Pricey pap

Do you fancy yourself as an edgy literary type? Have you got a thing for Marilyn Monroe? Marilyn Monroe by Norman Mailer and Bert Stern, could be the Christmas present for you. The handsome photo-book is a combination of Mailer’s cool prose and some of the most ‘revealing, intimate’ shots of Marilyn ever taken. (Revealing and intimate, in this context, means Monroe’s nipples can be seen.)

All this at a time when Marilyn chic is back, what with the new biopic starring Michelle Williams. What’s not to like? Well, there’s the outrageous price: $1000 (about 650 quid).  And as Natasha Vargas-Cooper over at Book Forum puts it,

‘Divorced from the morbid pictures, sold in a pulp paperback, the writing could be considered a recommended but nonessential work by Mailer. But the pairing of voyeuristic nipple studies and fantastical descriptions of trauma has all the intimacy and delight of a Pap smear.