Joyce Carol Oates, Blonde

Paola Trimarco (The Open University)

Ed. by Stephen E. Meats, Pittsburg State University
The Literary Encyclopedia. Volume 3.2.4: American (US) Writing and Culture: Postwar and Contemporary, 1945-present.
Vol. editors: Sofia Ahlberg (Uppsala University), Patrick Chura (University of Akron), Emory Elliott (University of California, Riverside), Dale Enggass (University of Utah), Christopher Hugh Gair (University of Glasgow), Matthew Hofer (University of New Mexico), Stephen E. Meats (Pittsburg State University), Kerry Myler (Birmingham Newman University), Justin Parks (UiT - The Arctic University of Norway), Nick Selby (University of East Anglia)

Dates

First circulation or publication 2000

Places

United States (Country of Origin)

Genres and Modes

Novel

Resources

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Joyce Carol Oates’s novel

Blonde

is a fictional account of the life of the Hollywood icon Marilyn Monroe and as such retains its importance today primarily as a portrait of American culture and specifically the roles of women within that culture. This novel is also studied and debated for the ways in which it has crafted fiction with non-fiction, and stylistically for its use of multiple points of view.

Blonde became a bestseller soon after publication and was later adapted into a television mini-series. The novel follows a form of writing that has marked much of Oates’s work, namely the fictionalising of contemporary American events, such as in her Pulitzer-Prize nominated novel Black Water (1992), which re-enacted the Chappaquiddick case involving Senator Edward Kennedy, and Zombie

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1890 words

Citation: Trimarco, Paola. "Blonde". The Literary Encyclopedia. First published 23 November 2015 [https://www.litencyc.com/php/sworks.php?rec=true&UID=12203, accessed 18 April 2024.]

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