“Gentlemen Prefer Blondes” by Anita Loos: Early in this “great American novel,” the protagonist’s alternate personality shoots a man

Gentlemen Prefer Blondes was praised by William Faulkner, Aldous Huxley, F. Scott Fitzgerald, James Joyce, H. G. Wells, and Edith Wharton, who called it “the great American novel” (1).

In the author’s preface, “The Biography of a Book,” Anita Loos, a brunette, explains that she was inspired to write the book, because she resented the fact that men did show a preference for blondes. And she intended her blonde protagonist, Lorelie, “to be a symbol of the lowest possible mentality of our nation” (2, p. xxxix).

However, the author cautions the reader not to think that her novel is merely a joke. “In fact, if one examines the plot of Gentlemen Prefer Blondes, it is almost as gloomy as a novel by Dostoievski…It concerns early rape of its idiot heroine” and “an attempt by her to commit murder” that is “only unsuccessful because she is clumsy with a gun” (2, pp. xxxviii-xxxix).

However, in the novel, itself, Lorelie’s failed attempt to commit murder is not a funny example of clumsiness, but an attempt to commit murder by an alternate personality, for which Lorelie’s regular personality has amnesia; that is, she has had a multiple personality memory gap:

“So when I [Lorelie] found out that girls like that paid calls on Mr. Jennings I had quite a bad case of histerics [sic] and my mind was really a blank and when I came out of it, it seems that I had a revolver in my hand and it seems the revolver had shot Mr. Jennings” (2, p. 25).

As in most novels, the issue of multiple personality, per se, is unacknowledged.

1. Wikipedia. “Gentlemen Prefer Blondes (novel).” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gentlemen_Prefer_Blondes_(novel)

2. Anita Loos. Gentlemen Prefer Blondes: The Illuminating Diary of a Professional Lady (1925) and But Gentlemen Marry Brunettes (1927). New York, Penguin Books, 1998.

Added June 20: The rest of Gentlemen Prefer Blondes has nothing relevant here. And since its sequel is not considered to be up to its standard, I will not pursue it.