The Day of the Locust and Miss Lonelyhearts - Softcover

West, Nathanael

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0099573164 ISBN 13: 9780099573166

Publisher: Vintage Classics, 2012

Synopsis

In The Day of the Locust a young artist, Tod Hackett, arrives in LA full of dreams. But celebrity and artifice rule and he soon joins the ranks of the disenchanted that drift around the fringes of Hollywood. When he meets Faye Greener, an aspiring actress, he is intoxicated and his desperate passion explodes into rage...

Miss Lonelyhearts is a decidedly off-kilter, darkly comic tale set in New York in the early 30s. A nameless man is assigned to produce a newspaper advice column. It was meant to be a joke. But as endless letters from the Desperate, Sick-of-it-All and Disillusioned pile up for Miss Lonelyhearts's attention the joke begins to escape him...

About this title

Review:

"As austerity ripples on in this century, the book's combination of escapism and relevance continues to draw me in. The language is so inventive, the characters so brilliantly (often absurdly) captured, and their behaviour so close to pantomime, that it renders the whole a garishly compelling and thought-provoking read" (Elle-Violet Bramley Guardian)

"Black-as-pitch Hollywood farce" (The Guardian)

"The Day of the Locust has scenes of extraordinary power. Especially I was impressed by the pathological crowd at the premiere, the character and handling of the aspirant actress and the uncanny medieval feeling of some of his Hollywood background set off by those vividly drawn grotesques" (F. Scott Fitzgerald)

"A talented and somewhat neglected author... wonderfully imaginative and slightly disturbed" (Daily Telegraph)

"It certainly packs a wallop" (John Dos Passos)

Book Description:

Razor-edged, unforgiving and unmissable satire of Hollywood by Nathanael West

About this edition

• Publisher: Vintage Classics
• Publication date: 2012
• ISBN 10: 0099573164
• ISBN 13: 9780099573166
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 256