Miss Lonelyhearts & The Day of the Locust
"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...
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"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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Format: paperback
ISBN:
9780811218221 (0811218228)
ASIN: 811218228
Publish date: June 23rd 2009
Publisher: New Directions
Pages no: 208
Edition language: English
Category:
Young Adult,
Classics,
Novels,
Academic,
School,
Literature,
Book Club,
American,
Literary Fiction,
20th Century,
Short Stories,
High School
--The Day of the Locust--Miss Lonelyhearts
Dear "Miss Lonelyhearts", It's not you, it's me. I'm exhausted and burnt out and trying to get ten million things done before Crasmas. I have so little time to read these days and just couldn't devote attention to you and I'm sure beneath your crusty, impenetrable exterior you're really lovely a...
For those who've not heard of Nathanael West, a wikipedia link. I'd seen this book in my father's bookshelves and always meant to get around to reading it. And so recently, I managed to.I'm going to have a rough time explaining how I feel about this book because it's going to be another one of those...
So far I've only read Miss Lonelyhearts. What an odd little story. Sex and booze and a Christ fixation and a melancholy madness brought on by immersion in the woes of complete strangers. I'm not sure what the point is, except to say that if you set out to fool or poke fun at others, you may find tha...
Both of these are unlike anything I've ever read before (of or before the period). I think Miss Lonelyhearts is the superior novel, but barely. Both are so full of depth that I think I have to read each a few more times to get everything. He is a compelling, fascinating and amazingly brazen (for ...