Miss Lonelyhearts....

....starts tomorrow. Who's in? It's only 59 pages; carve out two hours and you're done in one sitting. It's quite good. I'll be reading it again this week. Suppose we should post us some background info on Nathanael West and the book. Feel free, anyone, to jump in and do so. Otherwise, I'll be back tomorrow with some links....

I'm in. Just a couple of quickie links to get the ball rolling:

http://www.bostonphoenix.com/archive/books/97/08/07/NATHANIEL_WEST.html

http://www.latimes.com/entertainment/news/arts/la-caw-paperback-writers16-2009au...

The second one is more about Day of the Locust but offers a quick overview of his life

3> Thanks for those! I saw over on Club Read that you're almost done with Miss Lonelyhearts. Look forward to your comments here or there (or everywhere!). I'll be finishing The Red Album of Asbury Park, Remixed today, by the salon's own Alex Austin - a riveting book,whose author will be the next "real life, underappreciated author" featured in Feb. - and then digging into Miss Lonelyhearts and hopefully Light in August some for Le Salon du Faulkner's Jan. read.

Will others here be doing the Light in August read over in the Faulkner group? It's been awfully quiet over there for some time - they could use your support. If West and Milton don't do it for you in Jan., consider Faulkner a superb alternative. I've gotten into the first 25 pages of Light in August and it's a surprisingly accessible and compelling reading experience so far.

"Dear Miss Lonelyhearts--
I am writing to you for my little sister Gracie because something awfull hapened to her and I am afraid to tell mother about it. I am 15 years old and Gracie is 13 and we live in Brooklyn. Gracie is deaf and dumb and biger than me but not very smart on account of being deaf and dumb. She plays on the roof of our house and dont go to school except to deaf and dumb school twice a week on tuesdays and thursdays. Mother makes her play on the roof because we don't want her to get run over as she aint very smart. Last week a man came on the roof and did something dirty to her. She to'd me about it and I dont know what to do as I am afraid to tell mother on account of her being lible to beat Gracie up. I am afraid that Gracie is going to have a baby and I listened to her stomack last night for a long time to see if I could hear the baby but I couldn't. If I tell mother she will beat Gracie up awfu'l because I am the only one who loves her and last time when she tore her dress they loked her in the closet for 2 days and if the boys on the blok hear about it they will say dirty things like they did on Peewee Conors sister the time she got caught in the lots. So please what would you do if the same hapened in your family.
Yours truly,
Harold S."

Nathanael West wastes no time hooking you in to the drama. This is one of three letters, and for me, the worst, as I've a daughter w/special needs, written to "Miss Lonelyhearts" - an advice columnist for the N.Y. Post-Dispatch - compiled at the beginning of the novella.

Oh my! What a way to begin the new year! Of course, having read Day of the Locust I should have known.

I'll be back later tonight for more discussion, but in the meantime... apparently there is a bio on West and his wife coming out this March http://www.nathanaelwest.com/ by Marion Meade. I read her bio of Dorothy Parker What Fresh Hell is This? some time ago.

Very dark and uncomfortable, but hard to put down.

For those living in areas with relaxed copyrights (or acting as if they were), the text is avaliable on Project Gutenberg Australia: http://gutenberg.net.au/ebooks06/0608851h.html

Okay, according to Wikipedia (I know, I know, but for discussion's sake) Miss Lonelyhearts is an Expressionist black comedy. The expressionist part I can get, but black comedy? That seems a stretch. I reread some with that in mind and I just don't see it. Have I missed something?

Also, found this passage interesting:

"He saw a man who appeared to be on the verge of death stagger into a movie theater that was showing a picture called Blonde Beauty. He saw a ragged woman with an enormous goiter pick a love story magazine out of a garbage can and seem very excited by her find.

Prodded by his conscience, he began to generalize. Men have always fought their misery with dreams. Although dreams were once powerful, they have been made puerile by the movies, radio and newspapers. Among many betrayals, this one is the worst."

Seeds, perhaps, for Day of the Locust, which was to come six years later?

In regards to your last question, theaelizabet, I'll wager that's a pretty astute observation. I wouldn't doubt at all that you're right and the seeds for the Locust were planted there in those quotes.

I'm going to read some more and think some more about the black comedy question.

I've got a copy of Miss Lonelyhearts b/w The Day of the Locust so I'm in.

I was unaware of the Faulkner group (partly why I'm so slow at reading books is because I'm already aware of far too many groups on LT), but with Les Miserables now and Infinite Jest in a month or two I just can't get to Faulkner at present.

hey thanks pimphilipse for providing the site for the online text of Miss Lonelyhearts. I accidentally went online and ordered the interpretations of it and not the actual book!

Mr. Freeque assures me that I am not too late and I will join y'all on this West book. I bought the anthology I own because Day of the Locusts was on one of my 100best lists that I've been reading through and I haven't read that one yet. but this will be a nice introduction to West.

I absolutely adore the pulp cover of this title. I have--or had, in college...I think it eventually fell apart--a copy of Women in Love from the same series. What a way to draw people into the classics, eh? Juicy!

13--Love the cover! Note the top line "A savage novel of woman's brutality to man." Say what?!

7> Very dark and uncomfortable, but hard to put down.

Couldn't have said it any better. I'm actually surprised by how dark it is. It evokes in me the same type of emotional reaction as did A Clockwork Orange, only without the graphic gore, though Miss Lonelyhearts is still pretty graphic. It had to have been shocking in its day. I'm not surprised the French, I've found out, were the first to truly champion West after his death. The French aren't shocked by anything in literature. This book had to have been censored at some point, right? I should look into that.

And I second misshollyhock, Pim, with the Gutenberg link. Thanks for that.

I'm glad you two (13,14) like the cover. I did a search for the Women in Love pulp cover, hoping to post it, but couldn't locate it. However, I did find the Wordsworth Classics cover of Women in Love, and for me, not having seen the pulp cover, I'd have to say that's my favorite cover!

Yes, "A savage novel of woman's brutality to man". Hahahah! And then you've got John Dos Passos's classic understated blurb: "it certainly does pack a wallop".

Here's some quotes that perhaps do back up this novella as being "a savage novel of woman's {damn women!} brutality to man".

Page 21 of the New Directions ed.: "She's selfish. She's a damned selfish bitch. She was a virgin when I married her and has been fighting ever since to remain one. Sleeping with her is like sleeping with a knife in one's groin."

That's womanly brutality to man if I ever heard it! Of course maybe Shrike's opinion of his wife is a bit, uh, skewed.

So let's hear Shrike's wife, Mary's, side of the story, as her lover, Miss Lonelyhearts (who's a man btw, in case you're not familiar w/the story) proclaims:

"'He said you were selfish, Mary - sexually selfish.'"

"'Of all the god-damned nerve. Do you know why he lets me go out with other men? To save money. He knows that I let them neck me and when I get home all hot and bothered, why he climbs into my bed and begs for it. The cheap bastard!'"

8> I think the passage above is an example of "black comedy," a la the movie, War of the Roses, but I don't know yet if I'd call the entire work black comedy. It's certainly darker than dark, but the sections where sleazy characters talk about women deserving to be raped or gang-raped, while dark indeed, didn't leave me laughing, just thinking, my God, there was a predecessor to A Clockwork Orange.

15> Of course maybe Shrike's opinion of his wife is a bit, uh, skewed.

Or, one could say that his opinion of his wife is a bit skewered.

16> Ha! Skewered more true than skewed, definitely. And likewise Mary's opinion toward Shrike. Such a lovely couple.

For those of you who won't have the time to read Miss Lonelyhearts now, here's, I think, in the following excerpt, the seed from which West riffed from. It not only summarizes the source of Miss Lonelyhearts' spiritual/existential conundrum, but serves too as a commentary on the more sensationalized, shallow sectors of the media (newspapers then), while today with television West's indictment reads truer than it's ever read, imo, as news media, especially local news media, with few exceptions, has become shallower and baser and trivialized - castrated of compassion - and made irrelevant in its obsessive devotion to entertaining us with appearances and feel-good fluffery instead of enlightening us and truly educating us as I like to believe the news was originally intended to do. BWTFDIK? Here's the quote, top of page 32, New Directions ed.:

"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 {emphasis mine}. 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."

Ack! I have just been to every second-hand bookstore in downtown Vancouver, without luck, thus recapitulating my experience with Tomcat Murr. Why Salon want make me sad?

Oh Martin, do hurry....we only have until Friday and then we'll be lost in paradise....

I'm definitely in. Picked up Miss L for a few minutes yesterday and was glad to see that one of my favorite books from years ago is still good. (You know what I mean, don't you?)

A very American (U.S.) book, I think. West has a big talent for an expressive phrase (e.g. stamped from the dough of suffering with a heart shaped cookie knife - that was the first big hit, there are many more.) I also liked the contrast between the gut wrenching letters to Miss L and the banality of Miss L's problems - the bad cigarette that wont draw properly. Damn it! Having your drinking interrupted and so on.

Any one else read of Shrike and think of Buck Mulligan from Ulysses?

>20 slickdpdx: Buck Mulligan? Maaaaybe--he's certainly "sick and pretentious", like the Boston Phoenix article says, but also a more expansive, even generous character, in my recollection. Sort of halfway between Shrike and, like, Falstaff?

Anyway, what a wallop of a beginning. Hard-boiled indeed.

20> I think that's a great point about the vast divide existing between the real problems and Shrike's. I hadn't noticed that until you pointed it out.

I think other than writing a really fun noirish novel, West was commenting on how self-absorbed most people are a lot of the time (or how perhaps some people are all the time), and how easy it is to pay lip service to real problems people and society face, without really lifting a finger (caring) to do anything about it other than writing trite cliches and banalities. I think he's lambasting those who know how to keep up appearances and say all the right things, but whose lives are as empty and in as much turmoil as those "humble, inarticulate" souls willing to reveal themselves, and be vulnerable. Although some of those souls in revealing themselves have amorous agendas all their own in revealing themselves, don't they?! which makes them even more disingenuous than those who merely pay lip service, acting as if they give a rip.

24--Just remember: "Art Is a Way Out."

Or the Way in.

I'm about 3/4 through and so far thinking to myself that either I'm missing something here (not unusual) and I'll need to read it again, or I am getting it and the two, three hours I spent reading it were not how I would have spent my time had I known.

Based on the comments above I suspect I'm getting it all too well. I know books exploring the depths of human motivation are useful and often wonderful, but the unremitting need to dispense salvation while suffering for it by Miss Lonelyhearts, the constant self absorption, the general disrespect these characters hold themselves and each other in, and the overwhelming sense of nihilism against which Miss Lonelyhearts is fighting (is it nihilism or is it ennui?) just isn't my cuppa.

Given the general level of discomfort I'm experiencing with this read, I would say West hit the target(s) at which he was aiming.

27: I think your taste in books is somewhat similar to mine and am glad I decided to opt out of this and stick with Les Miz.

27> So let me get this straight, Gene. You like your women (and your music) "hot and nasty," to quote you from a different thread, but you don't like the hotness nor nastiness of the slew of hot and nasty characters in Miss Lonelyhearts? Huh?

>29 absurdeist: Nasty, maybe, but hot? I guess Betty has her moments.

I don't see them as either hot or nasty, just sad in their loneliness (who are the lonely here?). Truly hot and nasty people revel in their nasty hotness, these people are just sad poseurs. They are reaching out to the vapid for support.

I'm going to have to reread this (fortunately its length makes this possible, if I miss something in Les Mis, it's just going to have to stay missed) to try to puzzle through all the Christ references and Shrike's wife's desire for perpetual virginity. It seems to me that deep down inside this short novella is a spiritual tract chasing Grace, but I haven't gotten enough from it yet to know for sure.

geneg : I think you are on to something.

Miss L looks to the sky for portents, sees only a newspaper, and that drifting and looking ragged. Resonates today, doesn't it?

To the extent characters might be poseurs and nihilist: Isn't it at least interesting that the poseurs aren't acting like European sophisticates and the nihilism is distinctly American?

Also, I really like West's writing style.

I'm still working on Miserables too, so I probably won't get back to Miss L until the weekend.

>32 slickdpdx: distinctly American, yes, very much. Reminds me of nothing so much as John Fante, also a forerunner of much cod-alienation. I like West better than Fante, though--less aggressive, less macho.

>33 MeditationesMartini: Pathetic too because of their banal sameness--these letters were obviously all written by the same person.

34, 35> pyro...are these edifying questions a warm up for the micro analysis of Infinite Jest you're planning for us? I sure hope it is!

I am as impressed by this story today as I was when I read it 30 years ago. At the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (the tar pits) beneath the cafeteria is a secret restroom, and to get to it you have to walk down a corridor of rental art pieces, which change monthly, and a second corridor of Expressionistic prints, which haven’t changed in, well, 30 years. Although I sometimes rush by it on the way to the restroom, I always stop by “The Scream” on the way back. That painting, in which the whole fucking world is screaming, holds me. At least, I’m not there yet. As noted in M8, Miss Lonelyhearts, like “The Scream,” is expressionistic. That’s not unimportant. It’s a way of getting at emotion or an intensity of emotion that may otherwise be unobtainable. West wrote the story during the Depression and life then was hell for a lot of people (as of course it still is for a lot of people). Those letters, which the narrator admits are all the same (“stamped form the dough of suffering with a heart-shaped cookie knife”), are miserable but intensely miserable. Those letters are screams—and jokes The narrator approaches the job as a joke, but in the face of those endless pathetic requests for help, he can’t sustain the mindset, so he becomes Christ, sort of, the original Miss Lonelyhearts. Page 4. “He walked into the shadow of a lamp-post that lay on the path It pierced him like a spear.” In his bedroom, Miss Lonelyhearts takes Christ off the cross and nails him to the wall. “... but the effect was still decorative.” If that’s not black humor, point the way. The narrator even sees misery/emotion in inanimate objects. “In their tons of forced rock and tortured steel....” As in The Scream, the whole world is suffering. Yeah, these aren’t realistic characters but they get at things. Shrike’s implacable verbal sadism—who hasn’t run into that? I think the scene where Mrs. Doyle is undressing in the dark and Miss Lonelyhearts compares it to sea sounds and then extends the metaphor is brilliant writing. The same with the scene when he takes Mr. Doyle’s hand under the table.

I'd say you pretty much nailed it there Alex Austin, author of The Red Album of Asbury Park Remixed (great book btw). What you've astutely pointed out to us re. the Christ symbols, I've gotta say, flew right over my head....swoooosh...as I was reading it. So thanks!

>39 pyrocow: I get where you're coming from, but I sort of thought that the way they were all kind of inarticulate in the same way kind of undermined their genuineness. I like the "undifferentiated humanity/banality of suffering" interpretation meself.

"He who is w/out sin cast the first stone." I know that's somewhere in the Bible. The Gospels, I think. Is West playing off that verse spoken by Christ?

1 Corinthians 10:4
"...and drank the same spiritual drink; for they drank from the spiritual rock that accompanied them, and that rock was Christ."

So when Miss Lonleyhearts says at the end that he's a rock, he means that his transformation into Christ is complete. Christianity is loaded with references to Christ as "The Rock."

The writhing he's looking for is Christ writhing on the cross, but all he gets is a still-life plaster Jesus.

As I read Miss Lonelyhearts it kept reminding me of Faust, with the blaspheming Shrike as Mephistopheles and virginal Betty as Gretchen. But where Faust was seeking forbidden knowledge, Miss Lonelyhearts is trying to find an escape from what he knows back to the naive innocence of religion.

Okay, I've finished the book and have been mulling it over a bit. I'll put some random thoughts down here that I will stretch into a review soon.

First, does anyone else see a similarity in Philip Roth's writing to West's? Several times, in tone and language, I found myself thinking of Roth. Maybe I'm alone on that one.

Second, I didn't really care for the book. The prose or language was thought provoking and unique. But the whole thing left me aching for just some small ray of hope. I know that the letters were meant to reflect the hopelessness of humanity, but I found the combination of Miss Lonelyhearts (who seemed to be saying, "I renounce all humans to their own suffering.") and Shrike (who seemed to make fun of any and eveything that humans might look to for solace, including, and most importantly, Miss Lonelyhearts feeble thoughts of religion.).

Third, I wasn't particularly shocked by any of the happenings, but I can see how they may have shocked in their time. Several times, I felt like West was aiming for that alone.

Last, after reading Alex's thoughts, I found myself shaking my head. I didn't see Miss Lonelyhearts' thoughts of Christ and religion as heartfelt. While he stands in stark contrast to Shrike, he of the sharp-tongued quips on Christ, Miss Lonelyhearts always seemed just as hopeless as those who were writing to him for advice, and just as likely to wallow.

Just my thoughts.

It is hard to feel much sympathy for such crummy characters. I think Miss L has the dark side of a messiah complex adjoined to personality that is also seriously dysfunctional in other respects. I know EF is fond of the DSM. Diagnoses EF? Any practioners or profs of psych out there? It might be fun to assign a psych class to diagnose Miss L on the various axises of the DSM.

Thank you for calling me in for a consult slick.

I believe Miss L suffers from a Delusional Disorder (297.1), Grandiose Type. Though I could live with an Unspecified Type as well. I'm going to posit as well, though I can't prove it specifically from the text, that the drone of helpless voices he "hears" day in and day out, has become, for him, practically hallucinatory by the novella's end. He can't get these voices out of his mind. The voices of those he's read are leading him deeper into delusion, and since it's pretty obvious to me that his sense of self-worth originates outside himself (what is called an external locus of control) - that's a recipe for what in West's day would have been described as a "nervous breakdown". And if he's not careful (assuming he survived the fall down the stairs) his delusions could easily escalate into outright psychosis, and then if that happened, he'd probably end up hospitalized on a 5150 as by then he undoubtedly be a threat to himself or to others. Though of course, there were no 5150s back when Miss L was "alive," so he'd instead have found himself in an institution preaching Christ to all the other inmate-messiahs.

Does he have a personality disorder also? I don't believe there's really enough data in the 58 pages to corroborate a proper diagnosis. I'd say he leans toward either Histrionic Personality Disorder (301.50) or Dependent Personality Disorder (301.6), but again, he would need to be interviewed and seen in a proper clinical setting to effectively determine where he's at; however, since he's an imaginary character in a work of fiction, getting the clinician to believe he even exists could be problematic.

To whom may I bill this preliminary assessment?

p.s. He's not hearing voices per se, in the text - he's not psychotic - not yet.

Well, I'm impressed. Nathaniel West, however, is turning over in his grave.

I agree about the wonderful cover art of Miss Lonelyhearts. I also agree that "Art can be the way out or the way in."
I picked up a copy at the library yesterday and read the book last night while my granddaughter was giving birth to my great granddaughter, Madisen (or Madison) Lena. Our baby is here. Yea!~!~!~!
But the book, the book; I found to be very humorous (I must be sick), full of satire, full of really sick and perverse persons, thoughts and ideas, but it held my interest all the way through and I enjoyed/appreciated it. None of these people have a clue about life and West is very good at sticking that right in your face. I like West's writing style very much.
I found it rather strange and interesting that "Miss Lonelyhearts" removed the "writhing Christ" from the cross just to hang Him writhing on the plaster wall, especially since he always wants to go with the God thing when answering letters.
I'm glad I read it but I am also glad that I didn't shell out any $ for the book because I really don't see myself reading this one again.
However Nathanael West is going on my list of authors to be read.
belva

Whoa, Belva, congratulations! And totally, it was weird the way the book was so cynical and sad and yet Christ-obsessed. I guess for me, would sort of think if Christ didn't cheer you up some he'd be the first thing to go. But different eras, different cultures.

Okay, expanding a little on my earlier comments. Again, I didn't find Miss L's Christ talk genuine in any way. There was no depth to it. The image of hime taking the writhing Christ off the cross and rehanging him seemed to me to be a metaphor for his surface desire for Christ and religion without all the reality of it. A sort of fall back to the idea of religion without getting mixed up in the messiness of it all, especially the sacrifice part. It really is quite hard to separate Christ from the cross in such a way. But Miss L wanted to soothe the masses with shot passages in a newspaper. Part of what bothered him so much about all of the people who wrote to him was the messiness of their lives, and it dorve him inevitably to the bottom of a bottle. He wants to have Betty but without any of the mundane reality that she brings.

>54 blackdogbooks: Oooh, I like that. The infinite inadequacy of the quick fix.

Miss Lonelyhearts (the character) kind of reminds me of the poet in the Octopus by Norris - the grandiosity of him, I mean - like the poet was going to write the great poem, Lonelyhearts is to save the world entire, rather than just write his letters in hopes of helping someone a little, or just being nice to someone. In his disappointment he asks like a total jerk. Shrike, on the other hand, kind of reminds me of the judge in Blood Meridian - minus the killing.

This was a pretty strange book. Not sure I can take it seriously, but it was kind of fun to read. It definitely wasn't what I was expecting, which was a book about someone who genuinely tried to respond to the hurt in the letters and got overwhelmed. That might be the case, but it seemed to leave out the beginning when he tried to respond, and go directly to when he was overwhelmed, so it was hard to feel any genuineness in his emotions.

#47, 54, #57: On whether Miss L's was genuine in his desire to help people: I guess, for me, the fact that many times when he reads a letter, he is described as seeing them as "funny" or he has to take off days at a time to go on a drinking binge says a lot for me. Also, if Miss L was genuinely trying to help people, I'd epect to find much more of his attempts as part of the prose that West offers, but that is glaringly missing.

On the shock value: I don't have any particular item I was thinking about. Perhaps a lot of the sexual and homosexual antics. But, as I said in my comments, I wasn't particularly shocked. I just thought that much of what he describes might have been found shocking a tthe time he wrote it.

Pyrocow, Miss L never seemed genuine in any way to me. Sorry, I guess we just don't see him the same.

Solla, great comparison between Shrike and the judge in Blood Meridian

I think Miss L was genuinely disingenuous for the most part.

Miss L couldn't handle the fact that he couldn't effectively help anyone and so became clouded and deluded in his thinking that he could be like Christ to these people. He couldn't even be like Christ to himself. I think he definitely wanted to have good intentions, he wanted to be genuine, but his desire to be genuine was based more on his own selfish need to view himself as a "decent person" rather than out of a true desire to help anybody. If you want to help somebody then you'll help them; Miss L may have acted like he wanted to help, but he couldn't help because he was so conflicted and focused on his internal shit rather than really seeing the real people around him.

Fact is, he didn't help anybody, not even himself. He was impotent both in person with those he interacted with and with his pen (er, typewriter).

Who said that "the road to Hell is littered with good intentions"? I think that quote essentially defines Miss L: good intentions, but no real actions backing up those "good intentions" resulting in zero positive results.

Am I merely stating the obvious in that West used the person of Miss L to skewer impotent religiosity, no matter how Christian and chaste it smells or sounds?

57 - I think I could have been more precise if I had said that Miss Lonelyhearts wanted communion with the whole world. If West had wanted to show us Miss L really trying to help an individual he might have quoted a letter written back. I only recall him quoting the lead of the column or a draft of it. He does say "Christ is the answer." He doesn't say "Somebody ought to be looking in on that deaf and dumb kid." Granted the letters that are shown to us - aside from the proposition - are pretty overwhelming, but they were a selection that would have been mixed in with others that were less overwhelming. I assume then that the overwhelming ones are the ones that Miss Lonelyhearts was fixated on, rather than on the ones where he might have offered something.

He is reading Doestoevsky, a passage about loving all of God's creation, and, if you do, you will perceive the divine mystery in things and come to love the whole world with an all-embracing love. He thinks, "It was excellent advice. If he followed it, he would be a big success. His column would be syndicated and the whole world would learn to love. The Kingdom of Heaven would arrive. He would sit on the right hand of the Lamb." When he dreams he tries to lead the audience in prayer, but found himself saying the jaded prayer of Shrike. This seems to me like his strives for a grand solution, and that in his disappointment he descends into cynicism and cruelty. From that, and from the account of the cruel things he does do - to his fiance, and to the old man whose arm he twisted trying to get him to tell his life story, I concluded that his cruelty came from his disappointment in not being able to achieve this grand thing. "He was twisting the arm of all the sick and miserable, broken and betrayed, inarticulate and impotent. He was twisting the arm of Desperate, Broken-hearted, Sick-of-it-all, ...."

But I wasn't saying and don't think that he found the letters to be a joke.

Which reminds me of Mssr Gillenormand's reception of Marius when Marius returns in Miserables. Different book I know!

Isn't that what he did to the Doyle's wife? Her suffering became real and his rage exploded?

Reducedsome of my scattered thoughts above to a more concise review. I know everypone won't agree with my interpretation of the book, but there it is anyway.

Miss Lonelyhearts by Nathaniel West
My Review on the book's home page:

Really good!

My review of Miss Lonelyhearts is here: http://www.librarything.com/work/2089165/reviews/55425319

Very thoughtful, solla. I do like your comparison of McCarthy's judge and Shrike.

Before the month ends, I want to share my thoughts about Miss L. First, it is a lovely book to read. The language is direct but literary. Second, it seems to me that it is a precursor of the existential and hard-boiled novels – in a setting that would not have occurred to most anyone but West. Third, it is a very American (U.S.) novel in its sensibility, settings, storytelling and concerns.

More substantively, Miss L. is in the midst of an existential crisis. Despite his material advantages he is foundering. Living is like swimming – if you think too much about how deep the water is; or what might be in the water; or why should the water continue to hold you up – you are getting into big trouble. This crisis is provoked by the despair and need of the losers that write in to his agony column. That kind of despair and need is like a vortex and it can drag you in. Miss L., already foundering, wants to lend a hand. He gets pulled in – like a well intentioned savior dragged under by the drowning man he tries to save. Why don’t we stop the next time we see a homeless guy; skip work, and take the guy home for a hot shower, clean clothes, a meal and a place to sleep? Even if you work or volunteer at a shelter, you don’t do that. There is a line. If you cross it, you are swimming in deep water. Miss L. drowns.

That's a great analogy, slick. Would work very well in a review as well.

I'm hesitant to call the letter writers what you call them; though I think it's a legitimate descriptive. But I just have this weird thing where I believe that the people in this world who truly fit the loser lable, wouldn't be humble enough to write what sound like sincere letters to Miss L. in the first place. They'd be too proud to admit they even have issues, or so blinded by self-delusion and rationalization and self-justification to even see that they have issues. Unless they're con-artists with ulterior motives for writing, that is (and I believe one letter writer would've fit that bill).

Look forward to your further thoughts. It will make a great review, I'm sure.

I intended loser as a descriptive as in a loser in the game of life, not "You loser!" But, I felt the same way writing it out when I left the comment, so you may be on to something. Maybe I should have called them drowners.

I was a little surprised by the strong negative reactions to the book (short novel? long story?) as a book (as opposed to Miss L. as a character.) I also found Miss L. a little more sympathetic than a lot of others, which doesn't mean I approve of things he did.

From the Boston Phoenix article theaelizabet provided at #3 above:

Although critics have credited West with defining his time and anticipating our own, they have never counted him among major 20th-century American writers. He seems to have become a writer, like Frank Norris or Djuna Barnes, whose work is periodically "revived," appreciated, and explained, and then returned to the hands of more stalwart fans. During one such revival, in 1957 (following the first publication of a West collection), Auden offered one way to explain the fluctuation of critical interest in West: it is hard to tell what he's doing. "Nathanael West is not, strictly speaking, a novelist," wrote Auden, who questioned the verisimilitude of Miss Lonelyhearts, in which a columnist and his editor engage in high-pitched theological analyses of letters from lovesick readers. "His characters need real food, drink, and money, and live in recognizable places like New York or Hollywood, but, taken as feigned history, they are absurd." West did indeed insist that absurdity and grandiosity, as well as nihilism and despair, are always bound up in even ordinary interactions. And perhaps this is why his work is perennially judged "problem" writing, fated to turn up now and then, get puzzled over, and then get tucked back out of sight, unsolved, like a Rubik's Cube.

Lonelyhearts: The Screwball World of Nathanael West and Eileen McKenney by Marion Meade.

A new biography just out covering the short marriage between Nathanael West and Eileen McKenney is just out. They'd only known each other for fourteen months and been married for eight months when the fateful car wreck on the way to F. Scott Fitzgerald's funeral killed them both.

I'm so glad I passed on that funeral.