Miss Lonelyhearts & the Day of the Locust

Rating:
Summary: Miss Lonelyhearts is a Noir-ish look at the Meaning of Life
Review: Just finished Miss Loneleyhearts, a wonderful 1930s parable of the American Dream gone wrong. Written in 1933 during the Great Depression, it is a gritty look at the hopelessness of the average person looking for meaning in a materialistic world. Although West is the son of Jewish immigrants, he writes convincingly of the Christian answer to hopelessness, faith in God. Wonderful characters portrayed in a Noir-ish style reminiscent of Dashiell Hammett and Raymond Chandler deal with the big question of the Meaning of Life yet find no easy answers.

The Day of the Locust is much more fully realized than Miss Lonelyhearts. If Miss Lonelyhearts is a parable, The Day of the Locust is a novel. Characters and plot are more developed and West spends more time developing the setting, which is a bleak mid-century Hollywood.

Tod Hackett is a Yale graduate who has been hired to work for a Hollywood studio as a set and costume designer. He falls in love with Faye Greener, a woman who seems incapable of love, but knows how to use her beauty. Sadly, she lacks the talent to achieve her goal as an actress. Tod is just one of the men drawn to Faye's charm. There is a fast-talking midget, a slow talking cowboy, a Mexican who raises fighting roosters, and a lonely retired motel clerk. The novel is more about the dark side of the Hollywood of dreams. West uses his characters to paint a bleak and lonely view of a city of lost angels driven by hope.

Rating:
Summary: Nightmare America
Review: 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.

Rating:
Summary: Miss Lonelyhearts is the real prize here
Review: Let's start from the beginning. A man is hired to give advice to the readers of a newspaper. The job is a circulation stunt and the whole staff considers it a joke. He welcomes the job, for it might lead to a gossip column, and anyway he's tired of being a leg man. He too considers the job a joke, but after several months at it, the joke begins to escape him. He sees that the majority of the letters are profoundly humble pleas for moral and spiritual advice, that they are inarticulate expressions of genuine suffering. He also discovers that his correspondents take him seriously. For the first time in his life, he is forced to examine the values by which he lives. This examination shows him that he is the victim of the joke and not its perpetrator. -Nathanael West (Miss Lonelyhearts)

Miss Lonelyhearts has been hired as a wiseacre stunt, to dispense snide advice to yokels. But in the face of their pain and their need for answers, the empty piffle that he serves up begins to eat away at his soul. The whole thing is supposed to be an elaborate put on, so his editor won't let him give the real answers that he longs to share, that Christ and the word of God are the only solutions to their problems. The result: "By avoiding God, he had failed to tap the force in his heart and had merely written a column for his paper." Lonelyhearts, plagued by his failure to help his correspondents, retreats into dreams before almost inevitably enacting a kind of messianic tragedy, ending in the obligatory crucifix scene.

Nathanael West here addresses the central dilemma facing modern man; having abandoned God, where do people turn for answers? What values, what morals, remain to provide structure for men's lives? West is unambiguous in answering these questions. He makes it clear that there is nothing that can fill these vital roles. The compelling image here is of modern men and women as a series of completely isolated lonely hearts, unable to share in the love of God, and, therefore, unable to love one another.

This is a brief but savage attack on the emptiness of modern life. It seems to me a much better novel than Day of the Locust which, of course, made the Modern Library Top 100; the themes are more universal and the message retains its power. It is as timely today, as it was when it was published over 60 years ago. If West has a masterpiece, I remain ambivalent on this point, this is it.

GRADE: B

Rating:
Summary: Two brilliant gems
Review: Miss Lonelyhearts and The Day of the Locust by Nathanael West. Highly recommended.

Miss Lonelyhearts, set on the East Coast in New York City, and The Day of the Locust, set on the West Coast in Hollywood, are the two grim but brilliant gems of Nathanael West's too-brief writing career.

In Miss Lonelyhearts, the title character-who has no other name to either the reader or the book's characters-is an advice columnist subsumed by the countless letters of despair he reads every day. His editor is named Shrike, appropriately, for the species of bird that impale their victims on thorns. While he seeks escape from "Desperate, Broken-hearted, Sick-of-it-all, Disillusioned-with-tubercular-husband": in the idealism of Religion, Art, Sex, and Nature, Shrike is always there to puncture his every attempt.

Miss Lonelyhearts' trouble precedes his career, however. During his college years, he tries to participate in a ritual sacrifice of a symbolic lamb (Religion) that is transformed into a cruel butchery and finally into a mercy killing. Later, Miss Lonelyhearts returns again and again to the image and idea of Christ, "the answer," whose figure he has removed from its cross and nailed to the wall at the foot of his bed (taking over the sacrifice from Romans and history and making it his own).

For sex, he tries (unsuccessfully) to subdue the "virginity" of Shrike's wife (named Mary); takes on the offering of "an admirer," Fay Doyle, "unhappily married [sacrificed] to a cripple"; and finally sacrifices the real virginity of Betty, whose order and sureness were "based on the power to limit experience arbitrarily." Until she encounters him, she is not a candidate for a Miss Lonelyhearts column, but he and his "sickness" make her likely to become one. Throughout, Shrike is there to tell him, "Soul of Miss L., glorify me. Body of Miss L., save me . . ." In the end, Miss Lonelyhearts finds humility and calls on Christ, not in his illness, "but in the shape of his joy." When he is happy "and the rock had been thoroughly tested and been found perfect," when he gives up his humanity for Christ-like beatitude and detachment, he sacrifices himself.

In The Day of the Locust, set designer Tod Hackett has entered the world of Hollywood, where nothing is real, where even everyday clothes consist of personality-altering costumes ("the man in the Norfolk jacket and Tyrolean hat was returning, not from a mountain, but an insurance office"). Here, the slopes of the canyon are lined with "Mexican ranch houses, Samoan huts, Mediterranean villas, Egyptian and Japanese temples, Swiss chalets, Tudor cottages, and every possible combination of these styles." Two types of people populate this set: the "masquerades" and those who "had come to California to die," whose "eyes filled with hatred."

Tod himself leads an unreal life as an unwanted extra in the love life of Faye [fairy-unreal] Greener, daughter of Harry Greener, who manages to make his own death seem no more than an act-and not always a good one.

After Harry's death, Tod and Faye's lives connect through two men who can be considered "masquerades": Earl the cowboy with his two-dimensional face and Miguel the Mexican, as well as Homer Simpson, a man who thinks he has come to California to recover his health and who doesn't realise he has come here to die.

Faye teases Earl, lusts after Miguel, and holds Tod at bay while living with Homer in a nonsexual business arrangement designed to keep her clothed, fed, and living well until she gets her big acting break, which, like all else in Hollywood, is an act and an illusion).

As Homer falls for Faye, she resents both his simplicity and his sincerity. Only when Homer finds her with Miguel (after mistaking her moaning for sickness) does he realise the truth of what Tod has told him: "She's a whore!" Like the Hollywood she wants to be part of, she is empty and bored-an illusion that cannot last. Even when Earl fights Miguel over her, the conflict is less real than that between two of Miguel's cocks, during which the weaker bird dies a harrowing, bloody, and genuine death that evokes compassion and sympathy than Harry's final act.

Throughout, Tod sees the masses finally turning to apocalyptic violence, which he portrays in his painting-in-progress, "The Burning of Los Angeles." Faye, naked and smiling, chased by the mob, is a bird released and in flight.

The violence comes, however, when a nearly catatonic Homer attempts to leave this never-never land and to return to Wayneville, Iowa, on a night when the crowd has gathered for a movie premiere. Finding himself under attack by a bored neighbor child, he finally strikes back in a murderous rage, giving the crowd the impetus it seeks.

It is not "The Burning of Los Angeles," but rather a fusion of Art, Sex, Religion, and Violence. Here, West returns to Miss Lonelyhearts and the attempted ideals of Art, Sex, and Religion ending in violence; he says of the womb: "Better by far than Religion or Art or the South Sea Islands"-an exact parallel to the idealist scenarios Shrike creates for Miss Lonelyhearts, only to puncture them with the fury of his cold, emotional violence.

Miss Lonelyhearts and The Day of the Locust are short, beautifully crafted masterpieces in which nothing is wasted. West captures Hollywood perfectly, where, in 1939, there were already New Age cults like that of the "raw-foodists": "We eat only raw [vegetables]. Death comes from eating dead things." In today's world, where millions turn to the Dear Abby columns and to Oprah, and where the cult of the celebrity is built on movies featuring easy sex and special-effects violence, Nathanael West might feel right at home-in time and place.

Diane L. Schirf, 5 October 2003.

Rating:
Summary: a new veiw
Review: miss lonley hearts is a truely tragic story centered around a depressed lunatic and his immoral and drunk freinds. he sets out to solve peoples problems and ends up only making them worse ruining his life as well as others. while the writers craft may be good, and there are many levels to this story, it is not one to contrive morals from.

Rating:
Summary: He shoots, he scores--twice!
Review: Nathanael West died young and left little behind, but what he left is enough to place him among the ranks of great writers. These two classic short novels hit their marks like bullets. They take as their subjects two places where the better aspects of humanity are seldom on display: a tabloid newspaper ("Miss Lonelyhearts") and Hollywood ("The Day of the Locust").

West writes like an entomologist. He treats his (human) characters as if they were insects. His descriptions are cold and dispassionate, and register the mechanical, instinctual side of human beings with perfect precision. There's no hope in his world, but he doesn't rub your face in the hopelessness; rather, the quietly merciless style of his writing calls your attention to it. What he shows is repulsive and ridiculous, but it's so well rendered that you can't turn away from it. "Locust" in particular is full of scenes I come back to again and again, just to see how he does it.

In short, this is great writing. It's pitiless, precise, and utterly above the subject matter with which it engages.

Rating:
Summary: "Few things are sadder than the truly monstrous"
Review: Nathanael West had a brief, barely noticed career before his sudden death in 1940. These two novellas, MISS LONELYHEARTS and THE DAY OF THE LOCUST, stand as his best-known contributions to literature, classics that are now widely taught in American high schools and universities. MISS LONELYHEARTS is the more bitter of the two: a newspaper columnist (a man, but always referred to as Miss Lonelyhearts) suffers a crisis of conscience and spirit under the emotional weight of the mail he receives. His colleagues make fun of the correspondents, who are mostly women, but Miss Lonelyhearts sees the pathetic futility in their seeking help to escape their bleak lives. His editor, Shrike, tries to energize Miss Lonelyhearts with long-winded diatribes satirizing religious beliefs, but their shrillness pushes Miss Lonelyhearts toward the edge. Using Christian imagery as well as irony, West evokes a world of alienation, futility, and human failings.

THE DAY OF THE LOCUST comes across as more satiric than shrill, perhaps because there is no Shrike here, although West's trademark themes of alienation and futility are fully evident. Tod Hackett is new to Hollywood; he is lazy but ambitious, a painter who hopes to earn a living as a set designer. Tod finds himself drawn to the outsiders of Hollywood, the lower classes, those for whom success is always out of reach. The characters are almost surreal in their quirkiness. Aspiring actress Faye Greener lives in the same building as Tod; by introducing Tod to the vapid decadence of Hollywood, she awakens Tod's violent impulses. Iowan Homer Simpson is a listless, repressed man who has come to California not for show business but for health reasons and to forget what little sexuality he has. West is not a writer to grant the wishes of his characters, but, like Harry Greener, many of the characters "seemed to enjoy their suffering [. . .] the sort that was self-inflicted."

West's philosophy in these two novellas seems to fit into a single line in THE DAY OF THE LOCUST, "Few things are sadder than the truly monstrous." These works display a dark, almost desperate humor that exposes the human condition as West saw it. If you don't think you can take an abundance of hopelessness, you should select another book to read. Still, these are important works, especially for those interested in modern American literature.

Rating:
Summary: "Few things are sadder than the truly monstrous"
Review: Nathanael West had a brief, barely noticed career before his sudden death in 1940. These two novellas, MISS LONELYHEARTS and THE DAY OF THE LOCUST, stand as his best-known contributions to literature, classics that are now widely taught in American high schools and universities. MISS LONELYHEARTS is the more bitter of the two: a newspaper columnist (a man, but always referred to as Miss Lonelyhearts) suffers a crisis of conscience and spirit under the emotional weight of the mail he receives. His colleagues make fun of the correspondents, who are mostly women, but Miss Lonelyhearts sees the pathetic futility in their seeking help to escape their bleak lives. His editor, Shrike, tries to energize Miss Lonelyhearts with long-winded diatribes satirizing religious beliefs, but their shrillness pushes Miss Lonelyhearts toward the edge. Using Christian imagery as well as irony, West evokes a world of alienation, futility, and human failings.

THE DAY OF THE LOCUST comes across as more satiric than shrill, perhaps because there is no Shrike here, although West's trademark themes of alienation and futility are fully evident. Tod Hackett is new to Hollywood; he is lazy but ambitious, a painter who hopes to earn a living as a set designer. Tod finds himself drawn to the outsiders of Hollywood, the lower classes, those for whom success is always out of reach. The characters are almost surreal in their quirkiness. Aspiring actress Faye Greener lives in the same building as Tod; by introducing Tod to the vapid decadence of Hollywood, she awakens Tod's violent impulses. Iowan Homer Simpson is a listless, repressed man who has come to California not for show business but for health reasons and to forget what little sexuality he has. West is not a writer to grant the wishes of his characters, but, like Harry Greener, many of the characters "seemed to enjoy their suffering [. . .] the sort that was self-inflicted."

West's philosophy in these two novellas seems to fit into a single line in THE DAY OF THE LOCUST, "Few things are sadder than the truly monstrous." These works display a dark, almost desperate humor that exposes the human condition as West saw it. If you don't think you can take an abundance of hopelessness, you should select another book to read. Still, these are important works, especially for those interested in modern American literature.

Rating:
Summary: Two Darkly Comic Masterpieces
Review: Nathanael West is one of my all-time favorite American novelists. In this slim, inexpensive volume you will discover the two most vivid and darkly funny satires ever written about mass media and modern popular culture. "Miss Lonelyhearts" is, as critic Edmund Wilson called it, a miniature epic. In a mere 60 pages it chronicles the swift descent into madness of an earnest young newspaperman who writes an advice column for a 1920s New York tabloid, rendered with such immediacy and anguished wit that you remember it for years afterward. West's literary craftsmanship is so perfect here that most novelists, given ten times the length, could never hope to match its scope and brilliance. "The Day of the Locust" concerns a young scenery designer and aspiring painter, Todd Hackett, who moves to Hollywood and falls in with a fringe group of bit-players and hangers-on. West's understanding and depiction of hopeless lust and pitiful self-delusion is unsurpassed. The story culminates in a gripping, hallucinatory account of a bloody riot at the premiere of an overhyped movie. I have rarely read a more accurate, convincing description of mob psychology in full frenzy. The last sentence of the novel is as chillingly memorable as that of Orwell's "Nineteen Eighty-four".

Rating:
Summary: Nathaniel West understood the darkness in man
Review: Nerds or Nazis -- the mob rules. They all want blood -- and they're looking for ANY excuse to draw it. That's the point Nathaniel West drives home: for better or worse, the deep ugliness in man, the heart of darkness.

In the book, the author writes how people in Hollywood would just hang out at the airport just hoping for a plane crash, praying for it, praying for any disaster that would color to their meaningless lives. The book ends with a mob scene at a film premiere where the protagonist is torn to shreds.

Are we supposed to sympathize with Homer? Pity him, despise him? Nathaniel West seems to point out that no one is deserving of pity. Boy, that's hard! The author really understood the darkness in people, though.

This is one tough book, which should not be read by anyone under 18. This reader is 40, and only now am I starting to glimpse at the point Nathaniel West was trying to make. This book is a true classic. Disturbing and unforgetable as all great books should be.

Also recommended: The Losers' Club by Richard Perez