Marilyn Last Sessions (Michel Schneider)
I am reading a French book about Marilyn Monroe. I haven't finished it yet, so I cannot make any all-encompassing statement about the curve of its plot or the measure of its depth. I like the book. But up until today, 200 pages in, I couldn't quite pinpoint why I liked the book. I couldn't even begin to describe it. Reading it had been a completely passive experience, one in which I relinquished all intellectual control and was breathlessly dragged along the marble road of polished sentences without looking back.
But a few days ago, in a conversation with my roommate, my reading experience congealed into sentences. It is a historical novel. You don't know what's true, what's not. Although the feeling of Marilyn's presence that coats the open pages is so visceral that I can't help but believe every sentence. I already feel like I know Marilyn. I couldn't describe her face, nor what she likes to eat, nor even which jokes make her laugh. I feel like I know her in a different way. That knowledge is much like the memory of a delightful film you have seen five years ago. You know it's good, but you couldn't begin to describe the plot. The stenciled outline is erased, what remains is the raw, dense sensation of the core.
How does the book achieve this? The chapters are short. As in a puntilistic painting, form or rather meaning is achieved in the assembly of disparate events, thoughts, quotes and encounters. In one chapter, Marilyn spends two weeks in a sanitarium. In another, she is discussing anal sex with her last analyst, doctor Greenson. Ignorant of time, yet loyal to its title, each chapter explores an issue discussed in Marilyn's last few years of analysis. The novel's organization reflects the erratic digging of these sessions.
Some of my favorite passages (i love the way the author, Michel Schneider, ends her chapters. Not the incisiveness of the punch line, something more subtle, yet more poignant, like an unexpected caress):
"Upon her return home, in the evening, Marilyn thought about the calm and gentle man who had examined her with a certain coldness. His eyes masked, under their challenge, a fatal gentleness. When, laying down on the sofa, she had asked him whether she was going to do a real analysis with him, like with the Dr Kris, he had answered that they shouldn't. "One must be modest. We are not aiming for deep changes, since you are soon going to go back to New York, to find your husband and pick up your analysis over there." The word modest had hurt her. She had cried. The analyst answered that it wasn't a reproach that he making to her, but a goal that he was fixing for himself. It's still strange, thought Marilyn, strange that he didn't propose that I lie down. It always amazes me when a man doesn't want to see me horizontal. To see my ass when I'm turning my back on him. A glass in hand, looking at the white of the wall and the black of the fabric that covered her bungalow, she continued to remember the session. The Dr. Greenson doesn't have any after thoughts I think. It's good that he didn't propose I should lie down. Maybe he was afraid. Of me? Of him? It's better like this. Me, I was scared. Not of him. It wasn't a sexual fear. "Let's Make Love" it's not only the title of the film. With Yves, I took this title literally. With the doctor, it won't be about love. In fact, she didn't like people asking her to lie down, she was afraid of the night, afraid of beginning it, afraid that it wouldn't end. She often made love, standing up, during the day. "
