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The Genius and the Goddess: Arthur Miller and Marilyn Monroe. By Jeffrey Meyers. (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2009. xviii, 345 pp. $29.95, isbn 978-0-252-03544-9)
Jeffrey Meyers tantalizes readers with his juxtaposition of "genius" and "goddess" in his dual biography of the acclaimed playwright Arthur Miller and the Hollywood icon Marilyn Monroe. His study seems to promise a layering of the 1950s and the early 1 960s with greater complexity and an exploration of the intriguing intersections between the era's high and low cultures. These years included the most tempestuous times in this relationship of misfits, from their initial meeting and affair in 1951 to their marriage in 1956, their divorce in 1961, and Monroe's death in 1962. These years also witnessed the intertwining of their celebrated cultural successes and their immersion into a nexus of sexual and political controversy. Miller wrote his allegorical play about witch-hunting, The Crucible (1951);...