num_pages: 167
description: The Day of the Locust is a novel about Hollywood and its corrupting touch, about the American dream turned into a sun-drenched California nightmare. Nathaniel West's Hollywood is not the glamorous "home of the stars" but a seedy world of little people, some hopeful, some despairing, all twisted by their by their own desires--from the ironically romantic artist narrator to a macho movie cowboy, a middle-aged innocent from America's heartland, and the hard-as-nails call girl would-be-star whom they all lust after. An unforgettable portrayal of a world that mocks the real and rewards the sham, turns its back on love to plunge into empty sex, and breeds a savage violence that is its own undoing, this novel stands as a classic indictment of all that is most extravagant and uncontrolled in American life.
language: English
title: The Day of the Locust
titlecomplete: The Day of the Locust
characters: Homer Simpson, Tod Hackett, Abe Kusich, Faye Greener
genres: Fiction, American, The United States Of America, Humor, Literature, Classics, Novels, Historical Fiction, 20th Century, Literary Fiction
ratings_count: 22160
places: Hollywood, California, California, The United States of America, Los Angeles, California
publisher: Time-Life Books