Miss Lonelyhearts

by Nathanael West

Overview

Miss Lonelyhearts is Nathanael West's second novel. He began writing it early in 1930 and completed the manuscript in November of 1932. Published in 1933, it is an Expressionist black comedy set in New York City during the Great Depression.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781618952936
Publisher:	Bibliotech Press
Publication date:	07/20/2018
Pages:	94
Product dimensions:	5.50(w) x 8.50(h) x 0.23(d)

About the Author

In 1940, when an automobile accident prematurely claimed Nathanael West's life, he was a relatively obscure writer, the author of only four short novels. West's reputation has grown considerably since then and he is now considered one of the 20th century's major authors. Born in New York, West worked as the night manager of the Kenmore Hotel on East 23rd Street in Manhattan, as a contract scriptwriter for Columbia Pictures in Hollywood, and as a screenwriter for RKO Radio Picture.

Harold Bloom is Sterling Professor of the Humanities at Yale University. His many distinguished books include The Anxiety of Influence (1973, 1997), The Western Canon (1994), Shakespeare: The Invention of the Human (1998), and How to Read and Why (2000).

Editorial Reviews

The novel is ostensibly a piece of humorous fiction. . . It is ostensibly satiric. But its irony has its roots in it. The wit is hard, brilliant and very funny. . . Miss Lonelyhearts stands to be one of the hits of the year, to win both popular and critical approval. -- Books of the Century; New York Times review, April 1933

New York Times Book Review

"In dark times, Miss Lonelyhearts shines the brightest light in the blackest places. For this reason West’s novel has never felt more alive than today."

The Daily Beast - Nathaniel Rich

'Beneath this gloom that [West] was pouring at you, there was a streak of the most diabolical humor, you couldn't imagine ...' - John Fante

"West wrote one remorseless masterpiece, Miss Lonelyhearts ... the perfected instance of a negative vision in modern American fiction ...

satirical genius" - Harold Bloom

'[West's] novels say more about the way we live now-and the things that brought us to our present pass-than any other work of fiction I can think of.' - The New Yorker

"A horselaugh at a world that is too ugly and bitter to be dealt with in any other way." - The New York Times

"Scenes of extraordinary power." - F. Scott Fitzgerald

"By applying the magpie aesthetics of Surrealism and T.S. Eliot to the 'American Grain,' by delving into the popular culture and emerging not with surrender or refusal but a razor-cool critique, West became the great precursor to Heller, Pynchon, Philip K. Dick, George Saunders, and so much else." - Jonathan Lethem

"Nathanael West's stunning four novels are American tales, rooted in our transmogrifying soil. Morality plays they are, classified as comedies. They are indeed often funny. Funny as a crutch." - Elizabeth Hardwick, The New York Review of Books

From the Publisher