Miss Lonelyhearts/The Day of the Locust (abridged) - Nathanael West

Written by Nathanael West
Read by L. J. Ganser, Kevin Pariseau, Wlliam Atherton
Format: MP3
Bitrate: Mixed

The Day of the Locust
Publisher: Audio Holdings
Date: April 2009
Duration: 2 hours 11 minutes (abridged)

Admired by F. Scott Fitzgerald, Dorothy Parker, and Dashiell Hammett, and hailed as one of the best one hundred 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.”

Miss Lonelyhearts (novella)
Length: 2 hrs and 59 mins
Release date: 06-01-10
Publisher: Audible Studios

Miss Lonelyhearts is Nathanael West’s second novel. It is an Expressionist black comedy set in New York City during the Great Depression.

In the story, Miss Lonelyhearts is an unnamed male newspaper columnist writing an advice column, which is viewed by the newspaper as a joke. As “Miss Lonelyhearts” reads letters from desperate New Yorkers, he feels terribly burdened and falls into a cycle of deep depression, accompanied by heavy drinking and occasional bar fights. He also suffers from the pranks and cynical advice of his editor at the newspaper, named “Shrike”, which is also a type of predatory bird. Miss Lonelyhearts tries several approaches as a way out of this depression (including religion, escaping to the countryside, and sex) but only ends up more confused.

A review—The general theme of the novel is one of extreme disillusionment with Depression-era American society, a consistent theme throughout West’s novels. However, the novel is essentially a black comedy and is characterized by an extremely dark but clever sense of humor and irony. The novel can be treated as a meditation on the problem of why evil exists in the world. The novel’s protagonist is psychologically overwhelmed by his perception of this evil, which is treated as an explanation for his increasingly desperate psychological condition. Although the characters of Miss Lonelyhearts are grotesque caricatures, the periodic letters sent to Miss Lonelyhearts, which describe real people with real insoluble problems, serve to ground the novel’s Expressionism in reality.

The first two chapters of Miss Lonelyhearts is an analysis of both books. These two books are NOT a light read.

Note—I do have an unabridged copy of The Day of the Locust. It is a 40year old recording for the blind, noisy and hollow sounding. I’ll put it up if there is interest in it……J