Miss Lonelyhearts & The Day of the Locust
Edition: 1998 Modern Library Ed edition
Publisher: Modern Library
Published: March 24, 1998
Language: eng
Format: Hardcover
Number of pages: 289
ISBN-13: 9780679602781
Subjects: Modern fiction; Los Angeles (Calif.); West, Nathanael, 1903-1940; Fiction - General; Literature: Classics; Motion picture industry; General; Fiction / General; Fiction; Classics; Advice columnists; California; Los Angeles; New York; New York (N.Y.); New York (State)
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 of a society obsessed with mass-produced fantasies foretold much of 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.
Notes: Modern Library