Anita Loos

Gentlemen Prefer Blondes -- Anita Loos's celebrated novel of the inter-war years -- is one of those books I'd been aware of for a long time, but had never read. Last week, I rectified that. I'll say at the start that, despite the accolades, this is not a novel on par with the work of either Fitzgerald, neither Scott nor Zelda. It's a book, certainly, that explores similar themes and geographies, but it does so in a far different fashion: Gentlemen Prefer Blondes is effectively a comedy -- almost, for me, in the vein of Three Men in a Boat or Diary of a Nobody. There's a predictability to these novels: which doesn't make them any less funny, but they function based on an implicit understanding of what comes next. Gentlemen Prefer Blondes was very much like that: there was almost a gimmicky quality to the whole thing. That said, despite the humor, Anita Loos does uncover a seriousness: about wealth and femininity, about education and accomplishment. The trouble, for me, was that each time one of those themes is probed, they seem almost to be invalidated by a joke or another dalliance. And I understand that is part of the way this novel operates. But I didn't take away much here: Lorelei Lee remains something of an enigma, despite her creed that "everything always turns out of the best." I suppose it does in Gentlemen Prefer Blondes, but there might have been other ways to present the roots of that optimism.