Norma Jean Baker of Troy by Anne Carson

DESCRIPTION

Anne Carson’s new work that reconsiders the stories of two iconic women—Marilyn Monroe and Helen of Troy—from their point of view.

Winner of the Governor General Award in Poetry

Norma Jeane Baker of Troy is a meditation on the destabilizing and destructive power of beauty, drawing together Helen of Troy and Marilyn Monroe, twin avatars of female fascination separated by millennia but united in mythopoeic force. Norma Jeane Baker was staged in the spring of 2019 at The Shed’s Griffin Theater in New York, starring actor Ben Whishaw and soprano Renée Fleming and directed by Katie Mitchell.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

ANNE CARSON was born in Canada and teaches ancient Greek for a living.

PRAISE

"This little grenade of a book is difficult to categorize. It's a performance piece and a treatise on war and beauty, reality and fakery, bombshell and bombing—with ancient Greek etymology lessons woven in to show us how the small and everyday becomes epic, and vice versa. Marilyn Monroe (neé Norma Jeane Baker) is fused here with Helen of Troy, and elements of both milieus—Homer and Hollywood—populate the narrative. It's easy to imagine the blunt beauty of Carson's language being spoken and sung on stage." — Barbara Engel

DETAILS

Paperback | 64 pages