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Loading... Miss Lonelyhearts & the Day of the Locustby Nathanael West
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will love Sign up for LibraryThing to find out whether you'll like this book. i have read these two novellas at least once a year for the past five years. in this genre of mid-20th-century American fiction--realist depictions of urban alienation and decay--West ranks right there at the top with Algren and Fante.True, there are several authors of the genre--Burroughs, Kerouac, Selby Jr., Miller, Pynchon, etc.--but only West, Fante, and Algren can depict their protagonists with such candid empathy. (  ) lanewilkinson | Dec 4, 2009 |  hated miss lonely hearts. would give it *. the day of the locust was ok but the characters were so unlikeable that it was an ordeal. would give it *** ( ) mahallett | Sep 12, 2009 | Although The Day of the Locust is the longer and more famous of the two works this volume comprises, I preferred Miss Lonelyhearts. Miss Lonelyhearts is an odd and haunting story: the eponymous protatgonist is actually a young man who's fallen into the job of writing an agony aunt column for a newspaper. We see him displayed in a number of set pieces, reacting to the ubiquity of evil and misery in the world. He's also Christ-haunted, in a very Flannery O'Connor-esque way, with some similarly bizarre behavioral results. This novella is sharply-written and memorably disturbing. The Day of Locust is one of the foundational Hollywood novels, featuring a young studio artist's experiences as he sketches, both literally and figuratively, the brutal outlines of the real characters that inhabit Lala Land. Some of these lost souls are unforgettable, and as the story reaches a feverish climax, we are left wondering if there's any hope at all for the great mass of us. Recommended, for the power of West's writing, and for these works' hard-edged portrayal of the 1930s, and of the unchanging depths of human nature itself. (  ) mrtall | Jun 1, 2009 | 5 stars for Miss Lonelyhearts + 3.5 starts for Day of the Locust equal 8.5 stars: divided by 2, which comes to 4.25 stars; round down to the nearest whole number (if the number is even) and you get 4 stars. Add 0.5 stars for being the basis of a 4 star movie "Miss Lonelyhearts" and subtract 1 star for being the basis of a 2 star movie "The Day of the Locust" and you get 3.5 stars. Round up to the nearest even whole number and again you get 4 stars. (  ) jburlinson | Dec 26, 2008 | Of these two novellas, Miss Lonelyhearts was by far my favorite. "Miss Lonelyhearts" is actually a male employee of a New York newspaper who write the advice column much in the vein of Ann Landers. He initially treats his job as a huge joke, but day after day of letters dealing with horribly depressing issues, he kinda cracks and becomes extremely disillusioned with humanity. The bulk of the story is Miss Lonelyhearts trying to free himself from depression through art, alcohol, sex, and finally religion. That's all I'll say...other than the ending is a bit like if Flannery O'Connor set one of her stories in New York city rather than the South...highly recommended short read. Day of the Locust is fine. It gets mentioned a lot for being a book that epitomizes Hollywood and all of the absurdity of Southern California during the Golden Age of Films. I enjoyed it, but the story does come off a bit like a convoluted soap opera at times, which I guess is fitting. (  ) araridan | Apr 6, 2008 |  no reviews | add a review
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(retrieved from Amazon Fri, 24 Apr 2009 07:58:05 -0400)
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