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Sam Toperoff Queen of Desire
Harpercollins 1992 0060166118 / 9780060166113 Hardcover Very Good
0060166118 0060166118 First edition. Near fine except for foxing to top edge. From Publishers Weekly A mesmerizing present-tense narration and a spare but intense prose style are utilized by Toperoff as he builds dramas around real and imagined people and incidents in Marilyn Monroe's life. The effect is uncanny, touching and wholly convincing --one puts down the book feeling that Toperoff has captured the real woman: confused, complex, frustrated in her lifelong desire "to create something from the material of self." In 13 episodic chapters, Monroe is sexually abused at age nine by her mother's boyfriend, traumatized by a back-alley abortionist, altered by plastic surgery. She discusses breast size with friend Simone Signoret and defeats a psychoanalyst's attempts to pierce her defenses. We glimpse the star through the eyes of Actors Studio guru Lee Strasberg, enamored Indonesian president Sukarnook as is/eed , director Billy Wilder and husbands Joe DiMaggio and Arthur Miller, all of whom project onto her their needs and their fantasies. Toperoff ( Lost Sundays ) never resorts to sensationalism in this eerily plausible, oddly beautiful novel. 50,000 first printing; $65,000 ad/promo; author tour. Copyright 1991 Reed Business Information, Inc. From Library Journal Like any legend, Marilyn Monroe's persona, motivation, and tragic demise have been psychoanalyzed and speculated upon in the media ad nauseum. As a result, certain images of Monroe tower large and serve to obscure more subtle truths about the actress. Toperoff's ( Sug ar Ray Leonard & Other Noble Warriors , LJ 11/1/86) fictionalized account touches on various specific events in Monroe's brief, pained existence with an eye for new details. Monroe's physicality (her heavy-lidded eyes, sensual lips, coy platinum coif, et al.) offers its own attendant mythology: the rise of an innocent all-American and fall of a jaded movie goddess. All of this Toperoff reconsiders. Both the familiar (shooting the famous billowing white dress pose and Old Timers' Day with husband Joe DiMaggio at Yankee Stadium) and relatively obscure (helping a friend get an abortion, getting her hair dyed by Jean Harlow's hairdresser) are touched on in this fictional portrait of a very real woman. - Lauren Bielski, New York Copyright 1991 Reed Business Information, Inc.
Price:
6.99 USD
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