Nathanael West
Paperback | Pages: 185 pages Rating: 3.91 | 9134 Users | 520 Reviews
Be Specific About Books Toward Miss Lonelyhearts / The Day of the Locust
| Original Title: | Miss Lonelyhearts & The Day of the Locust |
| ISBN: | 0811202151 (ISBN13: 9780811202152) |
| Edition Language: | English |
Commentary In Favor Of Books Miss Lonelyhearts / The Day of the Locust
Miss LonelyheartsMiss Lonelyhearts was a newspaper reporter, so named because he had been assigned to write the agony column, to answer the letters from Desperate, Sick-of-It-All, Disillusioned. A joke at first; but then he was caught up, terrifyingly, in a vision of suffering, and he sought a way out, turning first here, then there—Art, Sex, Religion. Shrike, the cynical editor, the friend and enemy, compulsively destroyed each of his friend’s gestures toward idealism. Together, in the city’s dim underworld, Shrike and Miss Lonelyhearts turn round and round in a loathsome dance, unresolvable, hating until death…
The Day of the Locust
To Hollywood comes Tod Hackett, hoping for a career in scene designing, but he finds the way hard and falls in with others—extras, technicians, old vaudeville hands—who are also in difficulty. Around him he sees the great mass of inland Americans who have retired to California in expectation of health and ease. But boredom consumes them, their own emptiness maddens them; they search out any abnormality in their lust for excitement—drugs, perversion, crime. In the end only blood will serve; unreasoned, undirected violence. The day of the locust is at hand…
Identify Appertaining To Books Miss Lonelyhearts / The Day of the Locust
| Title | : | Miss Lonelyhearts / The Day of the Locust |
| Author | : | Nathanael West |
| Book Format | : | Paperback |
| Book Edition | : | Deluxe Edition |
| Pages | : | Pages: 185 pages |
| Published | : | June 1st 1969 by New Directions Publishing Corporation (NY) (first published 1939) |
| Categories | : | Fiction. Classics. Literature. Novels. American |
Rating Appertaining To Books Miss Lonelyhearts / The Day of the Locust
Ratings: 3.91 From 9134 Users | 520 ReviewsJudgment Appertaining To Books Miss Lonelyhearts / The Day of the Locust
To be honest, I was expecting something lighter. Here was the hook: Miss Lonelyhearts, an advice columnist in the early 30s, is really a man. Sounds like a role for Jimmy Stewart at his gosh-darned chirpiest, doesnt it? But the first few pages put a different image in mind it was Pottersville without benefit of George Bailey. The letters in to Miss Lonelyhearts were just so bleak. Of course, it was a time when deprivations were de rigueur. Those lacking money, health, or wedded bliss had very
Do you know what's wrong with this New Direction edition of West's most famous two little novels? Nothing. It's a perfect book. And it's a work that never gets old. The ultimate Hollywood nove (Day of the...)l that is almost spiritual. West got it right away and very few could match his greatness or snickering. A snicker that becomes passionate.Miss Lonelyhearts is awesome beyond one's favorite mustard. It's a nasty little book that still stings. Hail West!
After recently having read Henry Miller's Plexus, and now Nathanael West's Miss Lonelyhearts, it occurs to me that 1930s America is as foreign to me as a colony on one of Jupiter's moons. I also believe there is a contemporary effort by some to portray the past in terms of today, with the objective of pointing out that people from then were just like people today. In the sense that they had the same emotional urges and drives, I might agree; but when factoring in the pressure of conformity and
Miss Lonelyhearts is Dostoevskiana at its best. Also reminiscent of The Stranger and Hunger, both heirs to Dostoevsky's aimless, misanthropic but morally conflicted by misery, properly modern men of which the underground man, from Notes from Underground, is the true original. Great powerful little book.Day of the Locust is a classic California novel full of wonderful little surprises, not the least of which is a supremely repressed, awkward character named Homer Simpson. Others include: cock
Robert Louis Stevenson prepared my 3rd grade mind and pushed the limits of my vocabulary. Soon I found Dickens, Dumas and Defoe. But, it was comic books, Mad and Nathaniel West that launched my interest in mid 50s fiction. West wrote only four novels all of which came before the wonderful Terry Southern crazy books. Probably if theres a genre it would include John Kennedy Tooles Confederacy of Dunces. Some call these guys books black humor. Hallucinatory and hilarious!
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 that the joke's on you. I've satisfied my curiosity, anyway. I don't know that Nathanael West is the author for me. I'll have to try one more just to be sure.
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