Marilyn Monroe’s image is so universal that we can’t help but believe that we know all there is to know of her. Every word and gesture made headlines and garnered controversy. Her serious gifts as an actor were sometimes eclipsed by her notoriety -- and the way the camera fell helplessly in love with her.
But what of the other Marilyn? Beyond the headlines -- and the too-familiar stories of heartbreak and desolation -- was a woman far more curious, searching and hopeful than the one the world got to know. Even as Hollywood studios tried to mold and suppress her, Marilyn never lost her insight, her passion, and her humour. To confront the mounting difficulties of her life, she wrote.
Now, for the first time, we can meet this private Marilyn and get to know her in a way we never have before. Fragments is an unprecedented collection of written artifacts -- notes to herself, letters, even poems -- in Marilyn’s own handwriting, never before published, along with rarely seen intimate photos. These bits of textjotted in notebooks, typed on paper or written on hotel letterhead -- reveal a woman who loved deeply and strove to perfect her craft. They show a Marilyn Monroe unsparing in her analysis of her own life, but also playful, funny and impossibly charming. The easy grace and deceptive lightness that made her performances so memorable emerge on the page, as does the simmering tragedy that made her last appearances so heartbreaking.
Fragments is an event -- an unforgettable book that will redefine one of the greatest stars of the twentieth century and which, nearly fifty years after her death, will definitively reveal Marilyn Monroe’s humanity.

Fragments: Poems, Intimate Notes, Letters

Biographies & Memoirs

Stanley Buchthal

Bernard Comment

Arts & Literature

HarperCollins, Publishers

Preceded by an extensive media blitz, Call Girl was a living installation which offered to anyone who desired it a thirty minute meeting with a call girl. Two stipulations defined the nature of the proposed exchange: that it be 100% all talk, and that it take place at the Canadian Cultural Centre in Paris. Through the formalization and theatricalization of the subsequent events (the call girls were impersonated by actresses), the artist sought to confront the visitor with the expectations he or she has in relation to a woman as an object of sexual fantasy. In the end, demand well exceeded supply. At the same time Norman set up an on-line installation based on the Homeric myth of Penelope, the paragon of womanly faithfulness, wherein she questions the emancipation of the female artist from her traditional venues of intervention. Bedard outlines the complicated logistics of setting up such an event. Comment provides an Homeric response to Norman's Penelope, and Giraudeau comments on the on-line installation.

Nadine Norman : Call Girl (English and French Edition)

Arts & Photography

Collections, Catalogs & Exhibitions

Canadian Cultural Centre

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Books by Bernard Comment