num_pages: 289
description: "Somehow or other I seem to have slipped in between all the 'schools,' " observed Nathanael West the year before his untimely death in 1940. "My books meet no needs except my own, their circulation is practically private and I'm lucky to be published." Yet today, West is widely recognized as a prophetic writer whose dark and comic vision ofa society obsessed with mass-produced fantasies foretold muchof what was to come in American life.     Miss Lonelyhearts (1933), which West envisioned as "a novel in the form of a comic strip," tells of an advice-to-the-lovelorn columnist who becomes tragically embroiled in the desperate lives of his readers. The Day of the Locust (1939) is West's great dystopian Hollywood novel based on his experiences at the seedy fringes of the movie industry.   "The work of Nathanael West, savagely, comically, tragically original, has come into its own," said novelist and screenwriter Budd Schulberg. "A new public [has] discovered in the writings of West a brilliant reflection of its own sense of chaos and helplessness in a world running more to madness than to reason."
language: English
title: Miss Lonelyhearts/The Day of the Locust
titlecomplete: Miss Lonelyhearts/The Day of the Locust
genres: Classics, Fiction, Short Stories, The United States Of America, Novella, Novels, 20th Century, Literature, Literary Fiction, American
ratings_count: 10026
publisher: Modern Library