{"id":387324,"date":"2025-08-31T15:12:15","date_gmt":"2025-08-31T15:12:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/387324\/"},"modified":"2025-08-31T15:12:15","modified_gmt":"2025-08-31T15:12:15","slug":"i-finally-read-the-great-american-novel-to-see-if-it-lived-up-to-the-hype-spoiler-it-does","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/387324\/","title":{"rendered":"I Finally Read the \u2018Great American Novel\u2019 to See if It Lived Up to the Hype (Spoiler: It Does)"},"content":{"rendered":"

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Forget Moby Dick, To Kill a Mockingbird or A Farewell to Arms. The great Edith Wharton<\/a> once cheekily crowned Gentlemen Prefer Blondes \u201cThe Great American Novel.\u201d The slim, 176-page satire by Anita Loos also won admirers like James Joyce and George Santayana, and went on to spawn a comic strip, a Broadway<\/a> musical, a 1928 silent film<\/a>, and, most famously, the 1953 Marilyn Monroe<\/a> classic. As a Golden Age of Hollywood enthusiast, I\u2019d seen Monroe purr that \u201cdiamonds are a girl\u2019s best friend.\u201d But I wanted to read the book that started it all and see if really meets Wharton\u2019s appellation as the Great American Novel. Here\u2019s my review.<\/p>\n

Anita Loos Commits to the Bit<\/p>\n

When I turned the first page, I had to contain my reflexive eye-roll at the spelling- and grammar- riddled prose. Instead of a traditional novel, Loos structures the entire story as a string of diary entries. The narrator, like the 1953 musical, is Lorelai Lee, a society girl from Little Rock, Arkansas. Unlike the movie, Lorelai is not a showgirl<\/a> engaged to a millionaire but rather a society girl and aspiring actress, bouncing from wealthy male patron to wealthy male patron in the hedonistic heyday of Jazz Age New York. While my writer heart had a hard time with all the \u201cdumb blonde\u201d flubs, the voice was spot on, and eventually the mistakes grew on me as an embellishment of the character.<\/p>\n

It Cheekily Redeems the \u201cDumb Blonde\u201d Trope<\/p>\n

While I loved the Monroe musical, Loos\u2019s original work gave the seemingly brainless Lorelai a little more credibility (albeit sarcastically). The book was never meant to be a serious thing, either. Loos had the idea for it while struggling with her luggage on a train, while noticing that instead of offering her aid, all the men were fawning over a vapid natural blonde. However, the novella does deserve some credit in a way that the movie robbed Monroe of the same chance to redeem the trope.<\/p>\n

Don\u2019t get me wrong\u2014in the film, Lorelai delivers plenty of witty aphorisms about the tribulations of womanhood. Notably, if you listen to \u201cDiamonds Are a Girl\u2019s Best Friend\u201d in its entirety, you\u2019ll hear the zingers. The particular gut punch: \u201cMen grow cold \/ As girls grow old \/ And we all lose our charms in the end.\u201d However, the plot sets it up so that Lorelai is portrayed as an engaged woman always scheming to find a better match, tripping in her own foibles in pursuit of the biggest possible diamond.<\/p>\n

In the book, Lorelai isn\u2019t engaged, and actually shows, beneath the ditzy veneer, a good modicum of intelligence as she juggles a string of interested, wealthy patrons and a diamond tiara heist, all while managing to bag the country\u2019s most eligible bachelor and turn him into a vehicle to fund her Hollywood pursuits.<\/p>\n

Sure, she\u2019s chasing the superficial, but Lorelai is on a mission and orchestrates everything so that in the end, she gets exactly what she wants. And you don\u2019t get exactly what you want solely riding on the basis of being pretty<\/a>. Might it be easier? Sure. But you need to give your goal momentum, and Lorelai is running a steam engine pulling ten first-class rail cars.<\/p>\n

In Short, a Hidden Gem<\/p>\n

The satire was a smash hit when it was published in 1925\u2014the same year as The Great Gatsby. Ultimately, Gentlemen Prefer Blondes printed an astonishing 85 editions and translations in 14 languages<\/a>. While incredibly tongue-in-cheek and poking fun, it does, ultimately, give Lorelai some credit. She\u2019s working the system in which she must exist as a woman, in a time period with limited opportunities. Can you fault her? Because as Monroe so aptly said in character: \u201cI can be smart when it’s important. But most men don’t like it.\u201d<\/p>\n

$9 at Bookshop.org<\/a><\/p>\n

$10 at Amazon<\/a><\/p>\n

This Judy Blume Adaptation Has a 97% Rotten Tomatoes Score\u2026and Don\u2019t Sleep on the Book Either<\/a><\/p>\n

Why You Should Trust Us<\/p>\n

PureWow’s editors and writers have spent more than a decade shopping online, digging through sales and putting our home goods, beauty finds, wellness picks and more through the wringer\u2014all to help you determine which are actually worth your hard-earned cash. From our PureWow100 series (where we rank items on a 100-point scale) to our painstakingly curated lists of fashion, beauty, cooking, home and family picks, you can trust that our recommendations have been thoroughly vetted for function, aesthetics and innovation. Whether you’re looking for travel-size hair dryers you can take on-the-go or women\u2019s walking shoes that won\u2019t hurt your feet, we\u2019ve got you covered.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"PureWow editors select every item that appears on this page, and some items may be gifted to us.…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":387325,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3938],"tags":[134255,3444,134261,130336,77,134256,134257,134259,134260,93600,134258,16,15],"class_list":{"0":"post-387324","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-books","8":"tag-anita-loos","9":"tag-books","10":"tag-diamonds-are-a-girls-best-friend","11":"tag-edith-wharton","12":"tag-entertainment","13":"tag-gentlemen-prefer-blondes","14":"tag-george-santayana","15":"tag-golden-age-of-hollywood","16":"tag-james-joyce","17":"tag-marilyn-monroe","18":"tag-the-great-american-novel","19":"tag-uk","20":"tag-united-kingdom"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/115124027152091661","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/387324","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=387324"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/387324\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/387325"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=387324"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=387324"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=387324"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}