The Day of the Locust

by Nathanael West

Overview

The great Hollywood novel is now available as a stand-alone New Directions edition

Admired by F. Scott Fitzgerald, Dorothy Parker, and Dashiell Hammett, and hailed as one of the “Best 100 English-language novels” by Time magazine, The Day of the Locust continues to influence American writers, artists, and culture. Bob Dylan wrote the classic song “Day of the Locusts” in homage and Matt Groening’s Homer Simpson is named after one of its characters. No novel more perfectly captures the nuttier side of Hollywood. Here the lens is turned on its fringes — actors out of work, film extras with big dreams, and parents lining their children up for small roles. But it’s the bit actress Faye Greener who steals the spotlight with her wildly convoluted dreams of stardom: “I’m going to be a star some day—if I’m not I’ll commit suicide.”

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780811224611
Publisher:	New Directions Publishing Corporation
Publication date:	05/28/2015
Edition description:	Reissue
Pages:	160
Sales rank:	232,449
Product dimensions:	5.00(w) x 6.90(h) x 0.70(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.

Editorial Reviews

"Los Angeles has been the subject of, and setting for, many fine novels yet The Day of the Locust still feels like the single best-achieved piece of fiction the city has inspired."

The Los Angeles Times

"West's Day of the Locust, a sun-blazed Polaroid of its time, seems permanently oracular."

Jonathan Lethem

"Nathanael West's humor is of course not at the expense of the victim. It is a horselaugh at a world that is too ugly and bitter to be dealt with in any other way."

The New York Times

Nathanael West's humor is of course not at the expense of the victim. It is a horselaugh at a world that is too ugly and bitter to be dealt with in any other way.

The New York Times

Los Angeles has been the subject of, and setting for, many fine novels yet The Day of the Locust still feels like the single best-achieved piece of fiction the city has inspired.

The Los Angeles Times

"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

"Los Angeles has been the subject of, and setting for, many fine novels yet The Day of the Locust still feels like the single best-achieved piece of fiction the city has inspired." - The Los Angeles Times

"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

"It's brilliant, savage and arresting - a truly good novel." - Dorothy Parker

"This is the Hollywood that needs telling about ... I got a kick out of it!" - Dashiell Hammett

"This is the sleazy side of Hollywood. The wouldbes, the neverwases, the hopefuls, and the pretenders ... the shams, the deceits and the lies by which they live. All are here ... it packs a knockout punch." - The Chicago Tribune

"[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

From the Publisher

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