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Queen of Desire
Toperoff focuses on 13 "moments" in Marilyn Monroe's life to create a fictionalized portrait of a highly sensitive, vulnerable girl, extending his material to offer insights on femininity, showbusiness, exploitation and rampant masculinity. The author wrote a biography of Sugar Ray Leonard.
276 pages, Hardcover
First published January 1, 1992
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May 26, 2026
Tuesday, June 1st 1926, Los Angeles. The weather was typical, poised to hit the mid-70s by afternoon, but still subject to the coastal phenomenon known by the locals as the June Gloom.
Somewhere in the Los Angeles General Hospital, affectionately nicknamed the Great Stone Mother, standing like a casual Art Deco assemblage of Sticklebricks in Boyle Heights, 9:30AM was approaching. Time, like every other force that day, was ignorant of the unusual bomb that was about to go off.
The effect was small at first, the shockwaves mostly unfelt. Spreading out over Los Angeles, invisible to most, continuous as the 1920s ended, then the 1930s. The pall of dust scattered by the strange explosion, rather than diminishing, fading and settling as they usually do, actually got bigger, and continued to expand.
One hundred years later, it is everywhere, as visible as it ever was. Like any event of any significance, it can be described in few words. In this case, we need only the mononym: Marilyn.
Sam Toperoff's book is an intriguing conceit. Thirteen episodes in her life, fictionalised but with many familiar players and participants, spaced out from Marilyn's childhood up until the antechamber of her death. Scenes at the Actor's Studio, on the set of The Seven Year Itch, playing poker with Huston, Clift and Gable on location during the filming of The Misfits, at home with Arthur Miller - very recognisable moments in her life, refracted through a fictitious lens.
Unlike Joyce Carol Oates' mammoth but fascinating Blonde, which was a flood of synechdocic detail - if that isn't a contradiction - Queen of Desire is much more impressionistic, a collection of chronological vignettes.
The disclaimer at the front of the book is clear to point out that this is fiction, and if the episodes do encroach on reality, it is not actual truth. Which obviously is the first step to having as much latitude as possible. It could also have been a good starting point for warping and distorting, to take Marilyn and fictionalise her into caricature. Luckily, it does not.
But make no mistake, this is a fictitious Marilyn, even with the cast of real characters surrounding her. Caught under the spell of the halo effect perhaps, Monroemaniacs are apt to confer upon their icon qualities not normally assumed by the casual observer - wit, intelligence, literacy, strength, kindness, independence - and they do so because Marilyn did exhibit all of those qualities at one time or another. Toperoff plays with at least some of this. In the course of this book, she is shown to be fascinated by architecture, literature and the spiritual. And anyone who knows enough about Marilyn will know that these are not wild speculations.
At one point she calls a radio phone-in to talk to a well-known atheist of the time (a real person called Madalyn Murray O'Hair who had a startling ending of her own) and offers the following observation:
In tone, to me at least, this is slightly reminiscent of the scene in the film Insignificance where the Marilyn cipher offers to explain the Theory of Relativity to the Einstein cipher. It's not clear if Marilyn ever said precisely those words, but she could have. It doesn't feel strange. It borrows from the Marilyn selection box in the same way the whole book does.
Suffice to say, this book feels incomplete precisely because it is episodic, giving it the frisson of snapshots. It is though not hagiographic in the least - the chapter involving her therapist shows her as marginally unbearable even in her distress - and it does feel a little gratuitous in parts. But it is full of moments that would ring true to the aficianado, and as a result is a fascinating enough read in its way, more than the sum of its varied parts.
In three days at the time of writing, it will be the centenary of her birth. I first discovered her in 1982, because of Some Like It Hot. By then she had already been dead for 20 years. Seemed sad to me when I was 14, but I was mostly unaware in my youth of the sophisticated nuance that attaches itself to icons. Dead is a relative term, it turns out, and many images of Marilyn look like they could have been taken yesterday. This would have sent my early teenage head into an existential spin, but now it just seems as it should be. And note, if you will, how I call her Marilyn, as if I'd known her all my life. Because, in a way, I have.
"All we demanded was our right to twinkle," she once supposedly said. Like candles on a cake perhaps. Happy 100th Marilyn!
Somewhere in the Los Angeles General Hospital, affectionately nicknamed the Great Stone Mother, standing like a casual Art Deco assemblage of Sticklebricks in Boyle Heights, 9:30AM was approaching. Time, like every other force that day, was ignorant of the unusual bomb that was about to go off.
The effect was small at first, the shockwaves mostly unfelt. Spreading out over Los Angeles, invisible to most, continuous as the 1920s ended, then the 1930s. The pall of dust scattered by the strange explosion, rather than diminishing, fading and settling as they usually do, actually got bigger, and continued to expand.
One hundred years later, it is everywhere, as visible as it ever was. Like any event of any significance, it can be described in few words. In this case, we need only the mononym: Marilyn.
Sam Toperoff's book is an intriguing conceit. Thirteen episodes in her life, fictionalised but with many familiar players and participants, spaced out from Marilyn's childhood up until the antechamber of her death. Scenes at the Actor's Studio, on the set of The Seven Year Itch, playing poker with Huston, Clift and Gable on location during the filming of The Misfits, at home with Arthur Miller - very recognisable moments in her life, refracted through a fictitious lens.
Unlike Joyce Carol Oates' mammoth but fascinating Blonde, which was a flood of synechdocic detail - if that isn't a contradiction - Queen of Desire is much more impressionistic, a collection of chronological vignettes.
The disclaimer at the front of the book is clear to point out that this is fiction, and if the episodes do encroach on reality, it is not actual truth. Which obviously is the first step to having as much latitude as possible. It could also have been a good starting point for warping and distorting, to take Marilyn and fictionalise her into caricature. Luckily, it does not.
But make no mistake, this is a fictitious Marilyn, even with the cast of real characters surrounding her. Caught under the spell of the halo effect perhaps, Monroemaniacs are apt to confer upon their icon qualities not normally assumed by the casual observer - wit, intelligence, literacy, strength, kindness, independence - and they do so because Marilyn did exhibit all of those qualities at one time or another. Toperoff plays with at least some of this. In the course of this book, she is shown to be fascinated by architecture, literature and the spiritual. And anyone who knows enough about Marilyn will know that these are not wild speculations.
At one point she calls a radio phone-in to talk to a well-known atheist of the time (a real person called Madalyn Murray O'Hair who had a startling ending of her own) and offers the following observation:
Where do you think creativity comes from? I think it's from our sexuality. Connected to it in ways we don't even understand ourselves.
In tone, to me at least, this is slightly reminiscent of the scene in the film Insignificance where the Marilyn cipher offers to explain the Theory of Relativity to the Einstein cipher. It's not clear if Marilyn ever said precisely those words, but she could have. It doesn't feel strange. It borrows from the Marilyn selection box in the same way the whole book does.
Suffice to say, this book feels incomplete precisely because it is episodic, giving it the frisson of snapshots. It is though not hagiographic in the least - the chapter involving her therapist shows her as marginally unbearable even in her distress - and it does feel a little gratuitous in parts. But it is full of moments that would ring true to the aficianado, and as a result is a fascinating enough read in its way, more than the sum of its varied parts.
In three days at the time of writing, it will be the centenary of her birth. I first discovered her in 1982, because of Some Like It Hot. By then she had already been dead for 20 years. Seemed sad to me when I was 14, but I was mostly unaware in my youth of the sophisticated nuance that attaches itself to icons. Dead is a relative term, it turns out, and many images of Marilyn look like they could have been taken yesterday. This would have sent my early teenage head into an existential spin, but now it just seems as it should be. And note, if you will, how I call her Marilyn, as if I'd known her all my life. Because, in a way, I have.
"All we demanded was our right to twinkle," she once supposedly said. Like candles on a cake perhaps. Happy 100th Marilyn!
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