I’ve always wondered how advice columnists keep doing their jobs. They hear so many awful things and are asked so many impossible questions. I wonder how they don’t burn out on reading so much real human misery. Nathanael West’s novella, Miss Lonelyhearts, tells the story of one such advice writer, who is having a spiritual and existential crisis. The otherwise unnamed narrator has read a trio of letters from women who have such agonizing problems that he completely loses the ability to write the kind of platitudes that have made his column a success. Who is he supposed to turn to for advice?

Read the rest of my review at A Bookish Type.

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 and...

Nah, nevermind.  It's you.  You were terrible.

-Aerin

"The Day of the Locust" is next, and I'm not holding out much hope.

Okay.  Okay no wait.  WHAT IS THIS I AM READING.

... I guess I should expound on that, but it was somewhere between the rape of the deaf-dumb teenager, the man chanting "Christ, Christ, Jesus Christ" while staring at a giant crucifix and expecting it to start writhing, and the graphic description of beating a lamb's head in with a rock, that my brain basically imploded with a NO WAY UH-UH WAAAAAAAIT A MINUTE WHUT.

All this and more within ten pages.  This is not a Monday-morning-commute sort of a story.  I don't know WHAT sort of story this is.