In 1951, not long after her breakthrough appearances in \u201cAll About Eve\u201d<\/a> and \u201cThe Asphalt Jungle,\u201d Marilyn Monroe went to college: She enrolled in a pair of 10-week classes at UCLA\u2019s adult-extension program, both covering literature. Looky-loos peeked through the windows. Some likely assumed a publicity stunt. But Monroe\u2019s passion for books was sincere. An orphan who bounced around upward of a dozen foster homes and orphanages regretted that she\u2019d never graduated high school, she moved often in her life but always made sure her books came wherever she went.<\/p>\n Gail Crowther\u2019s \u201cMarilyn and Her Books\u201d<\/a> is the story of that library, though more precisely it\u2019s about what we\u2019ve projected upon Monroe when we\u2019re asked to consider that she had one. Our prevailing cultural reflex, then and now, is skepticism larded with misogyny. A famous 1955 photo of her sitting in a Long Island playground reading James Joyce\u2019s \u201cUlysses\u201d \u2014 one of 50 known photos of her reading \u2014 is routinely scoffed at whenever it\u2019s posted online. (Crowther gathers up a sampling of misogynistic comments.)<\/p>\n But Crowther\u2019s sleuthing determines that Joyce\u2019s novel was a regular companion of hers, and she was particularly enchanted with Molly Bloom\u2019s closing soliloquy. As an actor who had to be exceedingly smart to play dumb blondes, she used the shoot to make \u201ca profound statement about her social positioning.\u201d<\/p>\n Marilyn Monroe reads the book \u201cTo the Actor: On the Technique of Acting\u201d by Michael Chekhov in a quiet moment at the Ambassador Hotel in New York. <\/p>\n (Ed Feingersh \/ Michael Ochs Archives \/ Getty Images)<\/p>\n Writing about Monroe\u2019s reading habits demands a lot of speculation on the part of Crowther, who\u2019s written engaging books on Dorothy Parker, Sylvia Plath and Anne Sexton. We know a lot about the star\u2019s library \u2014 when she died in 1962, she owned more than 400 books, diligently cataloged and auctioned in 1999. There\u2019s documented marginalia and scribblings that suggest a serious reader, and anecdotes about her reciting poems at parties, reading Proust on set, and expounding on Whitman, Dostoevsky and Tolstoy. She had strong opinions about Hemingway: \u201cThose big tough guys are so sick, they aren\u2019t even all that tough. \u2026 They always want to kill something to prove themselves.\u201d<\/p>\n And Crowther literally has the receipts from Los Angeles and Beverly Hills stores like the Pickwick Book Shop, Martindale\u2019s Book Store and Hunter\u2019s Books, where she purchased titles that were practical (\u201cHow to Live With a Cat\u201d), relatable (\u201cSister Carrie\u201d) and weighty (a three-volume life of Sigmund Freud).<\/p>\n Her third husband, playwright Arthur Miller, suggests the purchases were largely a pose: In his memoir, he wrote that aside from some short stories and Colette\u2019s \u201cCheri\u201d she likely never read anything start to finish. It would be nice to know more, but as Crowther pointedly observes multiple times, journalists never thought to ask her about her reading. When the subject of literature came up, Monroe seemed compelled to play to ditzy expectations. After telling interviewers she wanted to play Grushenka in an adaptation of \u201cThe Brothers Karamazov,\u201d they asked her if she could spell the character\u2019s name. She demurred.<\/p>\n A clearer historical record might have blunted the sexist comments that have stalked her, and given Crowther an opportunity to do less guesswork. \u201cMarilyn and Her Books\u201d is scaffolded with 15 chapters, each dedicated to a question that usually can\u2019t be answered in full: \u201cDid Marilyn read all her books?\u201d (probably not, who does?), \u201cDid Marilyn suffer from imposter syndrome?\u201d (probably, who doesn\u2019t?). Some questions feel like attempts to pad the pages (\u201cAre there any surprising omissions from Marilyn\u2019s personal library?\u201d \u201cHow did Marilyn\u2019s reading compare to that of her contemporaries?\u201d). The elegiac opening and closing chapters, in which Crowther imagines visiting Monroe\u2019s home and scanning her shelves, also add to the feeling that too much is being extrapolated out of not enough information.<\/p>\n Curiously, the book also dwells little on Monroe\u2019s own literary ambitions. Crowther shares a few scraps of despairing, Plathian verse, but almost entirely neglects her unfinished posthumous memoir, published in 1974 as \u201cMy Story.\u201d Its relative shapelessness, along with its use of a ghostwriter, doesn\u2019t bolster her literary credentials, but its existence points to Monroe\u2019s ambition to have them.<\/p>\n And there\u2019s plenty to say about the literary work that Monroe herself has inspired, including Joyce Carol Oates\u2019 2000 masterpiece, \u201cBlonde,\u201d or Sharon Olds\u2019 poem \u201cThe Death of Marilyn Monroe,\u201d in which a man who carted away her body is shocked into the reality of \u201ca woman breathing, just an ordinary woman breathing.\u201d Writers have afforded Monroe the grace and status in death that she was rarely afforded in life.<\/p>\n But the core question that drives the book, the subject of a central chapter, is valuable: \u201cWhy is Marilyn Monroe\u2019s reading ability doubted?\u201d Among other things, Crowther argues, Monroe suffered from a \u201cpoisonous cocktail of patriarchy, industry decisions, cultural stereotypes, social expectations, Marilyn\u2019s unwitting complicity,\u201d and more. Crowther keeps her focus narrowly on Monroe, but it doesn\u2019t require a substantial mental leap to see how Monroe is just one example of a cover-model-worthy woman artist being told she\u2019s a try-hard for demonstrating intelligence. (To pick just one example, the pop star Dua Lipa\u2019s book club has a demonstrated high-literary bent, selecting Tommy Orange, Olga Tokarczuk and Percival Everett, which got her mocked as \u201can alien spaceship touching down in a medieval peasant village<\/a>.\u201d)<\/p>\n \u201cMarilyn\u2019s reading formed a concerted effort to overcome any inadequacies she perceived in herself,\u201d Crowther writes. That, too, made her a lot like anybody who goes to books to satisfy gaps in our knowledge. We can do that in private, to avoid embarrassment. For Monroe, though, the effort was always public and always suspect \u2014 the culture was attuned to see any book in her hand as a prop. For most people, reading is an escape route. For Monroe it only led to one more cul-de-sac.<\/p>\n![\"Actress](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/05\/1779717093_7_.jpeg\")
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