New Directions (paperback, 02/25/2020)
* New & Noteworthy: Anne Carson writes in her new verse drama, Norma Jeane Baker of Troy (New Directions): “The economy of ancient Greece, like that of early modern America, depended on the institution of slavery. And warfare was a factory for the production of slaves.” Originally staged in the spring of 2019 at the Shed’s Griffin Theatre in New York, starring actor Ben Whishaw and soprano Renée Fleming, Norma Jeane Baker dissects beauty and femininity atop a world ruled by men. Marilyn Monroe and Helen of Troy collide to become the protagonist of a myth about the perils of vanity and the weaponization of aesthetics, in which tablet-like history lessons, such as how to strike through Bronze Age armor with precision or how to control the optics of war through PR strategies, help to anchor the reader. Norma Jeane Baker of Troy is a whirlwind of a book that expertly complicates then decimates a lexicon historically steeped in violence against women.
