![]() ![]() But even more, the power of the novel is Lorelei’s: her unwillingness to play the victim and her canny manipulation of those who would manipulate her. On the one hand, this is farce pure and simple, and part of the fun is to watch Lorelei and her tough-talking friend Dorothy take the air out of society’s pretensions, which, then as now, were ripe for satire. This, of course, is the origin of the famous Marilyn Monroe line: “A kiss on the hand may be quite continental / but diamonds are a girl’s best friend.” Monroe played Lorelei in the 1953 movie, a performance in which, McPhee observes, she “seemed to have ascertained that the world was one big bastion of hypocrisy, especially when it came to women, so she put a new spin on an old adage: if you can’t beat ’em, make ’em pay, pay, pay.” “issing your hand may make you feel very very good,” the narrator, a young woman named Lorelei Lee, tells us, “but a diamond and safire bracelet lasts forever.” If you’re among the uninitiated, as I was, “Gentlemen Prefer Blondes” is a perfect read for this most saccharine of holidays: a cynical knife blade of a novel, barely 130 pages, that puts the lie to romance. Norton, $13.95) featuring a nuanced introduction by Jenny McPhee landed on my desk, just in time for Valentine’s Day. The book, however, managed to elude me - until a new edition (W.W. How is it possible that, until this week, I had never read Anita Loos’ “Gentlemen Prefer Blondes”? Certainly, I’ve seen the Howard Hawks film. ![]()
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