“But when the portraits are all juxtaposed with Norman Mailer’s muscular descriptions of the traumas of her childhood, the whole thing is just too brutal. Mailer relates how, by Monroe’s own admission, her grandmother tried to suffocate her with a pillow at two years old; he revisits the story of the crazed mother who left Norma Jean with neighbors while she convalesced for years in an insane asylum; and, of course, he re-creates, as only Mailer can, the constant sexual longing and humiliation that powerful men visited on Monroe throughout her life.”
Bookforum reviews the Norman Mailer and Bert Stern collaboration of Marilyn Monroe, a thousand dollar book.
