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Title: The Day of the Locust by Nathanael West, Alfred Kazin ISBN: 0-451-52348-2 Publisher: New American Library Pub. Date: September, 1983 Format: Mass Market Paperback Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $5.95 |
Average Customer Rating: 4.04 (24 reviews)
Rating: 3
Summary: like "less than zero" in the thirties
Comment: Some of the depravities of Hollywood and LA depicted here seem slightly quaint today (now that the area has had sixty years to surpass West's vision), but this book still hits the mark with a remarkable frequency. When West is writing at his best he functions as a baleful documentor of what would grow into the LA we all know and love. Cults, pseudoreligions, celebrity-worship, crowds, riots, child actors, hodgepodge architecture, and an industry dedicated to the falsification of reality: all of them are here, and West's writing on these afflictions still retains force today. Ultimately, West sees LA as an environment in which no human goodness can survive-a kind of moral black hole-and this is certainly reflected in the novel's array of characters, who are largely a batch of self-centered xenophobes. Even Tod, ostensibly the novel's "hero," tries (more than once) to summon up the courage to simply rape Faye. In other words, this book won't be a big hit with people who use "I didn't like any of the characters" as a criticism: a shame, because there's a reasonably good study of human desperation to be found here, and West's focus on how certain environments and cultures exacerbate that desperation is still profoundly relevant to our own day. A quick read, not very difficult, dense, or lyrical, but a fine addition to the "literature" on LA.
Rating: 5
Summary: A grimly comic view of Hollywood & the American dream
Comment: Perhaps the best novel ever written about Hollywood, "The Day of the Locust" presents a grotesque world in which pretense and reality have become so intertwined that it is impossible to distinguish between them any longer. Shot through with mordant humor (especially a sequence which describes a California funeral home in terms which anticipate Waugh's "The Loved One"), the novel deals with people who are chasing some illusory dream which they cannot even clearly articulate, let alone obtain. West paints a bleak view of humanity's chances, but he does so with such insight and well-honed satire (not to mention his wonderfully sparse prose, in which every word has been carefully chosen for effect) that the book is never less than compelling.
Rating: 3
Summary: Characters on the fringe of 30's Hollywood
Comment: The movie industry is the draw and an incredibly odd collection of characters find themselves living marginalized lives in the shadow of early Hollywood. Their lives interact in a series of bizarre scenes fueled primarily by lust for the one female character who is completely self-absorbed and has somehow transformed the attention from men she encounters into her own fanasy version of celebrity.
There is a dark undertone of violence that finally erupts in a random and surprising way that sems to be a rebellion against the perversion of reality that Hollywood represents.
Not a great book..but a memorable one.
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Title: To Die For by Cecilia Elizabeth O'Leary ISBN: 0691070520 Publisher: Princeton Univ Pr Pub. Date: 15 October, 2000 List Price(USD): $21.95 |
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Title: Killing Custer: The Battle of the Little Bighorn and the Fate of the Plains Indians by James Welch, Paul Stekler ISBN: 0140251766 Publisher: Penguin USA (Paper) Pub. Date: November, 1995 List Price(USD): $15.00 |
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Title: Where the Girls Are : Growing Up Female with the Mass Media by Susan J. Douglas ISBN: 0812925300 Publisher: Three Rivers Press Pub. Date: 28 March, 1995 List Price(USD): $16.00 |
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Title: What Makes Sammy Run? by Budd Schulberg ISBN: 0679734228 Publisher: Vintage Pub. Date: 06 December, 1993 List Price(USD): $14.00 |
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Title: The Big Sleep by Raymond Chandler ISBN: 0394758285 Publisher: Vintage Pub. Date: 12 July, 1988 List Price(USD): $12.00 |
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