Book Review - Nathanael West's The Day of the Locust
The Day of the Locust by Nathanael West
Published by: EFE Books
Publication Date: 1939
Format: Kindle, 206 Pages
Rating: ★
To Buy (different edition than one reviewed)
Tod Hackett is looking for inspiration. He wants to do a great painting, it's what his Ivy League education demands, but moving west to Hollywood means his skills are only useful in scenic work on films. Not exactly work that has depth and meaning, which is what could be said for the town and it's denizens. The more people he meets the more he realizes that Hollywood is full of frauds and wannabes with eyes full of hatred. He wants to capture this in his great work, "The Burning of Los Angeles." He wants to watch the town burn and immortalize the conflagration. In his apartment complex there is the full array of the Hollywood unwashed, the failed dreamers, the bookmakers, the screenwriters, and the failed actresses. Faye Greener is a failed actress, though she'd never admit as much. She's just doing what she needs to to get by until her big break. Tod becomes obsessed with Faye. He wants Faye but she always keeps him at a distance which results in him fantasizing of taking her by force. It's Tod's obsession with Faye that keeps him constantly in her orbit. He is stuck in a twilight world of hangers-on. Faye plays her men off each other. She seems to get far more enjoyment from their anger than their attentions. There's Earle, an ersatz cowboy, Miguel, a fake Native American, and most importantly, Homer Simpson. Homer came west for his health, one of those who come to California to die, and has ended up supporting Faye. It's unclear what he gets from the relationship other than pain and heartbreak. All these people scrap and fight in Homer's house in the valley. There's brawls and violence and cockfights and pornography. This group of people is endemic of what is happening in Hollywood and one night it all boils over. Homer tries to leave, there's an incident with a precocious child actor who has been taunting him and Los Angeles burns. Just as Tod envisioned.
A book needs to have something going for it, a compelling plot, compelling characters, or a compelling message. If you have all these things, all the better, if you have none of them, you have The Day of the Locust. I know, you could argue with me that it does have several messages, the deevolution of man to animals instincts, that California is where the American Dream goes to die, that it was a clarion call to take heed of the rise of fascism, but guess what? I don't care. This isn't an introduction to literature class where we sit around and justify this book as a Classic with a capital "C." This is nothing more nor less than a study in entropy with such violence against women that it is triggering to read. Tod again and again has rape fantasies. He plainly states that "[n]othing less violent than rape would do" in his pursuit of Faye. That isn't love, that is violent obsession. And I'm sorry, but that doesn't make him a quicky character, that makes him a sexual predator. I can't get past this. Tod is the epitome of all the characters in this book, horrible people living lurid lives. These are not people I want to read about because these are not people I want to spend time with. Have you ever been at a party you didn't want to go to and you don't really know anyone at and then all of a sudden the atmosphere shifts and you realize not only do you really not want to be there but that it could be dangerous? Well that's The Day of the Locust. I mean, maybe if it was eloquently written there could have been some redeeming factor. I think you can gather already that there was not. Nathanael West can write descriptions but when it comes to action? Oh, the cockfight and the riot are such a mess that they literally did not make sense. There was one section of the book where Tod goes to a party and for a second I was confused, the writing was assured, the story made sense, and then I realized that it was completely lifted from The Great Gatsby, female tennis pro and all, but with a lurid pornography twist. In an interesting aside, West was good friends with F. Scott Fitzgerald, and the day after F. Scott died of a heart attack Nathanael West ran a stop sign that killed both him and his wife. A cruel person would say that perhaps West had no more reason to live because he had no more work to rip-off... But I'm not quite that cruel, unlike the other reviewers who said that The Day of the Locust was overly praised because of West's death before he was even forty. I will just say this book was not for me and no matter how people praise Miss Lonelyhearts there's not a chance in hell I'm ever reading it.
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