User:MerAtticus/sandbox: Difference between revisions

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This is just random to see how the formatting looks

{{cquote|What is it about Marilyn Monroe that obsesses you so?|author=Mimi Reisel Gladstein}}

{{dc|dc=I|N A LENGTHY, SINGLE-SPACED, TWO-AND-A-HALF-PAGE TYPEWRITTEN CRITIQUE}} of the Actor's Studio production of ''Strawhead,'' Norman Mailer's fifth wife, Carol, tasks him with the above observation about this third appropriation of Marilyn Monroe as a focus for his creative endeavors. It is a salient question, something mentioned not only by someone who knew him intimately, but also by critics of the relevant works, ''Marilyn, Of Women and Their Elegance,'' and ''Strawhead''. Mailer's biographers have also noted how he was beguiled by the topic. Robert Merrill calls it "a continuing obsession".{{sfn|Merrill|1992|p=9}} Barry Leeds introduces his book-length study, ''The Enduring Vision of Norman Mailer,'' with a chapter on Mailer and Marilyn, observing in his first sentence that for decades Mailer had been "fascinated with the life and death of Marilyn Monroe",{{sfn|Leeds|2002|p=20}} introducing the similarities between them, and concluding that they were both prisoners of sex. The issue calls for further exploration of both its enduring allure for Mailer and the unsavory aspects of his handling of his Marilyn mania.

It is hard to know exactly when this "obsession" began. Mailer claimed on several of occasions that he had never met Marilyn Monroe. Not so, according to Shelley Winters, quoted in the "Hollywood Politics" chapter of Peter Manso's biography. She contradicts Mailer's claim that he never met Monroe. According to Winters, they met at a rally for Henry Wallace in

{{smaller|THE MAILER REVIEW VOL. 5, NO. 1, FALL 2011. Copyright 2011. The Norman Mailer Society. Published by The Norman Mailer Society.|size=8}}{{pg|264|265}} Hollywood in 1948.{{sfn|Manso|1985|p=131}} Both may be right according to their memories. It is possible that in 1948, the woman who would become Marilyn Monroe was still Norma Jeane and displayed little of that incandescent ability to exude sexuality as she projected herself to the camera and fans.{{efn|Guiles spells it "Jeane" in ''Legend: The Life and Death of Marilyn Monroe,'' as does Leaming in ''Marilyn.'' Mailer spells it "Jean".}} The as-yet-unknown Norma Jeane may not have made enough of an impression on Mailer for him to remember it. Years later, once he began writing about her, the official story from him and a number of his biographers is that the only place they ever met was in his imagination.{{efn| This holds true for the make-believe trial he created to forestall the criticism of his second Monroe book. When he is asked in an imaginary court scene, Mailer answers the Prosecutor's question about whether he had ever met MM, by saying, "No, but I sat behind her once at Actor's Studio" ("Before" 33).}} Regardless of whether or not they met briefly in the forties or never met, once Mailer had fastened onto Monroe as a topic for his literary delectation, he had a hard time letting go. In addition, his fervor sometimes led to "piling on" and on occasion "late hits" or "low blows," to use football and boxing metaphors for Mailer's literary excesses.

Oddly enough for what became such an enduring interest, the initial impetus to write about Monroe was not Mailer's.{{efn|I am not unmindful of the earlier references to Monroe or the Marilynesque characters in previous Mailer works, but here I mean Marilyn as the main subject.}} It came as part of a book project for a compilation of photographs of Monroe by famous photographers, principle among them was Larry Schiller who had taken nude photographs of the actress in the last days of her life. Others included Milton Greene, Bert Stern, Eve Arnold, and Richard Avedon.{{efn|Milton Greene's photographs would be featured in Mailer's second Monroe project ''Of Women and Their Elegance.''}} Mailer was a big name writer, whom they contacted to quickly deliver a ten-thousand-word preface for this photography book. However, as is often the case with addictions and/or obsessions, once started, they are difficult to abandon. The Preface was like an aphrodisiac appetizer for Mailer and once begun, the subject so enflamed his phallic pen, that eventually it produced more than ninety-thousand-words and, in the opinion of the ''New York Times'' reviewer, the "100 photographs...[were] reduced to serving the relatively minor function of illustrating his text".{{sfn|Lehmann-Haupt|1973|p=27}} And while Monroe was to serve as Mailer's muse on three separate occasions, it was this initial foray into the world of America's legendary sex goddess that first demonstrated Monroe's variety of uses for Mailer. In this case, the publication of ''Marilyn'' was professionally valuable in the development of Mailer's career. Middle-aged, with his career in a "holding pattern," according to Mary Dearborn, "''Marilyn'' put Norman's name before the public, where it had not been" for some years.{{sfn|Dearborn|1999|p=324}}

Another possible source for Mailer's obsession with Monroe could be Mailer's competitive nature. A number of writers have suggested that his legendary ego might have been wounded by his lack of access to the era's {{pg|265|266}}consummated sex goddess, as he considered himself the epitome of the macho man. The main men in her life were such that Mailer would want to measure himself against them. Husband number one was not a consideration. Mailer interviewed James Dougherty, but the man and his remembrances are summarily dismissed as possibly unreliable since they are those of a narcotics cop. For Mailer, in terms of possible competition, Dougherty qualifies at best as a neophyte, ignorant of the finer points of the contest. Husbands two and three are another matter. They were both significant figures in their different professions. Mailer, for whom boxing was an actual hobby and metaphorical trope, may have consciously or subconsciously regretted that he never even got the chance to get in the ring with either of these champions.{{efn|Hemingway also used the boxing metaphor, famously evaluating his writing in relation to other writers in terms of staying in the ring with them.}} It was about this time in Mailer's life that Jose Torres began giving him boxing lessons in exchange for editorial assistance with the book Torres was writing about Muhammed Ali. In a contest with Monroe's second husband, Mailer is out of his class, division, or league, whichever metaphor works. Joe DiMaggio was a legendary sports hero, an icon of the masculine arena. DiMaggio had reached such mythic status that he was referenced in popular music and in Hemingway's admired novella, ''The Old Man and The Sea''.{{efn|A Simon and Garfunkel lyric for a song in the Academy Award-nominated film, ''The Graduate,'' positions DiMaggio as a national hero, one whose return the nation longs for: "Where have you gone, Joe Dimaggio / A nation turns its lonely eyes to you." Santiago, the heroic fisherman in Hemingway's ''The Old Man and the Sea,'' tells the boy about "the great DiMaggio."}} Bouts are not scheduled between boxers who fall in different weight classes and, in the sports league, Mailer would not even try to get in the ring with DiMaggio. Instead, Mailer presents him in an almost complimentary manner, writing, that during the years that Monroe was married to DiMaggio, she looked like she was fed on sexual candy. {{sfn|Mailer|1973|p=102}} In his need to find sufficiently lusty language, Mailer invents the term "fucky" to describe how Monroe looked during the DiMaggio period. He also pays DiMaggio the high compliment of comparing him to Hemingway in terms of eminence in his art, pointing out the "consistent courage" it took to face thousands of fast balls, any of which could kill or cripple him.{{sfn|Mailer|1973|p=99}} If there is a hero in this "novel," it would have to be "Jolting Joe." Mailer credits him with always being there for Monroe "when she needs him, and is probably her closest friend in the months before she dies."{{sfn|Mailer|1973|p=95}} A photograph of DiMaggio at Monroe's funeral is one of the last images in the book and Mailer's last line reads, "Let us then take our estimate of her worth by the grief on Joe DiMaggio's face the day of that dread funeral in Westwood west of Hollywood."{{sfn|Mailer|1973|p=262}}.

The competition begins in earnest when Mailer turns to Monroe's last husband, Arthur Miller. Miller is definitely in Mailer's class, division, or{{pg|266|267}}league: both are literary heavy-weights. Miller was a dominant figure in the intellectual and arts arena. Both ''Death of a Salesman'' and ''The Crucible'' were prominent theatrical vehicles, winning a number of drama awards and becoming mainstays of university and community theatres all over the country. Mailer takes a number of jabs at Miller, labeling him a "failure" as Monroe's champion in her battles with Olivier in England and a "traitor" because he had written a note about how she embarrassed him, a note that devastated her when she read it.{{sfn|Mailer|1973|p=167}} As if taking on the role of Monroe's champion, Mailer pelts Miller with numerous pejoratives. Among them are "tight," "tied up" and "abstemious".{{sfn|Mailer|1973|p=143}} In addition, Mailer tries to land a knockout blow by characterizing Miller in the the sexual arena as "an inhibited householder from Brooklyn."{{sfn|Mailer|1973|p=167}} In this metaphorically sexual bout, in addition to his below-the-belt punches, Mailer hits Miller with a glancing blow to the head with the assessment that he had "limited lyrical gifts, no capacity for intellectual shock."{{sfn|Mailer|1973|p=142}} Mailer is sure he could have beat Miller but he never did get in the ring with him because, as he complains, when they lived in close proximity he "waited for the call to visit, which of course never came."{{sfn|Mailer|1973|p=19}} He admits that a reason for the cut may have been the very fact of his competitive nature and the fact that stealing Monroe had been his secret ambition. Convinced of his prowess in this arena, he suggested that Miller may have feared creating the opportunity. Of course that meeting with Monroe never occurred, and as Mailer could not compete with either of these men in a real life ''mano a mano,'' he resorted to his most effective weapon. He created his own access--with his pen.

Returning to the subject of the many uses Mailer made of Monroe, ''Marilyn,'' as I argued in an earlier study, is, among other things, an exercise that created a masturbatory fantasy about a woman who got away.{{sfn|Gladstein|2010|p=288-302}} It is also the initial volley in Mailer's campaign to possess his subject inside and out, first in his voice as a biographer and then assuming her voice as memoiorist. From the onset of the first project, Mailer expresses his frustration with the time limitations imposed on his fantasy fulfillment. In "An Acknowledgment," Mailer proclaims his discontent with having to meet a publication deadline.{{sfn|Mailer|1973|p=257}} This he was able to remedy in the future by creating his own projects, whereby he will be "master of his own domain." Because of the time checks in this case, he protested that he could not write a proper biography, which he claimed would take at least two years just to amass the materials needed for a suitable job. Therefore, he complained,{{pg|267|268}}rather than the biography he desired to write, he has written a "novel biography." Since he can't do his own original research, he enumerated the other writers whose works he draws on, as well as Norman Rosten's manuscript for the as-yet-unpublished biography, ''Marilyn--An Untold Story.'' In addition, he cited what he called "interviews in modest depth." {{sfn|Mailer|1973|p=259}} In this case, the Mailer braggadocio, his advertisments of himself, may have been uncharacteristically muted. In ''Legend: The Life and Death of Marilyn Monroe,'' Fred Lawrence Guiles, whose first biography ''Norma Jean'' is one of two cited by Mailer as the main sources for the facts in his book, returned the compliment, when he credited Mailer's "modest" interview with producing the "most thorough account" of the relationship between Norma Jeane (not yet Marilyn) and André de Dienes, a Hungarian born fashion photographer. A number of the fresh-faced, jeans-clad photographs by Dienes are in the book.

''Marilyn'' was also to serve Mailer as a vita-enhancing publication. Robert Merrill argued for "serious reconsideration" of ''Marilyn'' as he contended that its excellences as a biography have been overlooked {{sfn|Merrill|1992|p=142}} and, though on of Mailer's "minor" works, it still contributed to the overall "imposing output of serious and original works".{{sfn|Merrill|1992|p=212}} Carl Rollyson considered it a "significant achievement in American letters with which biographers must reckon".{{sfn|Rollyson|1991|p=261}} Jennifer Bailey read it as an "unmistakable achievement".{{sfn|Bailey|1979|p=140}} And, indeed, when one gets beyond the leeringly salacious element, there is much to admire about the book, both as a biography and as a novel. A charming element about it is Mailer's tone, which is wonderfully self-deflating in places. One such instance is when he acknowledges his peevishness about not being invited to meet Monroe as he was sure that "no one was so well suited to bring out the best in her".{{sfn|Mailer|1973|p=20}} Then, in the next line, he conceded that some failed marriages later, he was better equipped to understand that what he was probably responding to at the time was the same thing that some fifty million other men felt as a result of what he called "the foundation of her art," which was an ability to "speak to each man as if he were all of male existence available to her".{{sfn|Mailer|1973|p=20}} He admited that not only would he probably have failed her, but that she might well have "damaged" him. In another instance of uncharacteristically revealing candor, he admited, in a discussion of Monroe's purported lack of self-assurance about sex, that "we all reveal our innocence about sex in a candid remark".{{sfn|Mailer|1973|p=75}} This from the writer who had, on occasion, postitioned himself as an "expert." To a certain extent the tension between the macho writer taking lusty virtual possession of his sub-{{pg|268|269}}ject and the self-revelatory hesitations he expresses created a correspondence between him and Monroe as they both projected a blatant forward sexuality that overlayed an undercurrent of vulnerability.

Another service ''Marilyn'' performs for Mailer, is facilitating his joy for linguistic excess.{{efn|I do not mean to imply that Mailer's linguistic virtuosity is sparing in other works, only that this work allows him even more occasion for unmonitored verbal hijinks.}} Given the spectacular and extravagant nature of his subject and her reputation, he allowed himself a surfeit of verbal highwire acts. On occasion the result is fun as when he catalogs the list of Monroe's early Hollywood relationships: "Snively, Schenck, Karger, and Hyde! If she had been a bargirl lookng to sue an ex-lover in a raunchy case, she would have picked her law firm out of the yellow pages with a name like that".{{sfn|Mailer|1973|p=89}} But at other times his unmonitored metaphors and imagery are definitely in need of a discerning editor.{{efn|My colleague Robert Gunn suggests that Mailer's prose flaunts a lack of monitoring, that in its "gleefully exhibitionistic (and highly erotic)" display demonstrates "not an absence of artistic control, but rather a deliberate choice to refuse propriety and proportionality."}} In one jarring instance, he wrote of Monroe's final moments when "the wings of death lay wet feathers across her face."{{sfn|Mailer|1973|p=86}} "Wet feathers" is a clumsy image whereby to communicate the dark eminence of death. Rather than a sense of awe, what is evoked is annoyance; wet feathers would tickle or make one want to sneeze. Mailer's choice of metaphor to describe Monroe's inability to escape her past is to describe her behavior "as sluggish as a dinosaur's tail".{{sfn|Mailer|1973|p=126}} This metaphor is equally inept. The image conveyed is awkward rather than apt. Experience that repeats itself "with the breath of a turnip" is another of his odd images.{{sfn|Mailer|1973|p=143}} Wet feathers, dinosaur tails, and the breath of a turnip--surely a wordsmith like Mailer could do better. In his explanation of why the "detritus of the insignificant" films she played in early on in her career are so damaged is any good will she may have accumulated as a young women led to "retaliations" Mailer descibed as "nihilistic," pulling out more over-the-top verbal imagery.{{sfn|Mailer|1973|pp=89-90}} He called Monroe "a sly leviathan of survival, and, Faust among the Faustians".{{sfn|Mailer|1973|p=90}} In addition to the lingustic abandon, he also allowed himself such salaciously voyeuristic flights of the imagination as an invented dialogue after the discovery by studio executives that their newest sensation had posed in the nude. Mailer excused himself by pointing out that "a novelist has a right to invent the following dialogue".{{sfn|Mailer|1973|p=92}} He then devised such questions as cannot help but inflame the imagination: "Did you spread your legs?""Is your asshole showing?""Any animals in it with you?" Lest he missed the opportunity to use every profanity he knows, Mailer included the statement, when trying to describe the divided character of Monroe's personality, that while she could be an angel, she was also "one hard and calculating {{pg|269|270}} computer of a cold and ambitious cunt" and then underlined his linguistic choice by stating parenthetically "(no other English word is near)".{{sfn|Mailer|1973|p=97}}{{efn|I am reminded of an old graffiti:"Profanity is the crutch of the inarticulate mother-fucker." I can think of a number of words that would work as well. I am sure Mailer could too, but he liked to shock and as I argue throughout, he gives himself full license with this topic.}}

@@ Line 13: / Line 13: @@
 This is just random to see how the formatting looks
+{{cquote|What is it about Marilyn Monroe that obsesses you so?|author=Mimi Reisel Gladstein}}
+{{dc|dc=I|N A LENGTHY, SINGLE-SPACED, TWO-AND-A-HALF-PAGE TYPEWRITTEN CRITIQUE}} of the Actor's Studio production of ''Strawhead,'' Norman Mailer's fifth wife, Carol, tasks him with the above observation about this third appropriation of Marilyn Monroe as a focus for his creative endeavors. It is a salient question, something mentioned not only by someone who knew him intimately, but also by critics of the relevant works, ''Marilyn, Of Women and Their Elegance,'' and ''Strawhead''. Mailer's biographers have also noted how he was beguiled by the topic. Robert Merrill calls it "a continuing obsession".{{sfn|Merrill|1992|p=9}} Barry Leeds introduces his book-length study, ''The Enduring Vision of Norman Mailer,'' with a chapter on Mailer and Marilyn, observing in his first sentence that for decades Mailer had been "fascinated with the life and death of Marilyn Monroe",{{sfn|Leeds|2002|p=20}} introducing the similarities between them, and concluding that they were both prisoners of sex. The issue calls for further exploration of both its enduring allure for Mailer and the unsavory aspects of his handling of his Marilyn mania.
+It is hard to know exactly when this "obsession" began. Mailer claimed on several of occasions that he had never met Marilyn Monroe. Not so, according to Shelley Winters, quoted in the "Hollywood Politics" chapter of Peter Manso's biography. She contradicts Mailer's claim that he never met Monroe. According to Winters, they met at a rally for Henry Wallace in
+{{smaller|THE MAILER REVIEW VOL. 5, NO. 1, FALL 2011. Copyright 2011. The Norman Mailer Society. Published by The Norman Mailer Society.|size=8}}{{pg|264|265}} Hollywood in 1948.{{sfn|Manso|1985|p=131}} Both may be right according to their memories. It is possible that in 1948, the woman who would become Marilyn Monroe was still Norma Jeane and displayed little of that incandescent ability to exude sexuality as she projected herself to the camera and fans.{{efn|Guiles spells it "Jeane" in ''Legend: The Life and Death of Marilyn Monroe,'' as does Leaming in ''Marilyn.'' Mailer spells it "Jean".}} The as-yet-unknown Norma Jeane may not have made enough of an impression on Mailer for him to remember it. Years later, once he began writing about her, the official story from him and a number of his biographers is that the only place they ever met was in his imagination.{{efn| This holds true for the make-believe trial he created to forestall the criticism of his second Monroe book. When he is asked in an imaginary court scene, Mailer answers the Prosecutor's question about whether he had ever met MM, by saying, "No, but I sat behind her once at Actor's Studio" ("Before" 33).}} Regardless of whether or not they met briefly in the forties or never met, once Mailer had fastened onto Monroe as a topic for his literary delectation, he had a hard time letting go. In addition, his fervor sometimes led to "piling on" and on occasion "late hits" or "low blows," to use football and boxing metaphors for Mailer's literary excesses.
+Oddly enough for what became such an enduring interest, the initial impetus to write about Monroe was not Mailer's.{{efn|I am not unmindful of the earlier references to Monroe or the Marilynesque characters in previous Mailer works, but here I mean Marilyn as the main subject.}} It came as part of a book project for a compilation of photographs of Monroe by famous photographers, principle among them was Larry Schiller who had taken nude photographs of the actress in the last days of her life. Others included Milton Greene, Bert Stern, Eve Arnold, and Richard Avedon.{{efn|Milton Greene's photographs would be featured in Mailer's second Monroe project ''Of Women and Their Elegance.''}} Mailer was a big name writer, whom they contacted to quickly deliver a ten-thousand-word preface for this photography book. However, as is often the case with addictions and/or obsessions, once started, they are difficult to abandon. The Preface was like an aphrodisiac appetizer for Mailer and once begun, the subject so enflamed his phallic pen, that eventually it produced more than ninety-thousand-words and, in the opinion of the ''New York Times'' reviewer, the "100 photographs...[were] reduced to serving the relatively minor function of illustrating his text".{{sfn|Lehmann-Haupt|1973|p=27}} And while Monroe was to serve as Mailer's muse on three separate occasions, it was this initial foray into the world of America's legendary sex goddess that first demonstrated Monroe's variety of uses for Mailer. In this case, the publication of ''Marilyn'' was professionally valuable in the development of Mailer's career. Middle-aged, with his career in a "holding pattern," according to Mary Dearborn, "''Marilyn'' put Norman's name before the public, where it had not been" for some years.{{sfn|Dearborn|1999|p=324}}
+Another possible source for Mailer's obsession with Monroe could be Mailer's competitive nature. A number of writers have suggested that his legendary ego might have been wounded by his lack of access to the era's {{pg|265|266}}consummated sex goddess, as he considered himself the epitome of the macho man. The main men in her life were such that Mailer would want to measure himself against them. Husband number one was not a consideration. Mailer interviewed James Dougherty, but the man and his remembrances are summarily dismissed as possibly unreliable since they are those of a narcotics cop. For Mailer, in terms of possible competition, Dougherty qualifies at best as a neophyte, ignorant of the finer points of the contest. Husbands two and three are another matter. They were both significant figures in their different professions. Mailer, for whom boxing was an actual hobby and metaphorical trope, may have consciously or subconsciously regretted that he never even got the chance to get in the ring with either of these champions.{{efn|Hemingway also used the boxing metaphor, famously evaluating his writing in relation to other writers in terms of staying in the ring with them.}} It was about this time in Mailer's life that Jose Torres began giving him boxing lessons in exchange for editorial assistance with the book Torres was writing about Muhammed Ali. In a contest with Monroe's second husband, Mailer is out of his class, division, or league, whichever metaphor works. Joe DiMaggio was a legendary sports hero, an icon of the masculine arena. DiMaggio had reached such mythic status that he was referenced in popular music and in Hemingway's admired novella, ''The Old Man and The Sea''.{{efn|A Simon and Garfunkel lyric for a song in the Academy Award-nominated film, ''The Graduate,'' positions DiMaggio as a national hero, one whose return the nation longs for: "Where have you gone, Joe Dimaggio / A nation turns its lonely eyes to you." Santiago, the heroic fisherman in Hemingway's ''The Old Man and the Sea,'' tells the boy about "the great DiMaggio."}} Bouts are not scheduled between boxers who fall in different weight classes and, in the sports league, Mailer would not even try to get in the ring with DiMaggio. Instead, Mailer presents him in an almost complimentary manner, writing, that during the years that Monroe was married to DiMaggio, she looked like she was fed on sexual candy. {{sfn|Mailer|1973|p=102}} In his need to find sufficiently lusty language, Mailer invents the term "fucky" to describe how Monroe looked during the DiMaggio period. He also pays DiMaggio the high compliment of comparing him to Hemingway in terms of eminence in his art, pointing out the "consistent courage" it took to face thousands of fast balls, any of which could kill or cripple him.{{sfn|Mailer|1973|p=99}} If there is a hero in this "novel," it would have to be "Jolting Joe." Mailer credits him with always being there for Monroe "when she needs him, and is probably her closest friend in the months before she dies."{{sfn|Mailer|1973|p=95}} A photograph of DiMaggio at Monroe's funeral is one of the last images in the book and Mailer's last line reads, "Let us then take our estimate of her worth by the grief on Joe DiMaggio's face the day of that dread funeral in Westwood west of Hollywood."{{sfn|Mailer|1973|p=262}}.
+The competition begins in earnest when Mailer turns to Monroe's last husband, Arthur Miller. Miller is definitely in Mailer's class, division, or{{pg|266|267}}league: both are literary heavy-weights. Miller was a dominant figure in the intellectual and arts arena. Both ''Death of a Salesman'' and ''The Crucible'' were prominent theatrical vehicles, winning a number of drama awards and becoming mainstays of university and community theatres all over the country. Mailer takes a number of jabs at Miller, labeling him a "failure" as Monroe's champion in her battles with Olivier in England and a "traitor" because he had written a note about how she embarrassed him, a note that devastated her when she read it.{{sfn|Mailer|1973|p=167}} As if taking on the role of Monroe's champion, Mailer pelts Miller with numerous pejoratives. Among them are "tight," "tied up" and "abstemious".{{sfn|Mailer|1973|p=143}} In addition, Mailer tries to land a knockout blow by characterizing Miller in the the sexual arena as "an inhibited householder from Brooklyn."{{sfn|Mailer|1973|p=167}} In this metaphorically sexual bout, in addition to his below-the-belt punches, Mailer hits Miller with a glancing blow to the head with the assessment that he had "limited lyrical gifts, no capacity for intellectual shock."{{sfn|Mailer|1973|p=142}} Mailer is sure he could have beat Miller but he never did get in the ring with him because, as he complains, when they lived in close proximity he "waited for the call to visit, which of course never came."{{sfn|Mailer|1973|p=19}} He admits that a reason for the cut may have been the very fact of his competitive nature and the fact that stealing Monroe had been his secret ambition. Convinced of his prowess in this arena, he suggested that Miller may have feared creating the opportunity. Of course that meeting with Monroe never occurred, and as Mailer could not compete with either of these men in a real life ''mano a mano,'' he resorted to his most effective weapon. He created his own access--with his pen.
+Returning to the subject of the many uses Mailer made of Monroe, ''Marilyn,'' as I argued in an earlier study, is, among other things, an exercise that created a masturbatory fantasy about a woman who got away.{{sfn|Gladstein|2010|p=288-302}} It is also the initial volley in Mailer's campaign to possess his subject inside and out, first in his voice as a biographer and then assuming her voice as memoiorist. From the onset of the first project, Mailer expresses his frustration with the time limitations imposed on his fantasy fulfillment. In "An Acknowledgment," Mailer proclaims his discontent with having to meet a publication deadline.{{sfn|Mailer|1973|p=257}} This he was able to remedy in the future by creating his own projects, whereby he will be "master of his own domain." Because of the time checks in this case, he protested that he could not write a proper biography, which he claimed would take at least two years just to amass the materials needed for a suitable job. Therefore, he complained,{{pg|267|268}}rather than the biography he desired to write, he has written a "novel biography." Since he can't do his own original research, he enumerated the other writers whose works he draws on, as well as Norman Rosten's manuscript for the as-yet-unpublished biography, ''Marilyn--An Untold Story.'' In addition, he cited what he called "interviews in modest depth." {{sfn|Mailer|1973|p=259}} In this case, the Mailer braggadocio, his advertisments of himself, may have been uncharacteristically muted. In ''Legend: The Life and Death of Marilyn Monroe,'' Fred Lawrence Guiles, whose first biography ''Norma Jean'' is one of two cited by Mailer as the main sources for the facts in his book, returned the compliment, when he credited Mailer's "modest" interview with producing the "most thorough account" of the relationship between Norma Jeane (not yet Marilyn) and André de Dienes, a Hungarian born fashion photographer. A number of the fresh-faced, jeans-clad photographs by Dienes are in the book.
+''Marilyn'' was also to serve Mailer as a vita-enhancing publication. Robert Merrill argued for "serious reconsideration" of ''Marilyn'' as he contended that its excellences as a biography have been overlooked {{sfn|Merrill|1992|p=142}} and, though on of Mailer's "minor" works, it still contributed to the overall "imposing output of serious and original works".{{sfn|Merrill|1992|p=212}} Carl Rollyson considered it a "significant achievement in American letters with which biographers must reckon".{{sfn|Rollyson|1991|p=261}} Jennifer Bailey read it as an "unmistakable achievement".{{sfn|Bailey|1979|p=140}} And, indeed, when one gets beyond the leeringly salacious element, there is much to admire about the book, both as a biography and as a novel. A charming element about it is Mailer's tone, which is wonderfully self-deflating in places. One such instance is when he acknowledges his peevishness about not being invited to meet Monroe as he was sure that "no one was so well suited to bring out the best in her".{{sfn|Mailer|1973|p=20}} Then, in the next line, he conceded that some failed marriages later, he was better equipped to understand that what he was probably responding to at the time was the same thing that some fifty million other men felt as a result of what he called "the foundation of her art," which was an ability to "speak to each man as if he were all of male existence available to her".{{sfn|Mailer|1973|p=20}} He admited that not only would he probably have failed her, but that she might well have "damaged" him. In another instance of uncharacteristically revealing candor, he admited, in a discussion of Monroe's purported lack of self-assurance about sex, that "we all reveal our innocence about sex in a candid remark".{{sfn|Mailer|1973|p=75}} This from the writer who had, on occasion, postitioned himself as an "expert." To a certain extent the tension between the macho writer taking lusty virtual possession of his sub-{{pg|268|269}}ject and the self-revelatory hesitations he expresses created a correspondence between him and Monroe as they both projected a blatant forward sexuality that overlayed an undercurrent of vulnerability.
+Another service ''Marilyn'' performs for Mailer, is facilitating his joy for linguistic excess.{{efn|I do not mean to imply that Mailer's linguistic virtuosity is sparing in other works, only that this work allows him even more occasion for unmonitored verbal hijinks.}} Given the spectacular and extravagant nature of his subject and her reputation, he allowed himself a surfeit of verbal highwire acts. On occasion the result is fun as when he catalogs the list of Monroe's early Hollywood relationships: "Snively, Schenck, Karger, and Hyde! If she had been a bargirl lookng to sue an ex-lover in a raunchy case, she would have picked her law firm out of the yellow pages with a name like that".{{sfn|Mailer|1973|p=89}} But at other times his unmonitored metaphors and imagery are definitely in need of a discerning editor.{{efn|My colleague Robert Gunn suggests that Mailer's prose flaunts a lack of monitoring, that in its "gleefully exhibitionistic (and highly erotic)" display demonstrates "not an absence of artistic control, but rather a deliberate choice to refuse propriety and proportionality."}} In one jarring instance, he wrote of Monroe's final moments when "the wings of death lay wet feathers across her face."{{sfn|Mailer|1973|p=86}} "Wet feathers" is a clumsy image whereby to communicate the dark eminence of death. Rather than a sense of awe, what is evoked is annoyance; wet feathers would tickle or make one want to sneeze. Mailer's choice of metaphor to describe Monroe's inability to escape her past is to describe her behavior "as sluggish as a dinosaur's tail".{{sfn|Mailer|1973|p=126}} This metaphor is equally inept. The image conveyed is awkward rather than apt. Experience that repeats itself "with the breath of a turnip" is another of his odd images.{{sfn|Mailer|1973|p=143}} Wet feathers, dinosaur tails, and the breath of a turnip--surely a wordsmith like Mailer could do better. In his explanation of why the "detritus of the insignificant" films she played in early on in her career are so damaged is any good will she may have accumulated as a young women led to "retaliations" Mailer descibed as "nihilistic," pulling out more over-the-top verbal imagery.{{sfn|Mailer|1973|pp=89-90}} He called Monroe "a sly leviathan of survival, and, Faust among the Faustians".{{sfn|Mailer|1973|p=90}} In addition to the lingustic abandon, he also allowed himself such salaciously voyeuristic flights of the imagination as an invented dialogue after the discovery by studio executives that their newest sensation had posed in the nude. Mailer excused himself by pointing out that "a novelist has a right to invent the following dialogue".{{sfn|Mailer|1973|p=92}} He then devised such questions as cannot help but inflame the imagination: "Did you spread your legs?""Is your asshole showing?""Any animals in it with you?" Lest he missed the opportunity to use every profanity he knows, Mailer included the statement, when trying to describe the divided character of Monroe's personality, that while she could be an angel, she was also "one hard and calculating {{pg|269|270}} computer of a cold and ambitious cunt" and then underlined his linguistic choice by stating parenthetically "(no other English word is near)".{{sfn|Mailer|1973|p=97}}{{efn|I am reminded of an old graffiti:"Profanity is the crutch of the inarticulate mother-fucker." I can think of a number of words that would work as well. I am sure Mailer could too, but he liked to shock and as I argue throughout, he gives himself full license with this topic.}}
 <span style="font-size:12px;""font=Alegreya Sans SC;""font-color=gray;">THE MAILER REVIEW VOL. 5, NO. 1, FALL 2011. Copyright 2011. The Norman Mailer