Background
Nathanael West was born on October 17, 1903 Nathan Weinstein in New York City of affluent Russian-Jewish immigrants.
(The Day of the Locust is a 1939 novel by American author ...)
The Day of the Locust is a 1939 novel by American author Nathanael West, set in Hollywood, California during the Great Depression, its overarching themes deal with the alienation and desperation of a broad group of odd individuals who exist at the fringes of the Hollywood movie industry. In 1998, the Modern Library ranked The Day of the Locust #73 on its list of the 100 best English-language novels of the 20th century. Time magazine included the novel in its list of 100 best English-language novels from 1923 to 2005, and noted critic Harold Bloom included it in his list of canonical works in the book The Western Canon.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1618951998/?tag=2022091-20
("The Day of the Locust" is the celebrated 1939 novel abou...)
"The Day of the Locust" is the celebrated 1939 novel about the Great Depression, set in Hollywood, California, its over-arching themes dealing with the alienation and desperation of a broad group of odd individuals who exist at the fringes of the Hollywood movie industry. In 1998, the Modern Library ranked The Day of the Locust #73 on its list of the 100 best English-language novels of the 20th century. Time magazine included the novel in its list of 100 best English-language novels from 1923 to 2005.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/8087830261/?tag=2022091-20
( "A primer for Big Bad City disillusionment, unsparing i...)
"A primer for Big Bad City disillusionment, unsparing in its portrayal of New York's debilitating entropy."?The Village Voice. With a new introduction by Jonathan Lethem. 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. Set in New York during the Depression and 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 in, begging him for advice. Unable to find answers, and with his shaky Christianity ridiculed to razor-edged shards by his poisonous editor, he tumbles into alcoholism and a madness fueled by his own spiritual emptiness. During his years in Hollywood West wrote The Day of the Locust, a study of the fragility of illusion. Many critics consider it with F. Scott Fitzgerald's unfinished masterpiece The Last Tycoon (1941) among the best novels written about Hollywood. Set in Hollywood during the Depression, the narrator, Tod Hackett, comes to California in the hope of a career as a painter for movie backdrops but soon joins the disenchanted second-rate actors, technicians, laborers and other characters living on the fringes of the movie industry. Tod tries to seduce Faye Greener; she is seventeen. Her protector is an old man named Homer Simpson. Tod finds work on a film called prophetically The Burning of Los Angeles, and the dark comic tale ends in an apocalyptic mob riot outside a Hollywood premiere, as the system runs out of control.
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(This is a collection of West's novels - "The Dream Life o...)
This is a collection of West's novels - "The Dream Life of Balso Snell", "Miss Lonely-hearts, "A Cool Million" and "The Day of the Locust".
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(Nathanael West was only thirty-seven when he died in 1940...)
Nathanael West was only thirty-seven when he died in 1940, but his depictions of the sometimes comic, sometimes horrifying aspects of the American scene rival those of William Faulkner and Flannery O'Connor. A Cool Million, written in 1934, is a satiric Horatio Alger story set in the midst of the Depression. Check out our other books at www.dogstailbooks.co.uk
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( With an Introduction and Notes by Henry Claridge, Senio...)
With an Introduction and Notes by Henry Claridge, Senior Lecturer, School of English, University of Kent at Canterbury. The four novels gathered here constitute the complete longer works of one the most brilliant and original American writers. Wests vision of American modernity is terrifyingly comical and diagnoses the tawdriness and meretriciousness of much of American popular culture. His greatest work, Miss Lonelyhearts, which begins this collection, is unique in modern literature. It describes New York in the early years of the Great Depression through the point of view of an agony aunt who corresponds with his suffering readers in the guise of Miss Lonelyhearts: (Are you in trouble? Do you need advice?). A Cool Million is, as its subtitle suggests, the dismantling of a myth, here a caustic satire of the rags to riches story. Wests final novel, The Day of the Locust, is a comic, yet apocalyptic account of the fantasies of 1930s Hollywood. This volume concludes with Wests parodic and surreal first venture into fiction, The Dream Life of Balso Snell. Henry Claridges introduction to this new edition of Wests fictional writings contextualises his work in the United States of the Great Depression, in his evocation of 1930s Hollywood (where he worked as a writer of screenplays), and in the larger context of his Eastern European Jewish background, and, particularly, his reading of Dostoyesvky. The text comes with extensive annotations, a note on the textual history of Wests writings, and a guide to further reading for both the student and the general reader.
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Nathanael West was born on October 17, 1903 Nathan Weinstein in New York City of affluent Russian-Jewish immigrants.
After graduating from Brown University in 1924 with a bachelor of philosophy degree, he held a number of nonwriting jobs.
West's acquaintance with poverty grew more directly personal in 1929, when his family suffered complete financial ruin.
The Dream Life of Balso Snell (1931), West's first novel, was written at college and is generally regarded as the weakest of his four novels.
West's next novel should have marked an upturn in his writing fortunes, but he was the victim of freakishly bad luck.
(It has sold over 300, 000 copies since West's death. )
A variation on the Scapegoat theme, Miss Lonelyhearts explores attitudes toward the problem of suffering.
Moved by his correspondents' grotesque but genuine pleas for help, he becomes caught up in their lives and is ultimately killed by one of them.
Critic Stanley Edgar Hyman called it "one of the three finest American novels of our century.
West's third novel, A Cool Million (1934), utilizing the myth of the Holy Fool, is a bitterly satiric treatment of American politics.
Lemuel Pitkin, who is in the Candide—Horatio Alger mold, sets forth with naive good will, only to be consistently victimized, often violently.
West spent his last five years in Hollywood as a scenarist.
His final novel, The Day of the Locust (1939), is basedon the Mythic Dance of Death.
A group of characters on the fringe of Hollywood are used as a quintessential symbol of American violence and emptiness.
Especially jarring is its final scene, a grotesque, surrealistic treatment of a film premiere which deteriorates into mob frenzy.
The book received favorable reviews but sold fewer than 1500 copies.
(It, too, has sold over 300, 000 copies since West's death. )
He moved to Hollywood, California, in 1935 and spent the rest of his life there writing screenplays.
(The Day of the Locust is a 1939 novel by American author ...)
("The Day of the Locust" is the celebrated 1939 novel abou...)
(Nathanael West was only thirty-seven when he died in 1940...)
(This is a collection of West's novels - "The Dream Life o...)
( "A primer for Big Bad City disillusionment, unsparing i...)
( With an Introduction and Notes by Henry Claridge, Senio...)
It is based on a Quest motif, but settles into a misanthropic, scatological attack on Christianity and Judaism.
Because he is drawn into a militant rightist group and is assassinated while giving a speech, the book is noted as an early treatment of native fascism.
The Day of the Locust (1939), a novel about Hollywood, centers on the encounters of Tod Hackett, a painter turned scene designer.
The latter have been hardened by the lurid emotions displayed in movies and long for real violence.
And a kind of "comic book novel" is the next book, Signorina Cuorinfranti (Miss Lonelyhearts, 1933), where the protagonist, editor of a "heartbeat" booklet, fights with an inhuman and unmistakable reality.
In April 1940 West married Eileen McKenny, the subject of Ruth McKenny's novel My Sister Eileen (1938).
On December 22, 1940, West and his wife, Eileen McKenney, were killed in an automobile accident near El Centro, California, just a few days before the opening of My Sister Eileen, the hit play immortalizing Mrs. West, written by her older sister, Ruth McKenney.