{"id":1802,"date":"2004-10-19T16:50:33","date_gmt":"2004-10-19T20:50:33","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/?p=1802"},"modified":"2015-05-16T20:19:43","modified_gmt":"2015-05-17T00:19:43","slug":"oh-and-one-other-thing","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/?p=1802","title":{"rendered":"<i>The Brothers Karamazov<\/i> and Marilyn Monroe"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><iframe style=\"width:120px;height:240px;\" marginwidth=\"0\" marginheight=\"0\" scrolling=\"no\" frameborder=\"0\" src=\"\/\/ws-na.amazon-adsystem.com\/widgets\/q?ServiceVersion=20070822&#038;OneJS=1&#038;Operation=GetAdHtml&#038;MarketPlace=US&#038;source=ac&#038;ref=tf_til&#038;ad_type=product_link&#038;tracking_id=thesheivari-20&#038;marketplace=amazon&#038;region=US&#038;placement=0374528373&#038;asins=0374528373&#038;linkId=4C4FKFFZUFUR2CG4&#038;show_border=true&#038;link_opens_in_new_window=true\"><br \/>\n<\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>\nI am finally reading <i>The Brothers Karamazov<\/i> which I started this week.  I had a rough time with those first two chapters &#8230; as usual.  Those Russians with their similar names &#8230; Alexey, and Alyosha, and the vitches added to last names &#8230; 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 <i>100 Years of Solitude<\/i>, Mitchell gave me a tip.  &#8220;The beginning is really confusing &#8230; because people in different generations all have the same name &#8230; but don&#8217;t give up &#8230; Stick it out, because then &#8211; you&#8217;re 100 pages in, and you understand everything, and then it is AMAZING.&#8221;  I have found that to be the case with <i>Brothers K<\/i>.  I stuck out the first two chapters, which were sheer drudgery &#8230; but now?  I cannot put the dern thing down.  It&#8217;s a page-turner.  It&#8217;s rich, it&#8217;s dense, it&#8217;s thought-provoking &#8211; but it&#8217;s also funny, lively &#8230; and it&#8217;s mostly conversation.  Not just narrative.<\/p>\n<p>My dad has been telling me to read this book for years, and I&#8217;m finally doing it.  <i>Crime and Punishment<\/i> is one of my all-time favorites, so I&#8217;m very pleased to be tackling this book as well.<\/p>\n<p>Haven&#8217;t gotten to the famous &#8220;Grand Inquisitor&#8221; chapter yet &#8211; although it&#8217;s coming!!!<\/p>\n<p>Here&#8217;s a random tidbit:<\/p>\n<p>When Marilyn Monroe fled Hollywood, basically on her own personal strike from the horrible material she was being offered, she disappeared for a while &#8211; and finally emerged, in New York &#8211; 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 <i>Brothers K<\/i> on the screen &#8211; 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 &#8230; It would be hard to imagine a star of Marilyn&#8217;s magnitude being treated with such contempt and condescension now.  One of the reporters asked her, &#8220;Do you even know how to spell Dostoevsky, Marilyn?&#8221; 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 &#8230; and so scoffed her &#8220;hoity-toity&#8221; choice of project.  Everyone thought she was illiterate.  Marilyn said to them, sweetly (she was always sweet):  &#8220;Actually, have you read the book?  There&#8217;s a wonderful character in it named Grushenka &#8230; she&#8217;s a real seductress &#8230; I think it would be a good part for me.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Having read the descriptions of Grushenka, I have to say Marilyn was right on the money.  Dostoevsky describes her &#8220;ample&#8221; hips, her soft hands &#8230; but more than that- her noiseless way of walking.  She didn&#8217;t really walk &#8211; she glid, she slithered &#8230; and she had a kind of girlish sweetness about her which hid a rock-hard steely broad underneath.<\/p>\n<p>Marilyn would have been great as Grushenka.  So there, condescending snobs.<\/p>\n<p>\n<iframe style=\"width:120px;height:240px;\" marginwidth=\"0\" marginheight=\"0\" scrolling=\"no\" frameborder=\"0\" src=\"\/\/ws-na.amazon-adsystem.com\/widgets\/q?ServiceVersion=20070822&#038;OneJS=1&#038;Operation=GetAdHtml&#038;MarketPlace=US&#038;source=ac&#038;ref=tf_til&#038;ad_type=product_link&#038;tracking_id=thesheivari-20&#038;marketplace=amazon&#038;region=US&#038;placement=0374528373&#038;asins=0374528373&#038;linkId=4C4FKFFZUFUR2CG4&#038;show_border=true&#038;link_opens_in_new_window=true\"><br \/>\n<\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I am finally reading The Brothers Karamazov which I started this week. I had a rough time with those first two chapters &#8230; as usual. Those Russians with their similar names &#8230; Alexey, and Alyosha, and the vitches added to &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/?p=1802\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[15],"tags":[266,44,999],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1802"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1802"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1802\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":101936,"href":"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1802\/revisions\/101936"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1802"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1802"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1802"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}