Know 'Real' Marilyn Monroe Through Her Unseen Diary

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oi-Devaki

By Devaki

Friday, April 30, 2010, 10:08

A good news for Marilyn Monroe fans, you can know more about her intellectual side through the upcoming publication of her hitherto unseen diaries.

The diary include the actress' notes, including poetry, musings on renaissance and even a recipe for stuffing as the collection is published in October, by Bernard Comment, the French publisher and American house, Straus and Giroux.

Anna Strasberg, the widow of Monroe's friend Lee Strasberg had inherited the diaries, after her death in 1962. Lee was her acting instructor, too.

The book called “Fragments," also conveys Monroe's frustration with being cast as a sex object. Some among the notes were jotted from as early as 1943, though the most were penned from 1951 to 1962. The diary conveys her actual inside and also reveals her intellectual and literary aspects, which many people were unaware of.

"There is a certain melancholy tone throughout the book, and what is very beautiful in some of the notes is the way you see the association between ideas, even if they are quite scattered all over the page," says the editor at Editions du Seuil.

"They go in all directions and it can be sometimes quite difficult to find order within the fragments," adds the director.

When asked about Monroe's writing, he said, "I think that not only did she enjoy, but she also felt the need to write, to sort out her life and try to put down the extremely acute feelings that she could have in reaction to certain situations."

"She was a great reader and someone with real writing flair. There are fragments of poetry that are really quite beautiful, lines that stop you in your tracks," says Courtney Hodell, an executive editor at the US Publishing House.