This is going to have to be quick, and a postscript to the posting that I made last night...I have to be in the shower soon, and get ready for work, but my mind has been chewing on the Crosbie book(sometimes, or often rather, I just can't let go)and I need to expostulate here for a moment...I read the last few pages again, where Madonna is in the Playboy mansion with Hefner(weird I know) and she discovers a few pages of a manuscript, entitled Dorothy L'Amour which reads "His voice was familiar, yet strange to me. Come with me, he said, and I lifted my hand. Dying, I saw him rush before me in the clear blue water, I heard the strings begin, the movement of the sea"...(Crosbie181-2) Madonna asks him what he is writing, and he "wrests the pages from her hands. We are writing about someone you do not know, someone we consider to be the embodiment of beauty and cardinal virtue" (ibid 182). The novel approaches its end by reading "Hefner stands frozen, clutching the manuscript to his chest. We have come this far, Dorothy, he says, as the pages begin to slide to the floor.[paragraph break] We have come this far and it is not over. It isn't over until the fat lady sings, and as you know, we do not allow her on the premises.[paragraph break] Tucking a roll of Viagra into his breast pocket, he opens the door and sails forward, toward the sound of music that has always imprecated him to feel love" (ibid 182). So, now I'm convinced that Crosbie wrote this as if Hefner wrote the whole thing. Why? This is what I'm pondering/digesting. Most fairy tales were written by men(think of the Grimm brothers, Hans Christian Anderson, etc.), and men when they write about women tend to fantasize, embellish, make them wispy faery-like creatures that are hard to pin down, sometimes weak, subject to their ever-changing emotions(stereotype, anyone?), not strong at all...they are almost always "rescued" by a charming prince or doomed because of a tragic flaw. Crosbie's(or Hefner's, depending on how you look at it) Stratten is a bit more complicated than that...she is a bit like Snow White with a dash of the Witch, Sleeping Beauty with the cold-heartedness of Maleficent...but she does posess her tragic flaw, her beauty...and is that what leads to her death? I don't know. She also appears, through much of this novel to be just lost, mentally, struggling with herself, her place, who she is...If Hefner is indeed supposed to be the narrator, writing Dorothy's memoirs for her, filling it with detail that he couldn't possibly know, is he making her into that weak woman figure that is so prevalent in fairy tale, or he trying to make her more human, all the while subconsiously, because of the society in which he lives and functions(and in which he is highly successful), sliding her into a patriarchal ideal? There were many times throughout the book where I found some of Dorothy's "idols" a little weird, given her age and upbringing(she was only 20 when she died, in 1980)...she had a rather intense obsession with Frank Sinatra(a contemporary of Hefner's and frequent guest at the Playboy mansion), and was extremely(and I mean EXTREMELY)well-read, referencing Proust and other rather uppity literati...I just thought, as I was reading that this was Crosbie, a Ph.D in English Lit., inserting her own authorial voice, but it could have been Hefner slipping his own ideas into Dorothy's "thoughts."Or, is this me, thinking that perhaps a Playboy bunny couldn't be quoting Goethe in her sleep, and what does that say about my assumptions that are perhaps socially constructed(and not even appropriate or correct), that one cannot be undeniably beautiful and undeniably brilliant at the same time? I mean, come on, I listen to the Stones and read the classics, a walking paradox...yet, I do not possess the radiance that Stratten is said to have beamed onto the world. I'm really trying to wrap my head around all of this, which is great because I LOVE books that make me think...Why did/does Crosbie write with a male voice, when she is a devoted feminist? I love the fact that she didn't let the reader know until the very end that the narrator was Hefner the entire time, for it makes you wonder, how do men really see women? On what pedestal do they place them? If this woman hadn't been a centerfold, and had just been normal sans celebrity, how would she have been viewed differently? Was Hefner trying to save her reputation? And, how can Lynn Crosbie possibly think as Hugh Hefner would, would he even write something like that? A man who practices something like a modern version of keeping concubines catering to the whims of a patriarchal society in which women are empowered by baring their parts to men? Is Crosbie trying to make Hefner into a sympathetic figure who "really understands" his "bunnies"? Or a pathetic old man trying to hero-worship the women whose stardom he has had a hand in creating, only to inadvertently foster feelings in them of self-loathing and depression? Dorothy was not the first centerfold to die tragically, or to slip mentally, and Hefner talks about ones that preceeded her, but it is her memoir that he writes. Perhaps it is his guilt taking over, and he is realizing a conscience however briefly about his role in the oppression of women in America over the past however many years...It's certainly a bit brief, since he still tucks "a roll of Viagra into his breast pocket" and continues on with his day...Need to shower, work and mull...