Tennesee Williams' Assessment of Marilyn Monroe

Ouch.

Why are there all these threads today about Marilyn Monroe?

He wasn’t really wrong. And he knew crazy women very well. It’s sad when people pretend Marilyn was some kind of genius - she was a highly constructed image for consumption.

All the supposed 'quotes' on that website are made up by the person who manages it. They are supposedly from 'private' telephone conversations with famous people.

This can't be. Her fans insist that she was a secret philosopher genius. I mean to her credit she did come up with the " If you can't handle me at my worst you don't deserve me at my best" line. It's a great way to immediately identify anyone who quotes it as a raging BPD nutcase.

She was a brilliant comic actress, smart enough to know how make a script funny. So she had that going for her.

Well, she was a supporter of civil rights for African Americans and took some concrete actions in that area. So, she had thought some things through.

I don't know but I am guessing Tennessee Williams did nothing in that area.

"Like most intellectuals, he's intensely stupid."

Marilyn Monroe: It's not true I had nothing on, I had the radio on

[quote] she would read Joyce and Schopenhauer and Woolf and Jung

I highly doubt that this unprovable claim.

She was one of the first women to start her own production company, she defended Arthur Miller against charges of communism knowing it could've been detrimental to her career, and she had a hand in helping Ella Fitzgerald's career.

Tennessee never had anything nice to say about anybody. He was a notorious bitch. I read his autobiography years ago. I had really admired him and his work but that book definitely diminished my respect for him.

How would he know what she understood about what she read? He sounds arrogant and condescending. It's better not to judge the intellectual capabilities of others.

Oh my… pissing contest much cough cough? He didn’t like Arthur Miller. Marilyn is not what you’d define as stable, but she was no dummy either.

Just another bitchy queen who wished he was a woman like Marilyn, loved by men and sympathized with by women.

Tennessee Williams?! Didn’t this bitch die from choking on a mint?

I put Tennessee Williams, Truman Capote and Gore Vidal in the same pod. All brilliant but with little good to say about others, particularly popular and successful others.

God, I love bitchy queens.

Still, you would think Tennessee would have loved Marilyn. She was almost the living, breathing embodiment of many of his heroines.

"There is no “real” Marilyn, no genuine Norma Jeane. We have mythologized the particulars of her humanity more than we have her faux-blondness, her baby-doll shtick, or her facial punctuation mark, and internalized her frigidity and arrogance as much as her Bernie Taupin-metaphorized vulnerability. The distance between us and her shapeliness, her winks, and her hair-tosses on the screen, on any screen, is enormous, and fertile with teasing distractions from third-party discourse. Her face is so ubiquitous that it transcends tiresomeness."

Tom didn't hate me he wanted to be me.

"... she was a highly constructed image for consumption."

She constructed it, and it made her a legend. Not bad for a foster child.

[quote]an ambulatory bowl of rich vanilla ice cream

Fake or not, that's probably the best description I've ever read of MM.

R21

Great point. I hate even making this flammable juxtaposition, because every other variable is different, but both her and Madonna (30+ years ago, please…. We don’t want to see your snatch anymore) are similar in the lack of a material figure as a trigger event. They both seem to lack a sense of self, but that’s as much as I’ll give my dime store Psychology standing.

^Maternal

^Maternal

I’m not getting enough attention Mary’s……. It’s like I always said: “People should never turn down sex or the opportunity to appear on television.”

r5 and funnily enough, that "If you can't handle me at my worst, then you don't deserve me at my best" quote has no source and no one can find where or when Marilyn ever said it, but people just attribute it to her. There is another quote that people attach to her that goes “Imperfection is beauty, madness is genius and it's better to be absolutely ridiculous than absolutely boring.” Again, this quote has no source and it also goes against some well-established facts about Marilyn. Her mother was very mentally-ill and lived in a "nuthouse"/"madhouse" and Marilyn's grandmother was also institutionalized. Marilyn spent her entire life in fear that she could end up this way, going mad and being put away (and this DID happen to her temporarily). Why the fuck would the same person also say "madness is genius"? It is so stupid and makes zero sense.

[quote] . I mean to her credit she did come up with the " If you can't handle me at my worst you don't deserve me at my best" line.

I thought that quote was made up?

Where does it say those quotes are from Tennesee Williams in OP's link?

R27 In all fairness, madness and creative genius are not new relations, but the concept is much older than the context correct.

She wasn’t so stupid - you can’t be an idiot and manage stardom and maintaining the image/career. Maybe not intellectual or book smart - but street smart.

It takes a lot of certain intellect to pull off being dumb when you are not.

I love how she left Hollywood in 1955 to move to New York, study acting and take control of her career. It had mixed results, but who had the balls to do that back then?!

OP is wrong. Follow the link and you'll see. Tennessee Williams never said or wrote any of this. It's all fiction by the guy whose blog OP linked.

This has always been my basic assessment of her. She claimed to want to be taken seriously, yet she continued to act like a bimbo. She went blonder, got naked as often as possible, talked like a breathy little girl, she was thirsty as fuck for sexual attention. I never believed that there was honestly much depth to her.

Correction: not quite fiction, but a work that purports to distill conversations with Williams about various actresses. Still, not Tennessee's writing nor his exact words. The link is to the book that OP quoted from.

Slightly OT but does anyone know why Marilyn didn't play Holly Golightly? Capote often said he wrote the part with Marilyn in mind and expected her to do any film. You'd think she'd have welcomed the part with its well respected contemporary literary source.

she would read Joyce and Schopenhauer and Woolf and Jung I highly doubt that this unprovable claim.

There's a list of books found in her belongings after she died. Doesn't mean she read them though

Holly is aged 19 in the book. Marilyn was 34 when the movie was filmed.

I imagined Holly as being tall and chic/model-ish than a sexpot.

I doubt Arthur Miller would have married her is she'd been the air head she projected to the world.

Williams was just jealous she got to fuck JFK and he didn't. Gore Vidal had a story about Williams checking out JFK's ass.

[quote]Tennessee Williams?! Didn’t this bitch die from choking on a mint?

He choked to death after inhaling a plastic cap from a pill bottle.

A lifelong depressive and drug addict said what about Marilyn Monroe?

Tennessee Williams wanted Monroe to do BABY DOLL (1956) so apparently he liked her work enough.

I’ve never heard the pair spent any time together, actually. He was rivals with her husband for Great American Playwright, so I can’t imagine they were too chummy.

[quote] Of course she understood none of it

Neither did I. I think I would’ve gotten along with Marilyn.

That above pic of Monroe and Miller is great.

R40 You're obviously not a pussy-chasing heterosexual male.

R40 He found her physically attractive. End of story.

She got to enjoy Arthur Miller's (rumoured) massive sizemeat!

I remember reading somewhere that Miller wasn't too broken up after she OD'd. I guess he was over her by then.

[quote] Miller… I guess he was over her by then

Wilder was over her after 2 weeks misbehaviour on 'Some Like It Hot'.

Olivier was over her after 2 weeks misbehaviour on 'Prince & the Showgirl'.

Actually, Wilder was over her during Seven Year Itch and swore he'd never work with her again.

Somehow he was convinced to do Hpt and regretted it.

Curtis was over her.

The stars were so much brighter back then, even if they had fucked up personal lives and certain personality dysfunctions. Today pretty much all we have are Kardashian fembots without any trace of a human soul in them.

I remember reading about one short shot in Some Like It Hot that took her 38 takes to get right. She comes in the door, looks in a drawer, looks at the camera and says "Where's the bourbon?"

"Where's the bon-bon?"

"Do you have any bourbon?"

"Where's the, uh, uh, stuff?"

"What's my line again?"

[trips on the rug]

Etc.

Otto Preminger was meaner and more succinct.

R4 is right, and Grissom used to post here on DL years ago. I followed him on Facebook for years until one day he went on a racist rant about a black woman actress, I believe, it was someone of note but I wasn't familiar with her so I didn't know who she was. His rant was absolutely appalling but most people didn't see it because it was in a reply.

From that point on I noticed more and more racist outbursts, and apparently he ended up on Medium making a career out of being a racist. On Twitter and Facebook, he'd suddenly come up with quotes from Williams and others which backed up his own racist beliefs, but I could never find a real source for them.

Here's one post where he calls Lynn Nottage inhuman and it just gets worse from there.

I don't trust anything that comes from Grissom as a primary source. The man isn't just a bigot, there's something wrong with his mind.

That 'where's the bourbon' line sounds like it was looped and she never got it in a take. It sounds like it was added later.

She's the best thing about Some Like it Hot and she is the ONLY reason to watch The Prince and the Showgirl where Olivier has all the charm and conviction of concrete. One of the older actresses in the film who must have known him from way back told him, 'She's wiping you off the screen.'

MM attracts unhinged frau fans.

[quote] There's a list of books found in her belongings after she died. Doesn't mean she read them though

She read them. The people involved with preparing her possessions for public auction reported that many of her books had her handwritten notes and annotations on the page margins. Her lack of a formal education inspired her to read on her own. When she lived in New York, she socialized with intellectuals and artists in the hope of understanding things which weren’t familiar to her. She wasn’t like Gwyneth, who hired a fucking book curator to tell her what titles she should have on her shelf (for show, of course).

She read them. She didn't understand them.

R61 = the bitchy ghost of Tennesee Williams

[quote] I don't know but I am guessing Tennessee Williams did nothing in that area.

Actually, he had it written in his contracts that his plays could not be performed in theaters that were segregated.

R37: According to Wikipedia, Marilyn’s guru, Lee Strasberg, advised her to turn down the role because playing a prostitute would be bad for her image.

She didn’t have a wholesome Doris Day or Sandra Dee persona. Her image was provocative enough for her time, so it’s understandable why she listened to him. Shirley MacLaine and Kim Novak also turned down the offer to play Holly.

As charming as Audrey was in the film, she was wrong for the role. She was too European to convincingly play a New York transplant who grew up in the Texas countryside.

Texas Whore is to Audrey Hepburn as Horny Japanese is to Mickey Rooney

I think some Marilyn fans have been liking their own posts here.

Marilyn was terribly mentally ill, terribly damaged, she abused prescription drugs and alcohol and was used by almost everyone. Just let her be.

Though Hepburn was miscast I wouldn't have liked to see Monroe in the role.

I'm trying to think who would've made more sense in the role and no big names are springing to mind.

I'm akin to agreeing with him Or at least that's what I have perceived in interviews. I don't think she was blatantly stupid, but she just wasn't bright either. She wanted very much to be because she was self conscious because of her image. But she wasn't, and really, it's not a big deal. Not everyone has to be super smart.

capote wanted marilyn, but paramount studios had the rights to it, and they chose hepburn and of course 20th century fox most likely wouldn't loan marilyn out to paramount to do the film so that's that...

after her death (of course) wilder did say he would work with marilyn again no matter the troubles she caused... his quote "working with her was like going to the dentist and getting a tooth pulled, it was hell during the time, but afterwards it was wonderful".... would have liked to have seen her work with wilder in "irma la duce" instead of maclaine....

This thread is filled fat frau Marilyn stans. Putting down gay hero Tennessee Williams to lift a glorified slut? I feel bad for her, but he contributed so much more to art and culture than she did, and essentially lived as an out gay man during midcentury. Of course, he was a little bitter, you cunts.

I would love for Tennessee to know me, read me, and shade me so beautifully.%

R68 Carrol Baker at that time could have nailed it, imo.

Natalie Wood too

I love them both, but Tennessee Williams likely had that opinion about Marilyn because she wasn’t his kind of woman. He wrote female heroines and anti-heroines who catered to men. Marilyn catered to Marilyn.

[Quote] Her fans insist that she was a secret philosopher genius.

You could post that comment in a Britney Spears thread and it would also be true.

This judgment of Monroe's intellectual capacity is probably accurate but is it so terrible to improve yourself by reading great works that might be beyond one's current capacity? Most Americans don't even read books of any type.

[quote] I think some Marilyn fans have been liking their own posts here.

Just like all the upvotes you gave yourself on your own thread that criticized her (Celebrities who attract awful fans). Your projection is obvious. Marilyn was a mess. Hardly the worst celeb in Hollywood history, but you’ll try your hardest to make her seem so, won’t you?

[quote]Hardly the worst celeb in Hollywood history

Well, I don't think she was evil.

She was, however, a whore.

I suspect there's some overlap between Britney and Mairlyn fans. There's definitely a lot of similarity between them: the object of their affection is the ultimate victim who has zero responsibility for themselves, yet also a private genius and really quite reserved despite all the evidence to the contrary.

Tennessee Williams catered to men? He was a misogynist? Do the Marilyn fraus hear themselves? Sorry somebody cut your idol down to size. He saw his sister and mother in her and probably felt pity that such a damaged woman was given this unhealthy level of fame and pressure.

[quote][R68] Carrol Baker at that time could have nailed it, imo.

I think I can see that working better, yes.

Like Tennessee Williams ever understood any of it. For intellect, I would have taken Tennessee Ernie Ford over that shallow ditz any day.

He did want her for COAHTR -- but that's hardly a compliment.

I think Holly works better when you imagine that *she* wanted to be Marilyn -- the ultimate phony -- rather than that she was Marilyn.

[quote] She was, however, a whore.

That’s the unforgivable sin? You sound like a sanctimonious frau. The majority of actors and actresses whored it up to get ahead in Hollywood. Grace Kelly, who came from a privileged background, didn’t need to. She did it anyway, probably for fun.

Williams had an end not unlike Marilyns

No, that's not a sin.

It's just the truth her frau fans don't like hearing.

R85 Calm down Mary, everyone calls Grace Kelly a whore in her own threads. And why does being from a poor background excuse you from bitchery?

Yeah, don't quite get how Tennessee catered to men.

Not that I'd consider that an insult anyway.

That's just some frau homophobia coming out.

R88: You should follow your own suggestion to calm down. According to you, anyone who says a positive thing about Marilyn while also acknowledging her faults is lumped with the fat fraus. But criticizing Tennessee, a talented yet drug-addicted, depressed "hero" is off-limits, based on your rants. The hypocrisy.

[quote]And why does being from a poor background excuse you from bitchery?

It doesn't. But there's a longstanding, classist bias against poor people. Poor people are crazy. Rich people are eccentric. Poor people are whores. Rich people are libertines and sensualists.

[quote] Tennessee Williams catered to men?

Literally - and by literally, I mean literally - not what I wrote. Work on your reading comprehension.

He catered to men, as one would say, outside of his professional life.

I loved that Williams called the Hotel Elysee the Hotel Easy Lay.

He had a very black sense of humor.

Natalie Wood was so wooden, you could put nails in her, R74.

Every Williams "heroine" was him.

In Breakfast at Tiffany’s, she’s not really portrayed as a prostitute but more a party girl.

1962.

In the alternate reality version Monroe would've been believable as a prostitute. Hepburn, no.

Did the dude even spend enough time with her to assess anything at all about her intellect?

Doubtful

I’m waiting for Shelley Winters to comment before I make a call. Shelley became the primary source of all things Marilyn after her death.

R29, yeah, I’m going to need a source. That labored piece of writing does not sound like Williams.

Insight from Susan.

The novella of breakfast had holly a lot rougher. they really cleaned up the movie version. It was touched upon that she was a prostitute with her $50.00 for the powder rm bullshit. Also in the book, her writer boyfriend was gay. Truman wrote the story as biographical. He had a neighbor that was like the holly of the book. I read that Capote was very unhappy with the choice of Hepburn.

R51, R58

This is an unhappy account of his unhappy experience in 1957. But there's an amusing anecdote at 7.30.

Olivier was wonderful in that clip.

I do believe that Monroe was quite intelligent, she'd have to be to rise as far as she did, and I also believe she read all those books and thought about them.

She just wouldnt have thought about them the same way an academic or literary writer would, because her mind was taken up with far more important things: Her survival, her career, her need to get people to love her, her need to deal with past trauma and remake herself, her need to keep going in spite of serious mental illness, etc. An academic or literary writer from a privileged background wouldn't understand or value such a mind, regarding it as inferior to a mind that was totally focused on language and words.

I think that's full of shit, that the person who can deal with the worst the world can throw at them and emerge as a kind and functional person has the more capable and valuable mind.

She got her start dick-sucking. And given she became such a big star she must’ve been good at it. 😮🍌

[quote] I think that's full of shit

Your language speaks volumes about you.

What is wrong with r108?

She may have been an idiot with BPD but, on the screen, she was SPECTACULAR. Unequaled, unrivaled, imitated but impossible to duplicate.

[quote]This thread is filled fat frau Marilyn stans.

Are you fucking kidding? Bitchy femme bottoms live for tragic fish like Monroe and Judy!

What a dick.

R110 BPD = Borderline personality disorder

Capote also thought Jodie Foster would be a good Holly for a rumored remake in the early 80s. I love Jodie, but that would be horrible miscasting. I'd cast Brooke Shields before Jodie!

She wasn't an idiot. She just played one in the movies.

What a shweetie.

^ Dame Sybil was a 'well-brought-up gel'.

She never said a bad word about anybody! Not even about George Bernard Shaw who slapped her posterior!

Grace Kelly wasn't a whore, she was a slut!

Learn the difference.

.,.,

Marilyn told Joan Rivers "Men are Stupid...and They Like Big Boobs". And Joan used it as a title for a book.

[quote]r58 she is the ONLY reason to watch The Prince and the Showgirl where Olivier has all the charm and conviction of concrete.

She was probably at her most beautiful in that film

[quote]r71 he contributed so much more to art and culture than she did

You can’t really compare them - they did different jobs.

[R71] he contributed so much more to art and culture than she did

And yet almost everyone knows and can recognize Marilyn Monroe, how many can recognize Williams or his work. Not many.

[quote] Olivier… has all the charm and conviction of concrete

That was the intention. The author, Terence Rattigan, wrote the prince was to be 'a stiff and pompous man'.

Olivier and Vivien Leigh had had starred in the stage version, called The Sleeping Prince. Barbara Bel Geddes did it on Broadway and Florence Henderson did Noël Coward's musical version, The Girl Who Came to Supper. Marilyn herself had bought the film rights and hired Olivier to costar and direct.

Re OP's 'quote', it is pretty much impossible for me to imagine T. Williams using the word "fruitage." Period.

R123 Any retard on the street can recognize Marilyn. That doesn't make her some grand artist.

Another statement by Williams about Monroe (and himself) that doesn't jibe with OP's 'quote.' (It's embedded in a photo, so it can't be uploaded here directly):

And if any retard on the street can recognize her then she must have contributed something to culture, albeit popular culture. And there would be a lot of educated people who've never heard of Tennessee Williams or seen or read one of his plays. Williams also lived twice as long as Marilyn, so his output should be greater.

Williams only became successful at 33, by which age Marilyn had achieved a lot more. Had she lived as long as Tennessee who knows what she might have achieved had she sorted herself out. Both were mentally ill and had their own demons.

[Quote]People praised Marilyn because she read books, because, I think, we couldn't conceive that an ambulatory bowl of rich vanilla ice cream needed to think or to grow a mind. Marilyn sought and developed her identity as a sex symbol; she wiggled and cooed for the camera, but, incapable of satisfaction or understanding, she fought this image, so she would read Joyce and Schopenhauer and Woolf and Jung. Of course she understood none of it, because there was no fertile ground in which any of this could take hold: You can throw a multitude of seeds into the desert sands, but there will never be fruitage. Marilyn's mind was a desert, a drought, with tiny compartments devoted to clothes, makeup, stardom, and fucking. That is all. That is absolutely all.

Perhaps the dress is to blame for the empty brain...

Tennessee was an astute observer of people like every writer is. His book eight mortal ladies possessed is a great read. " oh Stephano !!!"

Both quotes are from the Follies of God book, r28, so if the op one is fake, so is that one.

Young Lee Remick could have been Holly Golightly.

R114 Obviously Capote knew something about Holly he did not share with us.

[quote]R134 Young Lee Remick could have been Holly Golightly.

She was from Boston, and a little too cold for that role, I think.

She was handed some sexy parts but I never found her to be really free in them. She was naturally kind of decent and prim, in the long run.

[quote] Tennessee Williams?! Didn’t this bitch die from choking on a mint?

Can you imagine? I never!

I thought it was a prescription bottle cap.

So very, very low…

The theory is he was lying in bed and tried using his teeth to unscrew the stubborn bottle cap.

I thought it was the aerosol tip of one of those antihistamine squeeze-bottles. It dislodged while being fiddled with by Williams, and shot back into his throat, suffocating him...A journalist described an attempt to interview him shortly before Williams died, and talked about getting access to wherever Williams was staying (probably New York) one afernoon around 4:00: the place was littered with half-filled drinks, which the still groggy Williams (who had just woken up), kept absentmindedly picking up and drinking from, then setting down and picking up another one somewhere else. Williams was already incoherent and the journalist said it was clear Tenn wasn't long for this world.

Haven't read any of the posts but I know that Truman Capote wanted MM as Holly Golightly and was disappointed in the AH casting. MM would have been perfect.

As an aside I was always somewhat thankful that Tennessee died before Aids hit big. I sometimes wonder if he didn't sense something coming and chose to informally or formally drink/drug himself to death. I don't think William's psyche could have taken what was right around the corner. He was doing pretty well on all accoubts till the last 2 years or so of his life where he seemed to give up.

His "assessment" is dripping with jealousy. He wanted to be Marilyn, but since he could not, he has to slice and dice her and call her stupid.

It's not anything new with men in general, be they bottoms or MRAs or incels.

Most men hate women because they imagine their lives are easier.

R143 shut up

R19 Good God, what pompous blowhardery.

I'm disappointed that no one seems to have noticed that the actual author, whose very own website this "essay" is taken from, is James Grissom, not Tennessee Williams. Grissom wrote a book titled "Follies of God," which is ABOUT Williams and the people who appeared in his life and influenced his work.

r146, see r57 and some of the preceding posts. And try reading the thread before posting next time.

Anyone who has read Williams's own "Memoirs"--and you should, it's outrageously funny and raunchy-- would immediately recognize that Grissom's style (judgmental, reliant on visual descriptions and tons of adjectives) bears no similarity to Williams's.

R132 you have to actually observe people to have astute observations of them.

Not see them at some party or shindig 3 or 4 times from across the room.

Jesus Christ, I got a notification from a comment I made here and I still can’t believe some of the frau responses on this thread. Marilyn wasn’t any sort of genius for “playing dumb” or marketing herself like every single celebrity did during her time (one of the stupidest concepts that’s ever been peddled is you have to be “smart” to be believable as a borderline retarded sexpot), she was a woman of average intelligence at most and couldn’t really act. Every single film she was in she had to be coached through. Always late, always doing a million takes and fucking it up. She wasn’t any kind of artist or performer despite the claims of her doing one scene from Anna Christie really well at the Actors Studio once. And to put down the openly gay genius Tennessee Williams for the sake of uplifting this glorified damaged pin-up model? Has to be fraus. I can’t see gay men doing this. So many other actresses during her time were more beautiful and talented and intelligent but for some reason she’s glorified. I imagine it’s because her estate pimps out her image like nothing else, similarly to Audrey Hepburn.

I’m reminded of the Louise Brooks quote whenever someone blathers on about how talented and brilliant Marilyn was: “Most beautiful dumb girls believe they’re smart and get away with it, because other people on the whole aren’t much smarter.”

R69, R89 and R144 here and I am a frau. Obviously I don't fall in the neat little box R150 wants to put me and all other women in, especially because I am pretty sure he just WW-ed a bunch of my posts.

Oh, I think Marilyn was smart all right, but in a way the limited minds of the Intelligentsia could not appreciate.

What the hell did snobby writers like Capote or Arthur Miller know about what it takes to survive a horrific childhood, poverty, or to one's way to the top of an industry where quid quo pro sexual harassment, hostile work environment, blatant sexism, corruption and abuse of employees, were considered normal? How long would they have lasted, if they'd ever had to deal with the shit she had to face every day of her career? A person doesn't come out on top of a shitheap like the Hollywood of the 1950s without some smarts, which are genuine smarts, but not the kind that's valued at universities.

And that's the sad thing, Marilyn herself didn't value her own mental gifts, she overvalued book-learning and literary writing as much as Capote and Miller did, and didn't understand that there were other kinds of intelligence. And her husband Arthur Miller and her pal Capote weren't about to help her realize that, they wanted to believe they were the most brilliant people on Earth, and that Marilyn was only there to make them feel superior. Fuck that, they could have learned a lot from Marilyn herself, if they'd been willing to learn.

You know, the above rant would have been a lot more impressive, if I hadn't confused Tennessee Williams with Truman Capote...

What a dick.

If she really tried to read those books, from a background of practically no education, then she couldn't have understood much of them. They are at the pointy end of intellectual endeavour and are certainly the authors you'd reach for if you wanted to sound very clever.

If you're quite smart but uneducated and you want to climb the intellectual ladder, you need a teacher to show you how to do it. If she said she was hoovering up Jane Austen or she loved The Grapes of Wrath or To Kill a Mockingbird, or if she was reading a history of philosophy or psychology, I'd believe it. Those are all good ways of getting going that might be graspable for a bright but uneducated American girl. You'd hope Miller directed her to that level of reading.

If the authors Williams listed were where she tried to START, she couldn't have understood them even if she were a genius because she didn't have enough context. It is quite hard to get through Joyce's Ulysses at any time, but you certainly can't grasp it unless you've already read at least Homer. I haven't read a lot of philosophy, but I imagine Schopenhauer similarly can't be understood without having a clue about his antecedents. Likewise what's Jung without Freud, and wasn't Jung already getting to be old hat in Marilyn's day anyway?