Of Women and Their Elegance
Mailer's 'imaginary memoir' of Marilyn Monroe - a fantasy autobiography in Monroe's voice - illustrated with 124 photographs, 34 of them Milton Greene's of Monroe. Simon and Schuster, 26 November 1980.
Of Women and Their Elegance is Mailer’s “imaginary memoir” of Marilyn Monroe — a fantasy autobiography written in Monroe’s voice — published by Simon and Schuster on 26 November 1980 (London: Hodder and Stoughton). At 288 pages, $29.95, it carries no dedication; a closing “Author’s Note” calls it “an imaginary memoir,” and a discarded title made the conceit explicit: Of Women and Their Elegance: by Marilyn Monroe as Told to Norman Mailer.
The book is built around 124 photographs — 34 of them Milton H. Greene’s images of Monroe, which Mailer’s text illustrates; the rest of show-business and fashion figures (Marlene Dietrich, Audrey Hepburn, Judy Garland, and others). It returns to the subject of his 1973 Marilyn: A Biography (73.30) — Mailer “was never altogether happy” with that book, he said, “because I was never inside her head.” A publisher’s disclaimer notes that the episodes “are not intended to be wholly factual.” Mailer drew heavily on the book for his later play Strawhead, staged at the Actors Studio in 1986 with his daughter Kate as Monroe (86.22, 86.25). The advance excerpt ran in the Ladies’ Home Journal (80.12), and Mailer defended it in the “Before the Literary Bar” self-interview (80.14).
Related pages
- Marilyn Monroe | Marilyn: A Biography (73.30) | Simon and Schuster
- “Before the Literary Bar” (80.14) | excerpt (80.12)
- 1980
- Marilyn: A Biography (73.30) | Marilyn Monroe's Sexiest Tapes and Discs (82.9) | The First Sitting (86.22)