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The Collected Works of Nathanael West

2011Nathanael West

4.6/5

Just picked up from the local library on inter-library loan from the Norway, Maine Public Library. I didn't realized that NW has such a small output, but then, I don't know much about him at all except for the film version of "Day of the Locust," which I've seen only bits of ... Donald Sutherland going wacko and stomping somebody. Montgomery Clift starred in "Miss Lonelyhearts" as well as "From Here to Eternity," which I'm still reading. So ... I found out about the small output thing. NW died in his thirties in a car wreck, supposedly on his way to the funeral of friend F. Scott Fitzgerald's funeral. FSG died the day before ...Last night I finished the short and weird "The Dream Life of Balso Snell," the author's first ... something. Self-indulgent(but interesting) stream-of-consciousness stuff that reminded me of "Gravity's Rainbow." I strongly suspect that Pynchon read this.Now well into "Miss Lonelyhearts," which is more straightforward than the first one but only just. It still has plenty of that chaotic dream atmosphere. Think Nabokov w/o the elegance. Nabokov with a permanent sour stomach and headache. Page 75 contains a quote from "The Brothers Karamazov" that I used as a trivia question. Cool!Near the end of ML and wondering how anyone would think that this would make a good movie. It's ALMOST as crazy as Balso Snell. Good stuff though. Wisecracking nihilism. Definite connection between this and Bartleby the Scrivener. NW even drops the "Ah humanity" quote.And now done and moving on after last night. I suppose this would be considered experimental/free form prose. It's worth reading but I really don't have a lot to say about it. Head scratching stuff ...Finished "A Cool Million" last night. It reads like perverted "Pilgrim's Progress"/"Huck Finn"/Odyssey. A poor young schlub gets to learn the hard way the truth about the land of the free and the home of the brave. Textbook scatological. Another 50-100 pages would have been hard to take. There wouldn't have been enough of Lemuel to fill a thimble! I guess the 30's(think Great Depression) gave a lot of people bad attitudes. It surely did to Mr. West.Now well into "The Day of the Locust," the longest and most "normal" of the author's works. A fairly recent and well-received movie was made out of it. Donald Sutherland as Homer was well cast, but I can't see Karen Black as Faye, who is only supposed to be 17 years old. Burgess Meredith copped an Oscar nomination for Best Supporting Actor for playing her dear old dad. Anyway, the tone is as bleak as the three previous "stories," but the delivery is just more conventional. What we get in West's writing is his version of Great Depression reality tossed in the face of American mythology. America the Beautiful ... Land of the Free ... Home of the Brave ... Land of Opportunity ... yadda-yadda-yadda ... It's all pretty grim stuff delivered with a dash of very black, sniggering-snickering humor.Almost finished last night after reading the devastating cock-fight and party scene, which NW described in lurid, loving detail. Reminds of the drinking party in "The Great Gatsby," also a great scene of degraded humanity. These people need to be punished and I suspect that some, at least, will be. Reviewers have opined that this is the best Los Angeles novel ever. There are some great candidates, including those which came later(Less Than Zero),but this is surely at or near the top of the list.And so to the apocalyptic ending as West's mass of bored, demanding-of-distractions mob of middle-Americans cuts loose. This book is short and nasty. An unflattering(d'ya THINK?!?!) portrait of La-La-Land and, by extension, the rest of our spiritually dead, consumerist society.- One of the more interesting observations I read about this story is a comparison of it with "The Great Gatsby" - I can dig that for sure ...- Just picked a nice hardbound copy of this book at our local library summer book sale. Score!
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