New book out this Month - ''Fragments'' by Farrar, Straus & Giroux - Marilyn's Poems, Intimate Notes, Letters ... Musings about life, literature and other rarely seen writings by Marilyn Monroe, including ex husbands, notes about acting and thoughts on the roles she was working on. "I think the book will show that she was a really thoughtful person with a real interior life," editor Courtney Hodell said. "She was a great reader and someone with real writing flair. There are fragments of poetry that are really quite beautiful, lines that stop you in your tracks. There's stuff about all of her relationships.'' You get the sense she’s quite aware of her image, she said. “But her sense of her true self is very different. That’s what comes through — she’s trying to arrive at the real Marilyn.” The writings date from 1943, when Monroe was a teenager, to near the end of her life. Description: Marilyn Monroe’s image is so universal that we can’t help but believe that we know all there is to know of her. Every word and gesture made headlines and garnered controversy. Her serious gifts as an actor were sometimes eclipsed by her notoriety—and the way the camera fell helplessly in love with her. But what of the other Marilyn? Beyond the headlines—and the too-familiar stories of heartbreak and desolation—was a woman far more curious, searching, and hopeful than the one the world got to know. Even as Hollywood studios tried to mold and suppress her, Marilyn never lost her insight, her passion, and her humor. To confront the mounting difficulties of her life, she wrote. Now, for the first time, we can meet this private Marilyn and get to know her in a way we never have before. Fragments is an unprecedented collection of written artifacts—notes to herself, letters, even poems—in Marilyn’s own handwriting, never before published, along with rarely seen intimate photos. These bits of text—jotted in notebooks, typed on paper, or written on hotel letterhead—reveal a woman who loved deeply and strove to perfect her craft. They show a Marilyn Monroe unsparing in her analysis of her own life, but also playful, funny, and impossibly charming. The easy grace and deceptive lightness that made her performances so memorable emerge on the page, as does the simmering tragedy that made her last appearances so heartbreaking. Fragments is an event—an unforgettable book that will redefine one of the greatest stars of the twentieth century and which, nearly fifty years after her death, will definitively reveal Marilyn Monroe’s humanity. - The letters in the book were part of the estate that Lee Strasberg inherited after Monroe’s death in August 1962. Now at the hands of his widow, Anna.