This photo of Marilyn Monroe reading Ulysses was taken on Long Island by Eve Arnold in 1954. Here is what Arnold has to say about the photograph.

"We worked on a beach on Long Island. She was visiting Norman Rosten the poet . . . I asked what she was reading when I went to pick her (I was trying to get an idea of how she spent her time) She said she kept Ulysses in her car and had been reading it for a long time. She said she loved the sound of it and would read it aloud to herself to try to make sense of it -- but she found it hard going. She couldn't read it consecutively. When we stopped at a local playground to photograph she got out the book and started to read while I loaded the film. So, of course, I photographed her. It was always a collaborative effort of photographer and subject where she was concerned -- but almost more her input."

One can imagine her reading the opening words of the Sirens episode with its musical rhythm:

"Bronze by gold heard the hoofirons, steelyringing Imperthnthn
thnthnthn.
Chips, picking chips off rocky thumbnail, chips.Horrid! And gold flushed more.

A husky fifenote blew.

Blew. Blue bloom is on the.

Goldpinnacled hair.

A jumping rose on satiny breast of satin, rose of Castile.

Trilling, trilling: Idolores."

One can also imagine her hearing herself speaking as she reads Molly Bloom's final words of the Penelope episode and of the work itself:

"yes I said yes I will Yes."

Whatever she read aloud and enjoyed would have pleased Joyce, since he wanted it to be a book for the ordinary person.

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Norman Rosten, the poet Marilyn Monroe was visiting, wrote a book about her: Marilyn: An Untold Story