The Brothers Karamazov and Marilyn Monroe

I am finally reading The Brothers Karamazov which I started this week. I had a rough time with those first two chapters … as usual. Those Russians with their similar names … Alexey, and Alyosha, and the vitches added to last names … I YEARNED for a family tree in the front of the book. Dostoevsky is like Gabriel Garcia Marquez in that respect. I remember when I first read 100 Years of Solitude, Mitchell gave me a tip. “The beginning is really confusing … because people in different generations all have the same name … but don’t give up … Stick it out, because then – you’re 100 pages in, and you understand everything, and then it is AMAZING.” I have found that to be the case with Brothers K. I stuck out the first two chapters, which were sheer drudgery … but now? I cannot put the dern thing down. It’s a page-turner. It’s rich, it’s dense, it’s thought-provoking – but it’s also funny, lively … and it’s mostly conversation. Not just narrative.

My dad has been telling me to read this book for years, and I’m finally doing it. Crime and Punishment is one of my all-time favorites, so I’m very pleased to be tackling this book as well.

Haven’t gotten to the famous “Grand Inquisitor” chapter yet – although it’s coming!!!

Here’s a random tidbit:

When Marilyn Monroe fled Hollywood, basically on her own personal strike from the horrible material she was being offered, she disappeared for a while – and finally emerged, in New York – where she was taking classes at the Actors Studio. She wanted to develop her own projects, and so she formed a production company. (Hello. Nobody did that then. She was a rebel, a renegade). One of the projects she wanted to do was to put Brothers K on the screen – with herself as Grushenka. She held a press conference announcing her plans, and the hostility of the press is kind of amazing to contemplate in this day and age, when even no-talent whores like Paris Hilton have books published, etc … It would be hard to imagine a star of Marilyn’s magnitude being treated with such contempt and condescension now. One of the reporters asked her, “Do you even know how to spell Dostoevsky, Marilyn?” I would like to see that reporter now and punch him in the nose. And obviously, very few of the reporters there had even read the book … and so scoffed her “hoity-toity” choice of project. Everyone thought she was illiterate. Marilyn said to them, sweetly (she was always sweet): “Actually, have you read the book? There’s a wonderful character in it named Grushenka … she’s a real seductress … I think it would be a good part for me.”

Having read the descriptions of Grushenka, I have to say Marilyn was right on the money. Dostoevsky describes her “ample” hips, her soft hands … but more than that- her noiseless way of walking. She didn’t really walk – she glid, she slithered … and she had a kind of girlish sweetness about her which hid a rock-hard steely broad underneath.

Marilyn would have been great as Grushenka. So there, condescending snobs.

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16 Responses to The Brothers Karamazov and Marilyn Monroe

  1. Dave J says:

    “Those Russians with their similar names … Alexey, and Alyosha, and the vitches added to last names…”

    What? What? Russian patronymics are middle names, and they aren’t that complicated at all: -evitch = “son of” and -evna = “daughter of.” Except there are a few irregular ones, most notably “Ilyich” for “son of Ilya.”

    That said, I feel embarassed to say I’ve never read Brothers K. I know I should.

    “Er – Marilyn would have been great as Grushenka.”

    Even from your secondhand Dostoevsky, I’m certain of that. What a tragic shame we never had the opportunity to see it.

  2. red says:

    Stop taking a condescending tone with me. It’s kneejerk with you for some reason and it’s extremely annoying.

  3. David foster says:

    I guess journalistic obnoxiousness is nothing new.

    Interesting that people who take one of the least intellectually-demanding programs in college are so eager to look down on others. Maybe there’s a connection…ya think?

  4. Alex says:

    Monroe could do anything. Remember the Monroe story we both knew and shared on The Porch?

    For people who don’t know it:

    Marilyn is walking down the street with one of the other actors from her class. She is dressed simply. Not a lot of make up, no swaying of the hips, no big whispery voice. She is wearing dark glasses and a sheer scarf covering her blonde hair.

    So they walk, and Marilyn’s friend is surprised by the lack of attention. No one’s clamoring for her, no one’s begging for autograph’s. Nothing.

    “Marilyn?” he says as they walk, “…do you miss all this?” pointing to the empty air.

    “Miss all what?” she asks behind her dark glasses.

    “The adoration, the public, the noise, the fuss. All that?”

    “It’s still there. ” she pauses for a second, then stops and faces him in the New York street. “Do you want to see her?”

    “See who?”

    “Marilyn. Do you want to see her?”

    He nods.

    “Stand here.” she says.

    Marilyn walks ahead about 10 feet, takes off the shades, takes off the hankercheif around her hair, and turns on the smile, the swagger, the pout, and the half lowered eyes. Like a flood people begin to call her name, gather around her, and reach out for her, begging for a signature.

    It’s a wonderful example of how aware she was. This was not a woman who didn’t know what she had, or how to use it, or what it meant. This was not a stupid woman.

  5. Tommy says:

    This isn’t apropos of the content of the book, but a couple of months ago, at a used bookstore, I found a copy of Brothers in the free bin outside the store. The cover was torn. I figured that was why it was in the free bin.

    I toted it home.

    I picked it up a week or so later to try a bit of it, and I found out further why the book was in the free bin.

    An entire block of pages from around page 100 to 300 was glued together.

    With glue, I hope.

    I don’t know why.

    I hadn’t noticed at the free bin. I guess I was just enamoured with the idea of Free Dostoyevsky.

    The funnyman inside me likes to think the previous owner, weirdo that he was, as he finished a page, would glue it to the one right before it…as if he never wanted to go back.

  6. John says:

    Sheila – Dave J is right, the evitch / ovitch and evna / ovna endings are added to the father’s name to produce a middle name. Those patronymics help keep cousins with the same first name uniquely identified. Use them as clues to identity when family gatherings occur in Russian novels.

    In Russia, polite society uses the first name and patronymic as the correct form of address, not Mr. and the last name, as in Western Europe. Makes it hard to be polite if you don’t know the middle name. In fact the term “Mr.” – “Gospodin” had really negative connotations in Russia during the communist era – it was associated with merchants. Come to think of it, the aristocrats didn’t like it much either. I once (1994) had to make a call to Russia to check on a speaker my boss was inviting. Only knew the middle initial from his publications, so to be poilite, I asked his wife (who answered the phone) for “Gospodin So-and-so”. He and his wife were still laughing about that when I hung up.

    However, if you run across ovitch / ovna as a true last name, the owner is usually Serbian or Croatian. There is a hilarious modern satirist named Voinovitch, who is a Russian of Serbian parentage.

  7. triticale says:

    How often do performers turned directors or producers cast themselves in supporting roles? It’s either top of the marquee or in-joke cameo. Truly classy of her.

  8. Bryan says:

    Hi Sheila,

    Apropos of Marilyn’s intelligence, I thought you’d enjoy this, if you haven’t already seen it.

    http://www.columbia.edu/itc/english/seidel/joyce/edit/images/week15/monroe_reads.jpg

  9. red says:

    John and Dave J:

    Both of your comments just prove to me that I would have been better served by having a family tree at the front of the book.

    I don’t know nothin’ about ovitches and ovnas … Just trying to figure out what the hell Dmitri, Ivan, and Alyosha are up to.

  10. red says:

    David Foster:

    I see your point. I guess my point is – and I don’t know the answer to this one: Journalists treated Marilyn Monroe, the biggest star of her day, like a dumb whore-blonde (they didn’t get that she was in on the joke – she created that girl!!) They were nasty to her, snickering, snarky … It is hard to imagine a journalist today saying to an actress, “Do you even know how to spell Dostoevsky?”

    I mean, perhaps it would happen … but to someone as huge as Marilyn?

    The beautiful thing, though, is that Marilyn’s fans (men and women) ALWAYS “got the joke”. They loved her unconditionally. A great example is when the nude pictures of her came out. The studios, the press were all unbelievably nasty towards this girl who they considered just a slut with nice tits. The studio told Marilyn to make a statement apologizing for the photos. She refused. Instead, she made a statement along the lines of: “Look, I needed the rent. I was a poor girl, and I needed the money. So I agreed to pose for the photos. That’s it.”

    The studio heads were PISSED. But then – the publicity departments were bombarded with letters from all over the country – letters from men and women – expressing support for Marilyn, sympathy. They loved her for her honesty.

    People tried to make Marilyn feel ashamed of who she was. And she dodged the shame, continuously. Who knows what it was like to be her, she probably had a lot of shame (being molested as a kid, all that) … but she REFUSED to play the victim. Watch “The 7 Year Itch” – which I find to be a dirty-minded yukky movie. It wants to make her into a joke, it wants to ogle at her, make fun of her sexuality … I hate the guy in it, too. But Marilyn’s performance is a comedic wonder. She consistently dodges being made into a joke.

    Audiences understood her, loved her … it was the press who somehow wanted her to fail, wanted to laugh when she tripped, or made mistakes …

    I don’t think the press is any different now, of course … People love to see successes being torn down. But still, I can’t imagine a journalist saying to, say, Renee Zellweger, or Nicole Kidman, or some huge star: “Do you even know how to spell Dostoevsky?”

  11. John says:

    More trivia on Russian names: we spent an entire week on in intro Russian because English usage differs so much. For pretty much every Russian first name, there is a diminutive used by close friends and family (and with strangers to children). English has a few of those: Billy, Bob, Jack, but they are confused in English by people who use the nicknames as legal given names. Russian is pretty strict. For example, Alyosha is short for Alexei. So there is a progression of politeness: Alyosha to Alexei to Alexei Alexandrovitch.

    Using names symbolically is pretty common in Russian literature. Dostoevsky uses “Alyosha” instead of “Alexei” to emphasize that Alyosha is youngest and at the bottom of the family totem pole, and also to empahsize his purity of spirit and humility.

    Although “Mr. So-and-so” was frowned upon in Communist times, “Comrade So-and-so” was pretty formal. I can’t imagine lower party functionaries addressing Iosif Vissarionovitch by his first name and patronymic unless they wanted a quick trip to spend some time at the scenic White Sea Canal: it would have been “Comrade Stalin”. Funny thing is, the word comrade in Russian also has mercantile roots: it is a combination of “goods” “tovar” and “search” – “iskat’” , which morphs to “ishch” – tovarishch. When Gorby went to the newly united Germany in 1990, he addressed the audience in front of the TV cameras as “Comrades”. I was watching from Kaunas, and my Lithuanian friends laughed: the only Tovarishchi there were the ones from Russia that he brought with him who, really were ishchut (searching) tovari (for goods), i.e. shopping.

  12. red says:

    The Russian language … and Marilyn Monroe. All in one comments thread. This is why I love my own blog.

    Carry on! Very interesting.

    I know from my friends from India that Indian families also use “pet names” – names only for within the family circle – and the main name, the ones on the birth certificates – are for public use. (Right, Beth??) The public names are usually agreed upon by the extended family (and have much symbolic meaning) – and the pet names are very private. One of my best friends from childhood was Indian, and I knew her pet name … although, since I was only 6 or 7, I didn’t know the significance of all of it, and placed no importance on it. I just knew that her parents called her a different name from what I called her. I accepted this, no question, like little kids do.

  13. Bryan says:

    An Arab friend of mine informs me that Arabic pet names are formed by taking the first consonant or consonant combination of one’s name, adding the vowel “oo” and repeating it. Thus, my pet name would be Booboo, and Sheila’s would be Shooshoo.

  14. red says:

    Booboo Radley? Shooshoo fly don’t bother me …

    I might have to punch anyone who called me Shooshoo.

  15. Bryan says:

    I didn’t like “Booboo” the first time she called me that, but it grew on me. Maybe yours could be “Rooroo” instead.

  16. Chrees says:

    FWIW…
    Joseph Frank wrote a five-volume biography of Dostoevsky. I’ve only read the final book that came out last year… “The Mantle of the Prophet” I believe it was called. It covers the last decade of his life and includes the time he wrote “The Brothers Karamazov.” It is fascinating to see pieces of D’s life work their way into the book. Also, Frank’s discourse on The Brothers K is worth the price of the book all by itself.

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