Nathanael West
Encyclopedia
Nathanael West was a US author, screenwriter and satirist
.
, the first child of German-speaking Russian Jewish parents from Lithuania
who maintained an upper middle class household in a Jewish neighborhood on the Upper West Side
. West displayed little ambition in academics, dropping out of high school and only gaining admission into Tufts University
by forging his high school transcript. After being expelled from Tufts, West got into Brown University
by appropriating the transcript of a fellow Tufts student who was also named Nathan Weinstein. Although West did little schoolwork at Brown, he read extensively. He ignored the realist
fiction of his American contemporaries in favor of French surrealists
and British and Irish poets of the 1890s, in particular Oscar Wilde
. West's interests focused on unusual literary style as well as unusual content. He became interested in Christianity
and mysticism
, as experienced or expressed through literature and art. West's classmates at Brown ironically nicknamed him "Pep" after a school trip where after only a few minutes of walking he quickly ran out of breath. West himself acknowledged and made fun of his lack of physical prowess in recounting the story of a baseball game where he cost his team the game. Wells Root, a close friend of West, remembers hearing this tale half a dozen times, recalling that everyone had placed bets on the game, which came down to the final inning with the score tied and the enemy at bat with two outs. At that point the batter hit a long fly towards West:
It is unclear whether this ever actually happened, but West later re-imagined this in his short story "Western Union Boy
".
Since Jewish students were not allowed to join fraternities, his main friend was his future brother-in-law S. J. Perelman
, who was to become one of America's most erudite comic writers. West barely finished at Brown with a degree. He then went to Paris
for three months, and it was at this point that he changed his name to Nathanael West. West's family, who had supported him thus far, ran into financial difficulties in the late 1920s. West returned home and worked sporadically in construction for his father, eventually finding a job as the night manager of the Hotel Kenmore Hall
on East 23rd Street
in Manhattan
. One of West's real-life experiences at the hotel inspired the incident between Romola Martin and Homer Simpson that would later appear in The Day of the Locust
(1939).
(1933). Maxim Lieber
served as his literary agent in 1933.
In 1931, however, two years before he completed Miss Lonelyhearts, West published The Dream Life of Balso Snell
, a novel he had conceived of in college. By this time, West was within a group of writers working in and around New York that included William Carlos Williams
and Dashiell Hammett
.
In 1933, West bought a farm in eastern Pennsylvania
but soon got a job as a contract scriptwriter for Columbia Pictures
and moved to Hollywood. He published a third novel, A Cool Million
, in 1934. None of West's three works sold well, however, so he spent the mid-1930s in financial difficulty, sporadically collaborating on screenplays. Many of the films he worked on were B-movie
s, such as Five Came Back
(1939). It was at this time that West wrote The Day of the Locust
. West took many of the settings and minor characters of his novel directly from his experience living in a hotel on Hollywood Boulevard
.
In November 1939, West was hired as a screenwriter by RKO Radio Pictures, where he collaborated with Boris Ingster on a film adaptation of the novel Before the Fact
(1932) by Francis Iles. West and Ingster wrote the screenplay in seven weeks, with West focusing on characterization and dialogue and Ingster focusing on the narrative structure. RKO assigned the film, eventually released as Suspicion
(1941), to Alfred Hitchcock
; but Hitchcock already had his own, substantially different, screenplay. Hitchcock's screenplay was written by Samson Raphaelson
, Joan Harrison (Hitchcock's secretary), and Alma Reville
(Hitchcock's wife). West and Ingster's screenplay was abandoned, but the text can be found in the Library of America
's edition of West's collected works.
were returning to Los Angeles from a hunting trip in Mexico
. Possibly distraught over hearing of his friend F. Scott Fitzgerald
's death (Fitzgerald died on the 21st, his death was made known the next day), West ran a stop sign in El Centro, California
, resulting in a collision in which he and McKenney were both killed. McKenney had been the inspiration for the title character in the Broadway play My Sister Eileen
, and she and West had been scheduled to fly to New York City
for the Broadway
opening on December 26. West was buried in Mount Zion Cemetery in Queens
, New York
, with his wife's ashes placed in his coffin.
is widely regarded as West's masterpiece. The Day of the Locust
(1939) still stands as one of the best novels written about the early years of Hollywood. It is often compared to F. Scott Fitzgerald
's unfinished novel, The Last Tycoon, written at about the same time and also set in Hollywood. Day of the Locust
was ultimately made into a film which came out in 1975 starring Donald Sutherland
and Karen Black
. Likewise Miss Lonelyhearts
(1933) saw production in film (1933, 1958, 1983), stage (1957), and operatic (2006) versions. If one were to draw a family tree of authors who employed "black humor" in their works of fiction, West could be seen as the offspring of Gogol and Poe, and the progenitor of Saul Bellow
, Vladimir Nabokov
, and Martin Amis
(whose use of movingly inarticulate e-mails in Yellow Dog
is a 21st-century echo of the letters to Miss Lonelyhearts). A more direct and pronounced influence has been traced from West's work to that of his near-contemporary, Flannery O'Connor
.
Some of West's fiction is seen as a response to the Depression
that hit America with the stock market crash in October 1929 and continued throughout the 1930s. The obscene, garish landscapes of The Day of the Locust
gain added force in light of the fact that the remainder of the country was living in drab poverty at the time. Though West attended socialist rallies in New York's Union Square
, his novels have no affinity to the novels of his contemporary activist writers such as John Steinbeck
and John Dos Passos
. West’s writing style does not allow the portrayal of positive political causes, as he admitted in a letter to Malcolm Cowley
regarding The Day of the Locust: "I tried to describe a meeting of the anti-Nazi league, but it didn’t fit and I had to substitute a whorehouse and a dirty film". West saw the American dream as having been betrayed, both spiritually and materially, and in his writing he presented "a sweeping rejection of political causes, religious faith, artistic redemption and romantic love". This idea of the corrupt American dream endured long after his death, in the form of the term "West's disease", coined by the poet W. H. Auden
to refer to poverty that exists in both a spiritual and economic sense. Jay Martin wrote an extensive biography of West in 1970. A new biography, "Lonelyhearts: The Screwball World of Nathanael West and Eileen McKenney," by Marion Meade
was published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt in 2010.
Satire
Satire is primarily a literary genre or form, although in practice it can also be found in the graphic and performing arts. In satire, vices, follies, abuses, and shortcomings are held up to ridicule, ideally with the intent of shaming individuals, and society itself, into improvement...
.
Early life
Nathanael West (born Nathan Weinstein) was born in New York CityNew York City
New York is the most populous city in the United States and the center of the New York Metropolitan Area, one of the most populous metropolitan areas in the world. New York exerts a significant impact upon global commerce, finance, media, art, fashion, research, technology, education, and...
, the first child of German-speaking Russian Jewish parents from Lithuania
Lithuania
Lithuania , officially the Republic of Lithuania is a country in Northern Europe, the biggest of the three Baltic states. It is situated along the southeastern shore of the Baltic Sea, whereby to the west lie Sweden and Denmark...
who maintained an upper middle class household in a Jewish neighborhood on the Upper West Side
Upper West Side
The Upper West Side is a neighborhood in the borough of Manhattan, New York City, that lies between Central Park and the Hudson River and between West 59th Street and West 125th Street...
. West displayed little ambition in academics, dropping out of high school and only gaining admission into Tufts University
Tufts University
Tufts University is a private research university located in Medford/Somerville, near Boston, Massachusetts. It is organized into ten schools, including two undergraduate programs and eight graduate divisions, on four campuses in Massachusetts and on the eastern border of France...
by forging his high school transcript. After being expelled from Tufts, West got into Brown University
Brown University
Brown University is a private, Ivy League university located in Providence, Rhode Island, United States. Founded in 1764 prior to American independence from the British Empire as the College in the English Colony of Rhode Island and Providence Plantations early in the reign of King George III ,...
by appropriating the transcript of a fellow Tufts student who was also named Nathan Weinstein. Although West did little schoolwork at Brown, he read extensively. He ignored the realist
Literary realism
Literary realism most often refers to the trend, beginning with certain works of nineteenth-century French literature and extending to late-nineteenth- and early-twentieth-century authors in various countries, towards depictions of contemporary life and society "as they were." In the spirit of...
fiction of his American contemporaries in favor of French surrealists
Surrealism
Surrealism is a cultural movement that began in the early 1920s, and is best known for the visual artworks and writings of the group members....
and British and Irish poets of the 1890s, in particular Oscar Wilde
Oscar Wilde
Oscar Fingal O'Flahertie Wills Wilde was an Irish writer and poet. After writing in different forms throughout the 1880s, he became one of London's most popular playwrights in the early 1890s...
. West's interests focused on unusual literary style as well as unusual content. He became interested in Christianity
Christianity
Christianity is a monotheistic religion based on the life and teachings of Jesus as presented in canonical gospels and other New Testament writings...
and mysticism
Mysticism
Mysticism is the knowledge of, and especially the personal experience of, states of consciousness, i.e. levels of being, beyond normal human perception, including experience and even communion with a supreme being.-Classical origins:...
, as experienced or expressed through literature and art. West's classmates at Brown ironically nicknamed him "Pep" after a school trip where after only a few minutes of walking he quickly ran out of breath. West himself acknowledged and made fun of his lack of physical prowess in recounting the story of a baseball game where he cost his team the game. Wells Root, a close friend of West, remembers hearing this tale half a dozen times, recalling that everyone had placed bets on the game, which came down to the final inning with the score tied and the enemy at bat with two outs. At that point the batter hit a long fly towards West:
He put his hands up to catch it and for some inexplicable reason didn’t hold them close together. The ball tore through, hit him in the forehead, and bounced into some brush. There was a roar from the crowd and [West] took one look and turned tail. To a man, the crowd had risen, gathered bats, sticks, stones, and anything they could lay hands on and were in hot pursuit. He vanished into some woods and didn’t emerge until nightfall. In telling the story he was convinced that if they had caught him they would have killed him.
It is unclear whether this ever actually happened, but West later re-imagined this in his short story "Western Union Boy
Western Union Boy
"Western Union Boy" is a short story written by Nathanael West in the early 1930's; it was not published in West’s lifetime and appears only in the Library of America edition of his collected work: Novels & Other Writings.-Plot summary:...
".
Since Jewish students were not allowed to join fraternities, his main friend was his future brother-in-law S. J. Perelman
S. J. Perelman
Sidney Joseph Perelman, almost always known as S. J. Perelman , was an American humorist, author, and screenwriter. He is best known for his humorous short pieces written over many years for The New Yorker...
, who was to become one of America's most erudite comic writers. West barely finished at Brown with a degree. He then went to Paris
Paris
Paris is the capital and largest city in France, situated on the river Seine, in northern France, at the heart of the Île-de-France region...
for three months, and it was at this point that he changed his name to Nathanael West. West's family, who had supported him thus far, ran into financial difficulties in the late 1920s. West returned home and worked sporadically in construction for his father, eventually finding a job as the night manager of the Hotel Kenmore Hall
Hotel Kenmore Hall
Hotel Kenmore Hall is a 22-story single room occupancy hotel located at 145 East 23rd Street in the Gramercy section of Manhattan, designed by architect Maurice Deutsch and constructed in 1927...
on East 23rd Street
23rd Street (Manhattan)
23rd Street is a broad thoroughfare in the New York City borough of Manhattan. It is one of few two-way streets in the gridiron of the borough. As with Manhattan's other "crosstown" streets, it is divided at Fifth Avenue, in this case at Madison Square Park, into its east and west sections. Since...
in Manhattan
Manhattan
Manhattan is the oldest and the most densely populated of the five boroughs of New York City. Located primarily on the island of Manhattan at the mouth of the Hudson River, the boundaries of the borough are identical to those of New York County, an original county of the state of New York...
. One of West's real-life experiences at the hotel inspired the incident between Romola Martin and Homer Simpson that would later appear in The Day of the Locust
The Day of the Locust
The Day of the Locust is a 1939 novel by American author Nathanael West, set in Hollywood, California during the Great Depression, its overarching themes deal with the alienation and desperation of a broad group of odd individuals who exist at the fringes of the Hollywood movie industry.In 1998,...
(1939).
Career as author
Although West had been working on his writing since college, it was not until his quiet night job at the hotel that he found the time to put his novel together. It was at this time that West wrote what would eventually become Miss LonelyheartsMiss Lonelyhearts
Miss Lonelyhearts, published in 1933, is Nathanael West's second novel. It is an Expressionist black comedy set in New York City during the Great Depression.-Plot summary:...
(1933). Maxim Lieber
Maxim Lieber
Maxim Lieber was a prominent American literary agent in New York City during the 1930s and 1940s. Whittaker Chambers named him as an accomplice in 1949, and Lieber fled first to Mexico and then Poland not long after Alger Hiss's conviction in 1950.- Early years :Lieber was born in Warsaw, Poland,...
served as his literary agent in 1933.
In 1931, however, two years before he completed Miss Lonelyhearts, West published The Dream Life of Balso Snell
The Dream Life of Balso Snell
The Dream Life of Balso Snell is a 1931 novel by American author Nathanael West. West's first novel, it presents a young man's immature and cynical search for meaning in a series of dreamlike encounters inside the entrails of the Trojan Horse....
, a novel he had conceived of in college. By this time, West was within a group of writers working in and around New York that included William Carlos Williams
William Carlos Williams
William Carlos Williams was an American poet closely associated with modernism and Imagism. He was also a pediatrician and general practitioner of medicine, having graduated from the University of Pennsylvania...
and Dashiell Hammett
Dashiell Hammett
Samuel Dashiell Hammett was an American author of hard-boiled detective novels and short stories, and political activist. Among the enduring characters he created are Sam Spade , Nick and Nora Charles , and the Continental Op .In addition to the significant influence his novels and stories had on...
.
In 1933, West bought a farm in eastern Pennsylvania
Pennsylvania
The Commonwealth of Pennsylvania is a U.S. state that is located in the Northeastern and Mid-Atlantic regions of the United States. The state borders Delaware and Maryland to the south, West Virginia to the southwest, Ohio to the west, New York and Ontario, Canada, to the north, and New Jersey to...
but soon got a job as a contract scriptwriter for Columbia Pictures
Columbia Pictures
Columbia Pictures Industries, Inc. is an American film production and distribution company. Columbia Pictures now forms part of the Columbia TriStar Motion Picture Group, owned by Sony Pictures Entertainment, a subsidiary of the Japanese conglomerate Sony. It is one of the leading film companies...
and moved to Hollywood. He published a third novel, A Cool Million
A Cool Million
A Cool Million: The Dismantling of Lemuel Pitkin is Nathanael West's third novel, published in 1934. It is a brutal satire of Horatio Alger's novels and their eternal optimism.-Plot summary:...
, in 1934. None of West's three works sold well, however, so he spent the mid-1930s in financial difficulty, sporadically collaborating on screenplays. Many of the films he worked on were B-movie
B-movie
A B movie is a low-budget commercial motion picture that is not definitively an arthouse or pornographic film. In its original usage, during the Golden Age of Hollywood, the term more precisely identified a film intended for distribution as the less-publicized, bottom half of a double feature....
s, such as Five Came Back
Five Came Back
Five Came Back is a 1939 melodrama and a precursor of the disaster film genre. The film was directed by John Farrow, photographed by renowned film noir cinematographer Nicholas Musuraca, and written by Jerry Cady, Dalton Trumbo and Nathanael West....
(1939). It was at this time that West wrote The Day of the Locust
The Day of the Locust
The Day of the Locust is a 1939 novel by American author Nathanael West, set in Hollywood, California during the Great Depression, its overarching themes deal with the alienation and desperation of a broad group of odd individuals who exist at the fringes of the Hollywood movie industry.In 1998,...
. West took many of the settings and minor characters of his novel directly from his experience living in a hotel on Hollywood Boulevard
Hollywood Boulevard
-Revitalization:In recent years successful efforts have been made at cleaning up Hollywood Blvd., as the street had gained a reputation for crime and seediness. Central to these efforts was the construction of the Hollywood and Highland shopping center and adjacent Kodak Theatre in 2001...
.
In November 1939, West was hired as a screenwriter by RKO Radio Pictures, where he collaborated with Boris Ingster on a film adaptation of the novel Before the Fact
Before the Fact
Before the Fact is a novel by Anthony Berkeley writing under the pen name "Francis Iles".Iles' novel is experimental in that it is not a whodunit: It does not take long to determine the identity of the villain and his motives...
(1932) by Francis Iles. West and Ingster wrote the screenplay in seven weeks, with West focusing on characterization and dialogue and Ingster focusing on the narrative structure. RKO assigned the film, eventually released as Suspicion
Suspicion (film)
Suspicion is a romantic psychological thriller directed by Alfred Hitchcock, and starring Cary Grant and Joan Fontaine as a married couple. It also stars Sir Cedric Hardwicke, Nigel Bruce, Dame May Whitty, Isabel Jeans, Heather Angel, and Leo G...
(1941), to Alfred Hitchcock
Alfred Hitchcock
Sir Alfred Joseph Hitchcock, KBE was a British film director and producer. He pioneered many techniques in the suspense and psychological thriller genres. After a successful career in British cinema in both silent films and early talkies, Hitchcock moved to Hollywood...
; but Hitchcock already had his own, substantially different, screenplay. Hitchcock's screenplay was written by Samson Raphaelson
Samson Raphaelson
Samson Raphaelson was an American screenwriter and playwright.Born in New York City, Raphaelson worked on nine films with Ernst Lubitsch, including Trouble in Paradise , The Shop Around the Corner , Heaven Can Wait , and That Lady in Ermine...
, Joan Harrison (Hitchcock's secretary), and Alma Reville
Alma Reville
Alma Reville, Lady Hitchcock was an English assistant director, screenwriter and editor. She was the second daughter of Edward and Lucy Reville....
(Hitchcock's wife). West and Ingster's screenplay was abandoned, but the text can be found in the Library of America
Library of America
The Library of America is a nonprofit publisher of classic American literature.- Overview and history :Founded in 1979 with seed money from the National Endowment for the Humanities and the Ford Foundation, the LoA has published over 200 volumes by a wide range of authors from Mark Twain to Philip...
's edition of West's collected works.
Death
On December 22, 1940, West and his wife Eileen McKenneyEileen McKenney
Eileen McKenney was the sister of the writer Ruth McKenney and the inspiration for Ruth's book My Sister Eileen . It was adapted as a Broadway play in 1940, filmed in 1942 and 1955 by Columbia Pictures, and adapted into the Broadway musical Wonderful Town...
were returning to Los Angeles from a hunting trip in Mexico
Mexico
The United Mexican States , commonly known as Mexico , is a federal constitutional republic in North America. It is bordered on the north by the United States; on the south and west by the Pacific Ocean; on the southeast by Guatemala, Belize, and the Caribbean Sea; and on the east by the Gulf of...
. Possibly distraught over hearing of his friend F. Scott Fitzgerald
F. Scott Fitzgerald
Francis Scott Key Fitzgerald was an American author of novels and short stories, whose works are the paradigm writings of the Jazz Age, a term he coined himself. He is widely regarded as one of the greatest American writers of the 20th century. Fitzgerald is considered a member of the "Lost...
's death (Fitzgerald died on the 21st, his death was made known the next day), West ran a stop sign in El Centro, California
El Centro, California
El Centro is a city in and county seat of Imperial County, the largest city in the Imperial Valley and the east anchor of the Southern California Border Region, and the core urban area and principal city of the El Centro metropolitan area which encompasses all of Imperial County. El Centro is also...
, resulting in a collision in which he and McKenney were both killed. McKenney had been the inspiration for the title character in the Broadway play My Sister Eileen
My Sister Eileen (play)
My Sister Eileen is an American comedy stage production, written by Joseph A. Fields and Jerome Chodorov, based on autobiographical short stories by Ruth McKenney...
, and she and West had been scheduled to fly to New York City
New York City
New York is the most populous city in the United States and the center of the New York Metropolitan Area, one of the most populous metropolitan areas in the world. New York exerts a significant impact upon global commerce, finance, media, art, fashion, research, technology, education, and...
for the Broadway
Broadway theatre
Broadway theatre, commonly called simply Broadway, refers to theatrical performances presented in one of the 40 professional theatres with 500 or more seats located in the Theatre District centered along Broadway, and in Lincoln Center, in Manhattan in New York City...
opening on December 26. West was buried in Mount Zion Cemetery in Queens
Queens
Queens is the easternmost of the five boroughs of New York City. The largest borough in area and the second-largest in population, it is coextensive with Queens County, an administrative division of New York state, in the United States....
, New York
New York
New York is a state in the Northeastern region of the United States. It is the nation's third most populous state. New York is bordered by New Jersey and Pennsylvania to the south, and by Connecticut, Massachusetts and Vermont to the east...
, with his wife's ashes placed in his coffin.
His work
Although West was not widely known during his life, his reputation grew after his death, especially with the publication of his collected novels by New Directions in 1957. Miss LonelyheartsMiss Lonelyhearts
Miss Lonelyhearts, published in 1933, is Nathanael West's second novel. It is an Expressionist black comedy set in New York City during the Great Depression.-Plot summary:...
is widely regarded as West's masterpiece. The Day of the Locust
The Day of the Locust
The Day of the Locust is a 1939 novel by American author Nathanael West, set in Hollywood, California during the Great Depression, its overarching themes deal with the alienation and desperation of a broad group of odd individuals who exist at the fringes of the Hollywood movie industry.In 1998,...
(1939) still stands as one of the best novels written about the early years of Hollywood. It is often compared to F. Scott Fitzgerald
F. Scott Fitzgerald
Francis Scott Key Fitzgerald was an American author of novels and short stories, whose works are the paradigm writings of the Jazz Age, a term he coined himself. He is widely regarded as one of the greatest American writers of the 20th century. Fitzgerald is considered a member of the "Lost...
's unfinished novel, The Last Tycoon, written at about the same time and also set in Hollywood. Day of the Locust
The Day of the Locust (film)
The Day of the Locust is a 1975 American drama film directed by John Schlesinger. The screenplay by Waldo Salt is based on the 1939 novel of the same title by Nathanael West...
was ultimately made into a film which came out in 1975 starring Donald Sutherland
Donald Sutherland
Donald McNichol Sutherland, OC is a Canadian actor with a film career spanning nearly 50 years. Some of Sutherland's more notable movie roles included offbeat warriors in such war movies as The Dirty Dozen, , MASH , and Kelly's Heroes , as well as in such popular films as Klute, Invasion of the...
and Karen Black
Karen Black
Karen Black is an American actress, screenwriter, singer, and songwriter. She is noted for appearing in such films as Easy Rider, Five Easy Pieces, The Great Gatsby, Rhinoceros, The Day of the Locust, Nashville, Airport 1975, and Alfred Hitchcock's final film, Family Plot...
. Likewise Miss Lonelyhearts
Miss Lonelyhearts
Miss Lonelyhearts, published in 1933, is Nathanael West's second novel. It is an Expressionist black comedy set in New York City during the Great Depression.-Plot summary:...
(1933) saw production in film (1933, 1958, 1983), stage (1957), and operatic (2006) versions. If one were to draw a family tree of authors who employed "black humor" in their works of fiction, West could be seen as the offspring of Gogol and Poe, and the progenitor of Saul Bellow
Saul Bellow
Saul Bellow was a Canadian-born Jewish American writer. For his literary contributions, Bellow was awarded the Pulitzer Prize, the Nobel Prize for Literature, and the National Medal of Arts...
, Vladimir Nabokov
Vladimir Nabokov
Vladimir Vladimirovich Nabokov was a multilingual Russian novelist and short story writer. Nabokov wrote his first nine novels in Russian, then rose to international prominence as a master English prose stylist...
, and Martin Amis
Martin Amis
Martin Louis Amis is a British novelist, the author of many novels including Money and London Fields . He is currently Professor of Creative Writing at the Centre for New Writing at the University of Manchester, but will step down at the end of the 2010/11 academic year...
(whose use of movingly inarticulate e-mails in Yellow Dog
Yellow Dog (novel)
Yellow Dog is the title of a 2003 novel by the British writer Martin Amis. Its setting, like many of Amis’s novels, is contemporary London. The novel contains several strands that appear to be linked, although a complete resolution of the plot is not immediately apparent...
is a 21st-century echo of the letters to Miss Lonelyhearts). A more direct and pronounced influence has been traced from West's work to that of his near-contemporary, Flannery O'Connor
Flannery O'Connor
Mary Flannery O'Connor was an American novelist, short-story writer and essayist. An important voice in American literature, O'Connor wrote two novels and 32 short stories, as well as a number of reviews and commentaries...
.
Some of West's fiction is seen as a response to the Depression
Great Depression
The Great Depression was a severe worldwide economic depression in the decade preceding World War II. The timing of the Great Depression varied across nations, but in most countries it started in about 1929 and lasted until the late 1930s or early 1940s...
that hit America with the stock market crash in October 1929 and continued throughout the 1930s. The obscene, garish landscapes of The Day of the Locust
The Day of the Locust
The Day of the Locust is a 1939 novel by American author Nathanael West, set in Hollywood, California during the Great Depression, its overarching themes deal with the alienation and desperation of a broad group of odd individuals who exist at the fringes of the Hollywood movie industry.In 1998,...
gain added force in light of the fact that the remainder of the country was living in drab poverty at the time. Though West attended socialist rallies in New York's Union Square
Union Square (New York City)
Union Square is a public square in the Manhattan borough of New York City, New York.It is an important and historic intersection, located where Broadway and the former Bowery Road – now Fourth Avenue – came together in the early 19th century; its name celebrates neither the...
, his novels have no affinity to the novels of his contemporary activist writers such as John Steinbeck
John Steinbeck
John Ernst Steinbeck, Jr. was an American writer. He is widely known for the Pulitzer Prize-winning novel The Grapes of Wrath and East of Eden and the novella Of Mice and Men...
and John Dos Passos
John Dos Passos
John Roderigo Dos Passos was an American novelist and artist.-Early life:Born in Chicago, Illinois, Dos Passos was the illegitimate son of John Randolph Dos Passos , a distinguished lawyer of Madeiran Portuguese descent, and Lucy Addison Sprigg Madison of Petersburg, Virginia. The elder Dos Passos...
. West’s writing style does not allow the portrayal of positive political causes, as he admitted in a letter to Malcolm Cowley
Malcolm Cowley
Malcolm Cowley was an American novelist, poet, literary critic, and journalist.-Early life:...
regarding The Day of the Locust: "I tried to describe a meeting of the anti-Nazi league, but it didn’t fit and I had to substitute a whorehouse and a dirty film". West saw the American dream as having been betrayed, both spiritually and materially, and in his writing he presented "a sweeping rejection of political causes, religious faith, artistic redemption and romantic love". This idea of the corrupt American dream endured long after his death, in the form of the term "West's disease", coined by the poet W. H. Auden
W. H. Auden
Wystan Hugh Auden , who published as W. H. Auden, was an Anglo-American poet,The first definition of "Anglo-American" in the OED is: "Of, belonging to, or involving both England and America." See also the definition "English in origin or birth, American by settlement or citizenship" in See also...
to refer to poverty that exists in both a spiritual and economic sense. Jay Martin wrote an extensive biography of West in 1970. A new biography, "Lonelyhearts: The Screwball World of Nathanael West and Eileen McKenney," by Marion Meade
Marion Meade
Marion Meade is an American biographer and novelist, whose subjects stretch from 12th century French royalty to 20th century stand-up comedians. She is best known for her portraits of literary figures and iconic filmmakers....
was published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt in 2010.
Novels
- The Dream Life of Balso SnellThe Dream Life of Balso SnellThe Dream Life of Balso Snell is a 1931 novel by American author Nathanael West. West's first novel, it presents a young man's immature and cynical search for meaning in a series of dreamlike encounters inside the entrails of the Trojan Horse....
(1931) - Miss LonelyheartsMiss LonelyheartsMiss Lonelyhearts, published in 1933, is Nathanael West's second novel. It is an Expressionist black comedy set in New York City during the Great Depression.-Plot summary:...
(1933) - A Cool MillionA Cool MillionA Cool Million: The Dismantling of Lemuel Pitkin is Nathanael West's third novel, published in 1934. It is a brutal satire of Horatio Alger's novels and their eternal optimism.-Plot summary:...
(1934) - The Day of the LocustThe Day of the LocustThe Day of the Locust is a 1939 novel by American author Nathanael West, set in Hollywood, California during the Great Depression, its overarching themes deal with the alienation and desperation of a broad group of odd individuals who exist at the fringes of the Hollywood movie industry.In 1998,...
(1939)
Plays
- Even StephenEven Stephen (play)Even Stephen is a play written by Nathanael West and S. J. Perelman in 1934. The play is a three act satire dealing with the adventures of Diana Breed Latimer, a best-selling novelist, who visits a women's college in New England to research her next book, an exposé of the romantic lives of young...
(1934, with S. J. PerelmanS. J. PerelmanSidney Joseph Perelman, almost always known as S. J. Perelman , was an American humorist, author, and screenwriter. He is best known for his humorous short pieces written over many years for The New Yorker...
) - Good HuntingGood Hunting (Nathanael West)Good Hunting is a 1938 play written by Nathanael West, in collaboration with Joseph Schrank. The play, a satire about World War I, opened in New York on November 21, 1938, and ran for two performances.-Process of writing:...
(1938, with Joseph Schrank)
Posthumous collections
- Bercovitch, Sacvan, ed. Nathanael West, Novels and Other Writings (Library of AmericaLibrary of AmericaThe Library of America is a nonprofit publisher of classic American literature.- Overview and history :Founded in 1979 with seed money from the National Endowment for the Humanities and the Ford Foundation, the LoA has published over 200 volumes by a wide range of authors from Mark Twain to Philip...
, 1997) ISBN 978-1-883011-28-4
Screenplays
- Ticket to Paradise (1936)
- Follow Your Heart (1936)
- The President's Mystery (1936)
- Rhythm in the Clouds (1937)
- It Could Happen to You (1937)
- Born to Be Wild (1938)
- Five Came BackFive Came BackFive Came Back is a 1939 melodrama and a precursor of the disaster film genre. The film was directed by John Farrow, photographed by renowned film noir cinematographer Nicholas Musuraca, and written by Jerry Cady, Dalton Trumbo and Nathanael West....
(1939) - I Stole a MillionI Stole a MillionI Stole a Million is a crime drama film starring George Raft as a cab driver and small-time crook who makes a big score and lives to regret it. The supporting cast includes Claire Trevor, Dick Foran, and Victor Jory...
(1939) - Stranger on the Third FloorStranger on the Third FloorStranger on the Third Floor is a film noir thriller, featuring Peter Lorre, co-written by Nathaniel West, and released by RKO Radio Pictures. The picture was directed by Boris Ingster....
(1940) - The Spirit of CulverThe Spirit of CulverThe Spirit of Culver is a 1939 drama starring Jackie Cooper and Freddie Bartholomew. Directed by Joseph Santley and written by Whitney Bolton and Nathanael West, the film is a remake of 1932's Tom Brown of Culver.-Plot:...
(1940) - Men Against the SkyMen Against the SkyMen Against the Sky is a 1940 drama starring Richard Dix and written by Nathanael West and based on a story by John Twist. Directed by Leslie Goodwins, this film deals with the dangers of flying and aircraft development in the period before World War II....
(1940) - Let's Make MusicLet's Make MusicLet's Make Music is a 1941 musical starring Bob Crosby and written by Nathanael West. The songs in Let's Make Music include the classic "Big Noise from Winnetka".-Development:...
(1940) - Before the Fact (1940) (unproduced)
Further reading
- Martin, Jay, Nathanael West: The Art of His Life (New York: Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 1970)
- Meade, Marion, Lonelyhearts: The Screwball World of Nathanael West and Eileen McKenney (New York: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2010)
- Woodward, Joe, Alive Inside the Wreck: A Life of Nathanael West (New York: OR BooksOR BooksOR Books is a New York-based independent publishing house founded by two veterans of the publishing industry, John Oakes and Colin Robinson, in 2009. The company, a "digital upstart", claims to offer a revolutionary approach to publishing by printing on demand, selling directly to the customer,...
, 2011)
External links
- Books and Writers: Nathanael West (1903-1940)
- Literary Traveler: The California Dreams of Nathanael West
- "The Nihilism of Nathanael West" by Ingrid Norton, Open Letters Monthly, January 2011.
- Nathanael West and the American Apocalyptic
- Nathanael West's Photo & Gravesite
- Library of America's notes on West's works
- Promotional website for Lonelyhearts: The Screwball World of Nathanael West and Eileen McKenney