The Day of the Locust (New Directions Paperbook), by Nathanael West
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The Day of the Locust (New Directions Paperbook), by Nathanael West
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The great Hollywood novel is now available as a stand-alone New Directions edition
Admired by F. Scott Fitzgerald, Dorothy Parker, and Dashiell Hammett, and hailed as one of the “Best 100 English-language novels” by Time magazine, The Day of the Locust continues to influence American writers, artists, and culture. Bob Dylan wrote the classic song “Day of the Locusts” in homage and Matt Groening’s Homer Simpson is named after one of its characters. No novel more perfectly captures the nuttier side of Hollywood. Here the lens is turned on its fringes ― actors out of work, film extras with big dreams, and parents lining their children up for small roles. But it’s the bit actress Faye Greener who steals the spotlight with her wildly convoluted dreams of stardom: “I’m going to be a star some day―if I’m not I’ll commit suicide.” The Day of the Locust (New Directions Paperbook), by Nathanael West- Amazon Sales Rank: #644341 in Books
- Brand: West, Nathanael
- Published on: 2015-05-28
- Original language: English
- Number of items: 1
- Dimensions: 7.00" h x .80" w x 5.00" l, .0 pounds
- Binding: Paperback
- 160 pages
Review “West's Day of the Locust, a sun-blazed Polaroid of its time, seems permanently oracular.” (Jonathan Lethem)“Los Angeles has been the subject of, and setting for, many fine novels yet The Day of the Locust still feels like the single best-achieved piece of fiction the city has inspired.” (The Los Angeles Times)“Nathanael West's humor is of course not at the expense of the victim. It is a horselaugh at a world that is too ugly and bitter to be dealt with in any other way.” (The New York Times)
About the Author In 1940, when an automobile accident prematurely claimed Nathanael West's life, he was a relatively obscure writer, the author of only four short novels. West's reputation has grown considerably since then and he is now considered one of the 20th century's major authors. Born in New York, West worked as the night manager of the Kenmore Hotel on East 23rd Street in Manhattan, as a contract scriptwriter for Columbia Pictures in Hollywood, and as a screenwriter for RKO Radio Picture.
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90 of 92 people found the following review helpful. A literary Molotov cocktail By A.J. "The Day of the Locust" is about the strange, disparate people that invariably get drawn to Los Angeles in the 1930's, a time when studios put out assembly-line low-budget movies and employed revolving crews of extras, writers, and various technicians. The novel seems influenced by Sherwood Anderson's "Winesburg, Ohio" in its portrayal of "grotesques," emotionally or behaviorally defective people on the fringe of society, but its tone is much more vibrant and frenetic; if "Winesburg, Ohio" is a petting zoo, "The Day of the Locust" is a three-ring circus.At the center of the action is an artist and scene designer named Tod Hackett. He observes southern California with a sort of concerned detachment; he sees it as a wasteland of incongruous, tacky architecture and rootless people who come here to die. His discontent is manifested in his extracurricular plan to paint a canvas called "The Burning of Los Angeles."Even though Tod may be considered the main character, he's the least interesting member of the cast; he's like the "straight man" in a comedy team. He's in love with an aspiring actress and occasional prostitute named Faye Greener who likes to use men. She has managed to hook a shy, lonely unemployed hotel bookkeeper named Homer Simpson (!) who moved to L.A. from Iowa for his health. Homer has compulsively fidgety hands and occasionally even exhibits the simplemindedness of his bald, mustard-colored cartoon namesake. Faye is also attracted to a lanky cowboy named Earle Shoop who works in a Sunset Boulevard saddlery store, does occasional movie work, and doesn't seem to know he's a caricature.There is a cavalcade of other colorful characters, including Faye's father Harry, an ex-vaudeville clown who is now peddling silver polish door-to-door; Abe Kusich, a drunken dwarf; Claude Estee, a successful screenwriter who has a rubber sculpture of dead horse in his swimming pool; Joan Schwartzen, a loud, lewd harridan, who is probably Phyllis Diller's progenitor; Miguel, Earle's chicken-tending Mexican friend; and last but not least, Adore Loomis, an obnoxious aspiring kid star.The novel focuses on the lives of these fringe characters rather than moviemaking, which allows West to demonstrate that he excels at writing unusual, difficult scenes -- a screening of a porn flick, a cockfight, a riot at a movie premiere. The inventiveness, energy, and attitude here cannot be overstated; never have I read a novel that delights so much in pathetic human oddity, in mixing its characters into a violent Molotov cocktail and observing the comical results with jubilation.
78 of 84 people found the following review helpful. Nightmare America By Gary F. Taylor Largely unknown during his brief lifetime, Nathanael West is now regarded as one of the finest authors of the 1930s--a writer whose slashing satires of American decay are so dead-on accurate that they are often painful to read. This is particularly true of his two best works, MISS LONELYHEARTS and THE DAY OF THE LOCUST. Both novels are short and intense, and both present horrific visions of American society choking to death on its own mass-media fantasies.Probably West's most powerful work, MISS LONELYHEARTS concerns a nameless man assigned to produce a newspaper advice column--but as time passes he begins to break under the endless misery of those who write to him for advice. Unable to find answers, and with his shaky Christianity ridiculed into destruction by his poisonous editor, he tumbles into a madness fueled by his own spiritual emptiness. First published in 1933, MISS LONELYHEARTS remains one of the most shocking works of 20th Century American literature, as unnerving as a glob of black bile vomited up at a church social, empty, blasphemous, and horrific.THE DAY OF THE LOCUST is the best known of West's works, and presents the story of a Hollywood art designer as he drifts through the California dream factory--a place in which reality exists only as something to subvert into a saleable commodity: an addictive series of dreams that won't come true for the increasing numbers of malcontents that crowd Los Angeles in search of the fantasies seen on the movie screen. And their seething disillusionment proves more deadly than even Hollywood could ever imagine. First published in 1939, THE DAY OF THE LOCUST is still considered the single most scathing novel ever written about Hollywood.Like much of West's work, these two novels are written in a comic style that the author deliberately and quickly sours: laughter quickly gives way to despair, despair to surreal horror, and all of it condensed into tightly written, noir-ish, and double-gritty prose that has the impact of a wrecking ball. West is not a writer for every one, not by a long shot, but his power is undeniable, and these two works are his best, essentials in American literature. But brace yourself: they offer one-way tickets going straight down all the way.
28 of 29 people found the following review helpful. Two nearly perfect short novels By Robert Moore Just before his tragically young death, Nathanael West wrote a friend that he was confident his best work was in front of him. The genius and brilliance of these two remarkable short novels make that prospect seem unspeakably tragic. As it is, these two works have been sufficient to cement West�s reputation as one of America�s great literary talents of the 1930s. MISS LONELYHEARTS is perhaps the more highly acclaimed of the two, though many find THE DAY OF THE LOCUST perhaps even more entertaining. Either way, this volume contains two of the most remarkable short novels in American literary history.Nathanael West was an exceptionally dense writer, in that his pages contain no wasted words, no needless characters, and no pointless characters. Every sentence, every word, every comma plays an essential role in his work. Both works are distilled to their most concentrated form. As a result, although they are highly readable and brief, they contain far more content than even much longer books.Both of the books are littered with moments of devastating power. In MISS LONELYHEARTS, these are more intimate, deeply personal, miniature scenes. The same is true of THE DAY OF THE LOCUST, though it ends with one of the greatest crowd scenes this side of Tolstoy�s WAR AND PEACE. The riot scene ending the novel is so vivid, so clearly presented, so terrifying that one might legitimately argue that it is the greatest crowd scene in literature. On the other extreme, the opening letters at the beginning of MISS LONELYHEARTS are as heartbreaking as anything in literature. They are worthy of comparison with the most horrific examples of suffering that Ivan in THE BROTHERS KARAMAZOV (a book that Miss Lonelyhearts reads and West loved) comes up with when talking with his brother Alyosha.These are not happy books. West was one of the foremost spokesmen for pessimism of the early 20th century. At the time of his death, however, he was working on a novel that, he claimed, was far less negative and dealt with �the Milk of Human Kindness.� But in these two, the misery of individual lives and the ultimate meaningless of the lives of all the characters can depress some readers. There are no admirable characters, no one that we can pull for sympathetically. There are, however, some astonishingly vivid characters�Miss Lonelyhearts, his editor Shrike, Tod Hackett, Faye Greener, or Homer Simpson (Matt Groening has indicated awareness of that character). But if one can handle the unrelieved tragedy and the hopelessness that pervade West�s pages, one will find these to be two gloriously original and unique masterpieces.
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