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62nd out of 131 books
—
5 voters
Novels and Other Writings : The Dream Life of Balso Snell / Miss Lonelyhearts / A Cool Million / The Day of the Locust / Letters (Library of America #93)
The library of America is dedicated to publishing America's best and most significant writing in handsome, enduring volumes, featuring authoritative texts. Hailed as the "finest-looking, longest-lasting editions ever made" (The New Republic), Library of America volumes make a fine gift for any occasion. Now, with exactly one hundred volumes to choose from, there is a perfe...more
Hardcover, 829 pages
Published
August 1st 1997
by Library of America
(first published 1957)
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Nathanael West was such an unique American writer. He was totally tuned into the world of European Surrealism, and it shows in his work. But it is also very American - and that was his strength or what made his work so unique, funny and wonderful. I love this man's work.
A Cool Million -- 5 stars.
Miss Lonelyhearts -- 5 stars.
Day of the Locust -- 4 stars.
Balzo Snell -- 1 star.
"What West seems to be saying in spite of himself through all his quirky and relentless blasphemy is religious: that if Christ really is the Incarnate God, life is tolerable; but if mercy is merely embodied in the destructive and sentimental pity of a Miss Lonelyhearts, life is a foul joke.
West's voice—an octave higher than most ears—will make its reverberant echoes heard for a long time. Hi...more
Miss Lonelyhearts -- 5 stars.
Day of the Locust -- 4 stars.
Balzo Snell -- 1 star.
"What West seems to be saying in spite of himself through all his quirky and relentless blasphemy is religious: that if Christ really is the Incarnate God, life is tolerable; but if mercy is merely embodied in the destructive and sentimental pity of a Miss Lonelyhearts, life is a foul joke.
West's voice—an octave higher than most ears—will make its reverberant echoes heard for a long time. Hi...more
Haven't visited West in a while and was drawn to this complete set at John Merrill's. Was introduced to West by my college love many years ago.
"The Dream Life of Balso Snell" differs from the more political and apocalyptic other three. "Snell" is a surrealistic Divine Comedy with no Beatrice waiting in Heaven. Balso descends into the pit of himself, into the Trojan Horse, and meets a host of twisted characters en route in and out. Extraordinarily bitter tale it is.
"A Cool Million" tracks the sto...more
"The Dream Life of Balso Snell" differs from the more political and apocalyptic other three. "Snell" is a surrealistic Divine Comedy with no Beatrice waiting in Heaven. Balso descends into the pit of himself, into the Trojan Horse, and meets a host of twisted characters en route in and out. Extraordinarily bitter tale it is.
"A Cool Million" tracks the sto...more
Hard to assign a rating to a collection whose constituent parts are so widely variable. In descending order of worth:
Miss Lonelyhearts - Tour de force. Five stars. Given its novella length, to describe it would be to spoil it.
Day of the Locust - Somehow combines, in embryonic, chimeric form, the genres of Hollywood satire, hard-boiled noir, and Depression-era social commentary in a way that places it into a kind of retrospective, Fichtean trinity in which "The Grapes of Wrath" figures as thesis,...more
Miss Lonelyhearts - Tour de force. Five stars. Given its novella length, to describe it would be to spoil it.
Day of the Locust - Somehow combines, in embryonic, chimeric form, the genres of Hollywood satire, hard-boiled noir, and Depression-era social commentary in a way that places it into a kind of retrospective, Fichtean trinity in which "The Grapes of Wrath" figures as thesis,...more
More enjoyable than I remember from when I read it ages ago.
Of the four novellas in this, I only read The Day of the Locust this time. It's not entirely my cup of tea: satire with characters who are all of them rather two dimensional on purpose. A pared down style that doesn't really allow for much elegant expression of the dour thoughts West is trying to convey (about society and human unfulfillment). Rather wildly changing perspective (definitely no Jamesian unity of narrative 'centre of cons...more
Of the four novellas in this, I only read The Day of the Locust this time. It's not entirely my cup of tea: satire with characters who are all of them rather two dimensional on purpose. A pared down style that doesn't really allow for much elegant expression of the dour thoughts West is trying to convey (about society and human unfulfillment). Rather wildly changing perspective (definitely no Jamesian unity of narrative 'centre of cons...more
I'd never read any Nathanael West (who wrote primarily in the 1930s) so I tried Day of the Locust. Why did I choose that particular novel? Because one of the characters is named Homer Simpson, of course. (In fact, Matt Groening, creator of the TV show The Simpsons, named his cartoon father after the book character. They're both rather dull-witted, but West's Simpson lacks the belligerence, cheating tendencies, fondness of alcohol and humor of his animated namesake.)
The story takes place in Holly...more
The story takes place in Holly...more
I have had the collected novels of Nathanael West on my shelf for years and I finally thought I would treat myself and read it. It wasn't worth the wait. I was under the impression that he was one of the great, under-appreciated cult writers deserving of a place in the pantheon besides his contemporaries such as Fitzgerald, Hemmingway, Faulkner and Dos Passos. In fact he is a decidedly minor writer. Balso Snell and a Cool Million are not worth anyone's time. Miss Lonelyhearts is a brisk, bleak,...more
The novels of Nathaniel West revel in a moral fascination with the corrosive and corrupting influence of American decadence, as seen through the grotesque looking glass of mid-20th Century Los Angeles, that until the arrival of James Ellroy’s “L.A. Quartet” had few to equal their copasetic blend of style and theme. Like Ellroy, West fixates on the failure of myth – but West is predominately a satirist, and where Ellroy hammers out bleak epics like a pugnacious middleweight, West spars like a spr...more
This is honestly some of the worst writing I've ever read.
Some parts of "Day of the Locust" were redeeming. For example the description and visualization of the apocalyptic painting that Tod Hackett is doing of the female lead character in the novel.
Most of West's other writings were pretty awful. "Cool Million" reminded me of the kind of pamphlets that fundamentalists try to force on people minding their own business on the city street. His two plays in the collection (one screenplay and one st...more
Some parts of "Day of the Locust" were redeeming. For example the description and visualization of the apocalyptic painting that Tod Hackett is doing of the female lead character in the novel.
Most of West's other writings were pretty awful. "Cool Million" reminded me of the kind of pamphlets that fundamentalists try to force on people minding their own business on the city street. His two plays in the collection (one screenplay and one st...more
A good friend of F. Scott Fitzgerald, Nathaniel West wrote in the 1930's. He died with his wife in a car wreck, just two days after Fitzgerald died.
I've only read Miss Lonlyhearts and The Day of the Locust and liked them both, but at the time I did think that they were a flawed. West's talent, though, seemed real, distinctive, and headed somewhere. Death mooted the issue.
I used to push Miss Lonelyhearts on everybody I knew who read fiction. I don't even own a copy any more because I gave it to s...more
I've only read Miss Lonlyhearts and The Day of the Locust and liked them both, but at the time I did think that they were a flawed. West's talent, though, seemed real, distinctive, and headed somewhere. Death mooted the issue.
I used to push Miss Lonelyhearts on everybody I knew who read fiction. I don't even own a copy any more because I gave it to s...more
Jan 18, 2013
Randolph Carter
rated it
5 of 5 stars
·
review of another edition
Shelves:
fiction,
strange-stories
Awesome collection of West's fiction from his all too short life. Running the gamut from stark realism to the truly bizarre it shows the true range of West's fictional talent. Miss Lonelyhearts and Day of the Locusts (avoid the dreadful film version) are the best of the lot. I still think the much pricier Library of America collection is still the better anthology.
I read this last summer on a whim; I had shelved some books next to it and some of the titles were familiar. So I gave it a try...and completed it in two afternoons.
I was completely taken away by Miss Lonelyhearts, putting it in my heart right next to 'Franny and Zooey.' It is about the often ridiculous, but completely necessary quest for spirituality in one's life with a liberal dosage of post-war cynicism. The book is tragically funny, often heartbreaking. It is a black humor with a soul.
Of th...more
I was completely taken away by Miss Lonelyhearts, putting it in my heart right next to 'Franny and Zooey.' It is about the often ridiculous, but completely necessary quest for spirituality in one's life with a liberal dosage of post-war cynicism. The book is tragically funny, often heartbreaking. It is a black humor with a soul.
Of th...more
Nathanael West is one of my favorite authors. Please read part of an article I wrote about him here: http://www.examiner.com/examiner/x-83...
This is from the Wikipedia entry for "The Dream Life of Balso Snell": "a young man's immature and cynical search for meaning in a series of dreamlike encounters inside the entrails of the Trojan Horse." Yeah, you read that right. It mixes erotic and scatological references with religious and literary allusions. Entertaining but weird. "Miss Lonelyhearts" exhibits the same brutal honesty and desperate compassion as West's "The Day of the Locust" but it's more visceral and lacks that novel's restr...more
This book has pretty much everything West wrote. A fantastic collection. He was such a great writer it's hard to believe he couldn't breakthrough during his life.
Thank goodness for Wordsworth who have put together this budget edition of Nathanael West's work. It also includes an insightful preface looking at his life and career which ended all too soon. Influenced by Dostoyevsky, West had a talent for satire. Some of his work is too dark and bitter even for me, and it's interesting to ponder how he might have matured. But the opening pages of Miss Lonelyhearts - and the closing pages of Day of the Locust - are brilliant. His take on American life (and wi...more
Day of the Locust I hold dear. I buy any copy of it I find lurking in second hand bookshops. It's the least I can do. Savage satire and yet not so savage - rather than cold didactic condescension there's raw emotion and fire. On each page I have the feeling West is somehow simultaneously attracted and repelled by his characters. As if he's in this hell with them getting down and grubby with them. A Cool Million, a wonderful surprise. The sustained comic tone as fresh and funny as anything you wi...more
Dec 24, 2008
Richard Schave
added it
Miss Lonelyhearts & the Day of the Locust by Nathanael West (1962)
The suffocating effect of accumulative despair.
The Day of the Locust deserves 5 stars, plus a bonus for providing the "Homer Simpson."
The Day of the Locust deserves 5 stars, plus a bonus for providing the "Homer Simpson."
The Day of the Locust is just perfect.
If you like the bizarre, the darker side of things (if you've ever read Horatio Alger you will find that "A Cool Million" is the exact opposite of his "boot-strap" books, everything goes tragically, and ridiculously wrong), examinations of the human condition, then you may like these books. I've read all four books in the collection, some more than once. Loved all of them. Very well written and thought out. Highly recommended. And, you'll find our where the name "Homer Simpson" comes from.
By far one of the shortest books on the top 100 list (148 pages). Each of the 27 chapters were really little vignettes that were loosely connected to one another...the connection being how the main character (Tod Hackett) is going to get Fay Greener (Want-to-be actress) in bed. Throw in a dwarf, a cowboy, other random hollywood types and Homer Simpson (Could this be where the name really came from?) and you have a pretty funny book that was very descriptive and well written.
I really only read Miss Lonelyhearts, The Day of the Locust and his sad, pleading missives to F. Scott Fitzgerald.
The man was genius and died before his time sadly. I loved this collection as it has my favourite "Day of the Locust". If you have not read any of his works then grab a copy of this collection, you will not be disappointed. If you have not read him since leaving school then it is time to reacquaint yourself with his brilliance.
I only wish as many people would read Nathanael West as read his contemporary and close friend, F. Scott Fitzgerald. An excellent and provoking novelist of the jazz-age, writing of a new America of mass-culture and its dark and terrifying underside.
"Day of the Locust" is one of my top three favorite books of all-time. Too bad I lent it to some girl who will never give it back to me. Never seen the movie, either.
currently reading the epistles and fragments that make up the last half of this wonderful anthology.
Feel like I will constantly be "currently-reading" this book
Read "Miss Lonelyhearts" and selected letters.
May 18, 2013
Andrey
is currently reading it
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Born Nathanael von Wallenstein Weinstein to prosperous Jewish parents; from the first West set about creating his own legend, and anglicising his name was part of that process. At Brown University in New York, he befriended writer and humourist S. J. Perelman (who later married his sister), and started writing and drawing cartoons. As his cousin Nathan Wallenstein also attended Brown, West took to...more
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Jan 03, 2008 06:39am
Jan 03, 2008 03:20pm