UNADORNED

Fragments Of Marilyn Monroe For Sale

By Elizabeth C.

SHE WAS AN ICONIC SEX SYMBOL, BUT A NEW BOOK of personal writings and photos gives glimpse into Marilyn Monroe's curiosity and melancholy.

Fragments contains 250 pages of letters, poems and even recipes found in Monroe's personal collection. The book is being jointly published by Farrar, Straus and Giroux in the U.S. and Editions du Seuil in Europe and is edited by Bernard Comment.

"She was very generous, endlessly giving of herself," Comment told Swissinfo. "It often leaves you reeling, and it is always touching.

"What also struck me was the poetic brilliance of some of the writing, although the style is never affected."

The book contains a poem she wrote after she discovered that her third husband Arthur Miller was sometimes embarrassed by her:

“On the screen of pitch blackness
Comes the shapes of monsters
My most steafast companions ...
And the world is sleeping
Ah peace I need you – even a peaceful monster.”

Comment described the papers, written on hotel stationary and in notebooks, as "intimate, but always very chaste. I was never in the slightest embarrassed as I read them. I can tell you that there are no revelations about her sex life, or about the Kennedys."

The screen siren, rumored to have had an affair with President John F. Kennedy, died in 1962 under mysterious circumstances.

According to the U.S. publisher, the book portrays "a woman far more curious, searching and hopeful than the one the world got to know. Even as Hollywood studios tried to mold and suppress her, Marilyn never lost her insight, her passion and her humor."