It's a little hard to make out in the image here, but the book she's reading is James Joyce's Ulysses.
I first came across this picture (the photo is by Eve Arnold) a few years ago when I found it as a postcard in a small bookstore here. When I looked for more info about it, I found something that said Monroe liked reading from Ulysses, especially the final section (the Molly Bloom soliloquy), before sessions with the psychiatrist she was seeing, because the free-flowing style of the book helped her free-associate during the sessions.
In the photo here, she has the book open to the end (or nearly the end) -- she may in fact have been reading the Molly Bloom section of the book at that moment.
It's a little hard to make out in the image here, but the book she's reading is James Joyce's Ulysses.
ReplyDeleteI first came across this picture (the photo is by Eve Arnold) a few years ago when I found it as a postcard in a small bookstore here. When I looked for more info about it, I found something that said Monroe liked reading from Ulysses, especially the final section (the Molly Bloom soliloquy), before sessions with the psychiatrist she was seeing, because the free-flowing style of the book helped her free-associate during the sessions.
In the photo here, she has the book open to the end (or nearly the end) -- she may in fact have been reading the Molly Bloom section of the book at that moment.