The Art of Seduction by Robert Greene Read Free Book Online Page A

weakness for the visual. Create the physical presence of a Siren (heightened sexual allure mixed with a regal and theatrical manner) and he is trapped. He cannot grow bored with you yet he cannot discard you. Keep up the distractions, and We're dazzled by feminine
    adornment, by the surface,
    never let him see who you really are. He will follow you until he drowns.
    \ All gold and jewels: so
    little of what we observe \
    Is the girl herself And
    The Sex Siren
    where (you may ask) amid
    such plenty \ Can our
    object of passion be found?
    Norma Jean Mortensen, the future Marilyn Monroe, spent part of her The eye's deceived \ By childhood in Los Angeles orphanages. Her days were filled with
    Love's smart camouflage.
    chores and no play. At school, she kept to herself, smiled rarely, and — O V I D , CURES FOR LOVE,

TRANSLATED BY PETER GREEN
    dreamed a lot. One day when she was thirteen, as she was dressing for school, she noticed that the white blouse the orphanage provided for her was torn, so she had to borrow a sweater from a younger girl in the house. The sweater was several sizes too small. That day, suddenly, boys seemed to He was herding his cattle gather around her wherever she went (she was extremely well-developed on Mount Gargarus, the highest peak of Ida, when
    for her age). She wrote in her diary, "They stared at my sweater as if it were Hermes, accompanied by a gold mine."
    Hera, Athene, and
    The revelation was simple but startling. Previously ignored and even Aphrodite delivered the golden apple and Zeus's
    ridiculed by the other students, Norma Jean now sensed a way to gain at- message: "Paris, since you tention, maybe even power, for she was wildly ambitious. She started to are as handsome as you are smile more, wear makeup, dress differently. And soon she noticed some- wise in affairs of the heart, Zeus commands you to
    thing equally startling: without her having to say or do anything, boys fell judge which of these passionately in love with her. "My admirers all said the same thing in differ- goddesses is the fairest. " •
    ent ways," she wrote. "It was my fault, their wanting to kiss me and hug
    "So be it," sighed Paris.
    me. Some said it was the way I looked at them—with eyes full of passion.
    "But first I beg the losers
    not to be vexed with me. I
    Others said it was my voice that lured them on. Still others said I gave off am only a human being, vibrations that floored them."
    liable to make the stupidest
    10 • The Art of Seduction
    mistakes." • The
    A few years later Marilyn was trying to make it in the film business. goddesses all agreed to
    Producers would tell her the same thing: she was attractive enough in per abide by his decision. •
    son, but her face wasn't pretty enough for the movies. She was getting
    "Will it be enough to
    judge them as they are?"
    work as an extra, and when she was on-screen—even if only for a few sec Paris asked Hermes, "or onds—the men in the audience would go wild, and the theaters would
    should they he naked?" •
    erupt in catcalls. But nobody saw any star quality in this. One day in 1949,
    "The rules of the contest
    are for you to decide,"
    only twenty-three at the time and her career at a standstill, Monroe met Hermes answered with a
    someone at a diner who told her that a producer casting a new Groucho discreet smile. • "In that
    Marx movie, Love Happy, was looking for an actress for the part of a blond case, will they kindly
    bombshell who could walk by Groucho in a way that would, in his words, disrobe?" • Hermes told
    the goddesses to do so, and
    "arouse my elderly libido and cause smoke to issue from my ears." Talking politely turned his back. •
    her way into an audition, she improvised this walk. "It's Mae West, Theda Aphrodite was soon ready,
    Bara, and Bo Peep all rolled into one," said Groucho after watching her but Athene insisted that
    she should remove the
    saunter by. "We shoot the scene tomorrow morning." And so Marilyn cre famous magic