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Fragments: Poems, Intimate Notes, Letters »

Book cover image of Fragments: Poems, Intimate Notes, Letters by Marilyn Monroe

Authors: Marilyn Monroe, Stanley Buchthal (Editor), Bernard Comment (Editor), Joyce Carol Oates
ISBN-13: 9780374158354, ISBN-10: 0374158355
Format: Hardcover
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Date Published: October 2010
Edition: (Non-applicable)

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Author Biography: Marilyn Monroe

Marilyn Monroe was the defining actress of her age. Acclaimed for her performances in Some Like It Hot, The Seven Year Itch, and many other films, Monroe also studied with Lee Strasberg at the Actors Studio. She died in 1962.

Book Synopsis

Marilyn Monroe’s image is so universal that we can’t help but believe that we know all there is to know of her. Every word and gesture made headlines and garnered controversy. Her serious gifts as an actor were sometimes eclipsed by her notoriety—and the way the camera fell helplessly in love with her.

But what of the other Marilyn? Beyond the headlines—and the too-familiar stories of heartbreak and desolation—was a woman far more curious, searching, and hopeful than the one the world got to know. Even as Hollywood studios tried to mold and suppress her, Marilyn never lost her insight, her passion, and her humor. To confront the mounting difficulties of her life, she wrote.

Now, for the first time, we can meet this private Marilyn and get to know her in a way we never have before. Fragments is an unprecedented collection of written artifacts—notes to herself, letters, even poems—in Marilyn’s own handwriting, never before published, along with rarely seen intimate photos.

These bits of text—jotted in notebooks, typed on paper, or written on hotel letterhead—reveal a woman who loved deeply and strove to perfect her craft. They show a Marilyn Monroe unsparing in her analysis of her own life, but also playful, funny, and impossibly charming. The easy grace and deceptive lightness that made her performances so memorable emerge on the page, as does the simmering tragedy that made her last appearances so heartbreaking.

Fragments is an event—an unforgettable book that will redefine one of the greatest stars of the twentieth century and which, nearly fifty years after her death, will definitively reveal Marilyn Monroe’s humanity.

The New York Times - Liesl Schillinger

Sentences trail across the page, then merge in clumps, like paper airplanes tossed into a net; multiple cross-outs, repetitions and misspellings make them a challenge to decipher. Nonetheless, a certain potency resides in their runic quality…Passionate decoders of the Monroe legacy will have a field day.

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