The title says it all. Two capital letters separated by a period. Actually there is an M on that title, yes one of two letters would be enough. Because Marilyn didn’t need a last name. He didn’t need anything to sleep. Just spray a few drops of Chanel nº5 on your body. I don’t know if he really said that when they asked what he was wearing while sleeping. But at this stage of reality and myth, it no longer matters what his real life was or what we have invented since his death in August 1962. She was 36 years old and the legend would begin to be born there, she. José Luis Muñoz, one of the two coordinators of this book, with more than seventy authors from both sides of the Atlantic, says in the preface: “A beautiful corpse, like that of Eva Perón or Ernesto Guevara. Myths about dying early. Gil-Albert wrote in one of his books (who remembers him these days, who remembers?) that myths are true because they reincarnate all the time. Even in the most secret corner of a memory where everything has shrunk over the years, we always discover something belonging to them.
Platinum blondes have been popping up since she’s stuffed a ton of sleeping pills in her guts. I know there have been other platinum blondes before or at the same time. But the picture on the posters of the houses next to Guernica and Che belonged to him. Mass culture has included her on the list of broken toys to turn her into a commodity, and so among the many versions of her life is that she was mistreated with the fanfare of “Harvey’s a Hollywood Babylon”, which presents us with a completely innocent woman. The Weinsteins were legion,” as Muñoz says in the introductory text for this tribute, which gives us a more versatile Marilyn than ever before. By the way: “polyhedra” is such an ugly word, isn’t it?
Time sometimes outweighs depending on which people. It was as if there were lives that lived the same years, as if each of those years were two. Or for more. As Joyce Johnson wrote in her wonderful book, Supporting Characters: “In the fall of 56, when I was barely out of my twenties, I was about to turn twenty-one.” In some cases, surviving as if it were a miracle. He knew all too well what Kerouac’s partner was talking about during his hippie years, when women occupied the seats left empty by men at night in New York’s streets and cafes. Marilyn Monroe lived to be thirty-six. If we pay attention to the fragility with which almost all versions depict their existence, one can also talk about an almost inexplicable survival. But there are other versions, less gentle, not so sweet: he always knew well what he was doing with his life. The account that took their round trips to desolation, to eternal solitude, according to those versions, was a self-created brand image to mislead those who wrote the history of others and turn it into a legend. I don’t know which of these images is real. I am not bothered. There are still posters and posters of his movies at home. And one day it will be hard for him to forget the black and white of The Misfits, his latest movie directed by John Huston and starring Clark Gable and Montgomery Clift. Talk about underprivileged people.
What appears on MM is a large and diverse catalog of Marilyn’s portraits. As Gustavo E. Abrevaya wrote in the other foreword: “Romantic, painful, political, weird, conspiratorial stories, some very dark.” And then: “Which of the versions described here was Marilyn?” Absolutely all and nothing. What is true – or so it seems to me – there are more borderline lives lived than others. And Marilyn Monroe’s has been one of those lives since she was born as Norma Jean, and she’s been searching for homes and people ever since she learned the world would eat you up if you didn’t eat first. The mixture of calculation and vulnerability that appears in this book, written by more than seventy hands, the common denominator of the intense love for a woman who, like many, has to struggle tirelessly, was present in her life – at least for a while. because others are women – to find their place in a male-dominated world. I end with a few lines from Hettie Jones, another great writer that hardly anyone knows about, because she, like Joyce Johnson, is from the beat generation of Kerouac, Ginsberg, Corso, Burroughs and the company. She was originally named Hettie Cohen and when she married LeRoi Jones, another menda of that generation, she changed her surname to Jones. Here are the lines that always remind me of Marilyn: “Maybe the pressure of this music / it bends my soul / until it bends and crumples / and it’s tiny and old.” And one thing is for sure: If they decide to read this book, they will have a good time. They have many Marilyns to choose from on their page. Polyhedron, those pages. What word…