MARILYN AND HER BOOKS

The story of Marilyn Monroe’s library, and what its holdings may have said about her.

Monroe’s centenary is in 2026, so it’s no surprise that many books and other media will mark the occasion. Some will be worthwhile, whereas others will feel more opportunistic. This book belongs in the latter category. Crowther, a British author, states that, for all the attention Monroe received, “one aspect of Monroe that received hardly any attention at all—mainly because it was assumed to be nonexistent—was her mind.” Among Monroe’s possessions when she died, “far and away the greatest number of objects belonging to Marilyn Monroe were her books,” more than 400 of them, from Russian classics to a lot of D.H. Lawrence and self-help books, including “at least four copies” of Kahlil Gibran’s The Prophet. Crowther wants to prove that Monroe had more going for her than “her beauty, her body, and her assumed ditziness.” Too often, however, she undermines her argument. Section headings are risible questions such as, “Did Marilyn read all her books?” Crowther devotes several pages to rightly excoriating men who made misogynistic comments about Monroe’s intelligence, but she does Monroe no favors by focusing on her outfit in a picture in which she reads Ulysses rather than attempting to find out Monroe’s thoughts on the book. Much of this volume highlights prominent figures in Monroe’s life rather than her. That and ample white space suggest Crowther couldn’t find enough evidence to support her claim. And she relies on speculation. She writes that Monroe owned no Dickens and theorizes that the reason may have been that Monroe wanted no reminders of her impoverished upbringing, before adding, “But caution is required: It doesn’t mean that she didn’t.” Monroe may very well have had a prodigious intellect, but one wouldn’t know it from the evidence presented here.

A weak attempt to prove that Monroe wasn’t just a pretty face.