Happy Birthday, Marilyn

Today would have been Marilyn Monroe's 84th birthday.  I've been thinking about her a lot recently in light of a book of her writings and poems coming out this September (Fragments).  I'm fascinated by the title, Fragments, because so much of what I know of her is relegated to the term.  The public image of her as a daffy blonde doesn't fit at all with her marriage, for instance, to Arthur Miller, a man far too brilliant--one hopes--to only have married for lust.


And then there are these photos of her.  A friend has the one of her reading Leaves of Grass, and I have always loved it.  It got me to wondering how many other photos of her reading were out there and I was surprised to see there were several.  Not just of her reading scripts, but novels, too, including Ulysses.  She must have had a far stronger spirit than I because I don't want to use that thing as a doorstop let alone read it.


At any rate, in celebration of her birthday and in honor of women everywhere who are a whole helluva lot more than they might seem, here she is.