Blonde: A Novel by Joyce Carol Oates

Author:Joyce Carol Oates
Language: eng
Format: azw3
Tags: Literary, Psychological, General, Historical, Fiction
ISBN: 9780062685865
Publisher: HarperCollins
Published: 2017-02-14T00:00:00+00:00

To My Baby

In you,

the world is born anew.

Before you—

there was none.

THE MAGI

They were Hedda Hopper, P. Pukham (“Hollywood After Dark”), G. Belcher, Max-the-Man Mercer, Dorothy Kilgallen, H. Salop, “Keyhole,” Skid Skolsky (who dredged for hot Hollywood gossip from his perch on the mezzanine at Schwab’s Drugstore), Gloria Grahame, V. Venell, “Buck” Holster, Smilin Jack, Lex Aise, Cramme, Pease, Coker, Crudloe, Gagge, Gargoie, Scudd, Sly Goldblatt, Pett, Trott, Leviticus, *BUZZ YARD*, M. Mudd, Wall Reese, Walter Winchell, Louella Parsons, and HOLLYWOOD ROVING EYE among others. Their columns of excited newsprint appeared in L.A. Times, L.A. Beacon, L.A. Confidential, Variety, Hollywood Reporter, Hollywood Tatler, Hollywood Confidential, Hollywood Diary, Photoplay, PhotoLife, Screen World, Screen Romance, Screen Secrets, Modern Screen, Screenland, Screen Album, Movie Stories, Movieland, New York Post, Filmland Tell-All, Scoop!, and other publications. They were syndicated by the United Press and the American Press. It was their tireless task to spread the word. To shake the sheets and fan the flames. They ran ahead, loosing skeins of gasoline in the underbrush, to hasten the rush of the flames. They blazoned, they heralded, they beat the drums. They blew bugles, trumpets, and tubas from the ramparts. They rang the bells, and they sounded the alarms. Together and individually, in a chorus and in arias, they proclaimed, acclaimed, broadcast, and forecast. They ballyhooed. They disclosed, and they exposed. They praised, dispraised, promulgated, and disseminated. They were volcanoes of words. They were tidal waves of words. They pitched, they advanced, they plugged, and they slugged. They spotlighted. They limelighted. They hawked. They puffed, blurbed, fanfared, hoopla’d, ventilated, and hyperventilated. They predicted, and they contradicted. The “meteoric” rise of, the “tragic” descent of. They were astronomers plotting the trajectories of stars. Ceaselessly they scoured the night sky. They were there at the birth of the star and they were there at the death. They rhapsodized the flesh and they picked at the bones. Greedily they licked the beautiful skin and greedily they sucked the delicious marrow. In boldface in the fifties proclaiming MARILYN MONROE MARILYN MONROE MARILYN MONROE. Photoplay Gold Medal Best New Star 1953. Playboy Sweetheart of the Month November 1953. Screen World Miss Blond Bombshell 1953. In glossy magazines Life, Collier’s, Saturday Evening Post, Esquire. In posters with a crippled child in a wheelchair gazing up at her erect blond beauty: REMEMBER TO GIVE GENEROUSLY TO THE MARCH OF DIMES. MARILYN MONROE.

To Cass she’d say, laughing anxiously, “Oh—she’s pretty, I guess. This photo. This dress. Gosh! But it isn’t me, is it? What about when people f-find out?”

The strange shiny opacity of her blue doll-baby eyes he’d be capable of decoding only in retrospect, and then without absolute certainty. For he hadn’t been listening closely. With Norma, you rarely did. She talked to herself, her thoughts crowded her brain and spilled over. The way she clenched her hands, flexed her fingers, touched her lips unconsciously as if to check—what? That she had lips? That her lips were young, fleshy, firm? And Cass had his own broody thoughts.

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