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Miss Lonelyhearts & The Day of the Locust
First published 1962 · 289 pages
A feverish, pitch-black plunge into the grotesque underbelly of American dreams and mass-produced fantasies.
What it feels like
Reading Nathanael West is like staring into a funhouse mirror that reflects the ugliest, most desperate truths of the American psyche. The experience is feverish and brisk, pulling you through a landscape of spiritual bankruptcy and manufactured dreams with a terrifying, propulsive energy. The prose is stark and episodic, unfolding like a series of grotesque comic strips that are simultaneously hilarious and deeply unsettling. You sit inside an atmosphere of mounting, apocalyptic dread, surrounded by characters who are hollowed out by their own unfulfilled desires. It is a pitch-black, uncompromising vision that will delight readers who crave biting satire, modernist disillusionment, and a front-row seat to the spectacular, tragic collapse of the American Dream.
- Mood
- feverish
- apocalyptic
- oppressive
- surreal
- Tone
- cynical
- darkly comic
- satirical
- bleak
- grotesque
- Pace
- brisk
- Themes
- spiritual bankruptcy · the illusion of the American Dream · mass-produced fantasy · alienation and despair · the grotesque in everyday life
- The writing
- Stark, episodic, and visually arresting, reading like a series of grotesque, darkly comic vignettes.
- The arc
- A rapid, dizzying descent from cynical observation into overwhelming, apocalyptic madness.
- Who it's for
- Devotees of pitch-black satire and modernist disillusionment who enjoy watching the facade of society crumble.
Content notes
- violence
- sexual assault
- animal cruelty
- mob violence
- depression and suicidal ideation
About the book
"Somehow or other I seem to have slipped in between all the 'schools,'" observed Nathanael West the year before his untimely death in 1940. "My books meet no needs except my own, their circulation is practically private and I'm lucky to be published." Yet today, West is widely recognized as a prophetic writer whose dark and comic vision of a society obsessed with mass-produced fantasies foretold much of what was to come in American life.
Miss Lonelyhearts (1933), which West envisioned as "a novel in the form of a comic strip," tells of an advice-to-the-lovelorn columnist who becomes tragically embroiled in the desperate lives of his readers. The Day of the Locust (1939) is West's great dystopian Hollywood novel based on his experiences at the seedy fringes of the movie industry.
Description from Open Library.
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