s ulysses?
Of the two, we know which of the two monroes would have preferred you to remember, thanks to the collection of poems, notes and letters she wrote that were collected in fragments, a book first published in 2010 and edited by stanley buchthal and bernard’s comment.
You are reading: Marilyn monroe favorite books
as sam kashner, in a review of snippets for vanity fair, points out:
“if some photographers thought it was funny to pose the world’s most famous and voluptuous ‘dumb blonde’ with a book, james joyce! heinrich heine!—was no joke to her. In these newly discovered journal entries and poems, Marilyn reveals a young woman for whom writing and poetry were lifelines, the ways and means to discover who she was and to navigate her often tumultuous emotional life. she. And the books were a refuge and a companion for Marilyn during her insomnia.”
Indeed, it quickly becomes apparent, through snippets and other essays and articles available online, that Monroe was much more than this “dumb blonde” image that many men, including her husband, playwright Arthur Miller, they seemed to think that she could never be more than. And it turns out that despite novelist Saul Bellows “falling in love with bowling” over a dinner for the premiere of Some Like It Hot with her intelligence and wit, Miller wrote in his diary that he was “embarrassed” and “disappointed.” for her.
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however, unlike men, books do not scrutinize; they do not judge. the cares of the world can fade away as you discover entirely new universes. So it seems that Monroe sought solace in the world of books: he became close friends with the writer Truman Capote and amassed a personal library of some 430 books.
Photographer Alfred Eisenstaedt would capture Monroe in this happy literary cocoon from Life magazine, dressed in white pants and a black blouse, curled up on her sofa in front of a shelf with hundreds of her own personal books. In another photo, she reads Heinrich Heine’s poetry on a sofa bed.
now, there may still be something voyeuristic and essentially condescending about any perceived fascination with monroe’s reading photographs. As feminist biographer Oline Eaton writes (in a really great tirade on her Finding Jackie blog):
“There is, within the image of monroe, a deep-seated assumption that she was an idiot, a vulnerable, kind, loving, terribly sweet idiot, but an idiot nonetheless. that’s the assumption that ‘reading marilyn monroe’ gets caught up in.
The power of the phrase “reading Marilyn Monroe” lies in its application to Monroe and our assumption that she wouldn’t know how to do it.”
so while you’re free to scour the approximately 18.4 million search engine results you’ll find if you search for images of monroe reading a book (and there are a couple in this article, of course), we wanted to focus instead in the literary world of monroe herself.
There are countless book lists out there; Whole sub-reddits full of them. and we all have our own mountainous piles of “reading” books waiting to be opened, some of which we never will (but we can lie about having read anyway). So while we can’t be sure she’ll read every one of the 430 books in Monroe’s personal library, or even completely sure she’s read every single one (after all, has she read every book on her shelves?) – We have reviewed the various resources on the intranet that compile the full list and compile the list here.
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The first 390 on the list are taken from Christie’s auction house, which, in 1999, sold these books from Marilyn’s personal library, a list of classics from Proust to Hemingway that publicly solidified her intellectual identity. and provided strong evidence against all. those who claimed the fullness of reading photographs were staged.
How many of Monroe’s books have you read? Cross-reference your reading history with the Monroe books listed below:
- 1) let’s make love by matthew andrews
- 2) how to travel incognito by ludwig bemelmans
- 3) whom I love most by ludwig bemelmans
- 4) thurber country by james thurber
- 5) the fall by albert camus
- 6) marilyn monroe by george carpozi
- 7) camille by alexander dumas
- 8) the invisible man by ralph ellison
- 9) the boston cooking school cookbook by fannie merritt-farmer
- 10) the great gatsby by f scott fitzgerald
- 11) from russia with love by ian fleming
- 12) the art of love by erich fromm
- 13) the prophet by kahlil gilbran
- 14) james joyce’s ulysses
- 15) stoned like a statue: a comprehensive study of drinking clichés, primitive, classic & modern by howard kandel & don safran, with an introduction by dean martin
- 16) the last temptation of christ by nikos kazantzakis
- 17) on the way by jack kerouac
- 18) selected poems of dh lawrence
- 19 and 20) sons and lovers of dh lawrence (2 editions)
- 21) the portable dh lawrence
- 22) etruscan places (dh lawrence?)
- 23) dh lawrence: a basic study of his ideas by mary freeman
- 24) the assistant by bernard malamud
- 25) the magic barrel by bernard malamud
- 26) death in venice & seven other stories by thomas mann
- 27) latest essays by thomas mann
- 28) the reader by thomas mann
- 29) hawaii by james michener
- 30) red roses for me by sean o’casey
- 31) knocking on sean o’casey’s door
- 32) selected works of sean o’casey
- 33) sean o’casey’s green crow
- 34) clifford odets golden boy
- 35) clifford odets clash of night
- 36) clifford odets country girl
- 37) 6 clifford odets plays
- 38) gordon young cat with 2 faces
- 39) day’s long journey into night by eugene o’neill
- 40) part of a long story: eugene o’neill as a young man in love by agnes boulton
- 41) the little engine that could by piper watty
- 42) the new joy of cooking by irma s. rombauer & marion rombauer-becker
- 43) selected works of george bernard shaw
- 44) ellen terry and bernard shaw – a correspondence
- 45) bernard shaw & mrs patrick campbell – her correspondence
- 46) pippin iv’s brief reign by john steinbeck
- 47) once there was a war by john steinbeck
- 48) set fire to this william styron house
- 49) lie down in the dark
- 50) mrs stone roman spring from tennessee williams
- 51) royal road by tennessee williams
- 52) a streetcar named desire by tennessee williams
- 53) the flower in drama and glamor by stark young
- american literature
- anthologies
- art
- biography
- Christian
- classic works
- counterculture
- texts and translations in foreign languages
- French literature
- freud
- gardening & pets
- humor
- judaica (mm officially converted to Judaism after her marriage to Miller).
- literature
- modern library
- music
- plays
- European poetry
- American poetry
- politics
- prayer
- psychology
- reference
- religion
- Russian literature
- science
- travel
- authors
- here are some other books that weren’t included on his shelves, but monroe was reported to have read or owned them. most of those on the list are cited in marilyn’s unabridged version.
Finally, we’ll end with a quote from Monroe about how he came to choose the books he stacked on his shelves:
“[on] nights when I have nothing else to do, I go to the pickwick bookstore on hollywood boulevard,” he explained to a friend. “And I just randomly open books, or when I get to a page or a paragraph that I like, I buy that book.”
perhaps an approach we could all take the next time we’re in a bookstore to help fill our lives with a little more literature.
many thanks to the eternal community of stars for creating this list.
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