THE DAY OF THE LOCUST PDF, EPUB, EBOOK

Nathanael West | 192 pages | 05 Jun 2014 | Roads Publishing | 9781909399310 | English | Dublin, Ireland The Day of the Locust () - Rotten Tomatoes

The Day of The Locust is an adaptation of the highly powerful novel from , it focuses on the seamy underbelly of Hollywood in the s. Pot boiling with pacey precision, director John Schlesinger crafts what is still to this day one of the hidden pieces of art from the s. We are witness to an assortment of odd characters on the outskirts Hollywood and it's big shiny star, fringe characters driven on by less than stellar ideals. Faye realises that her limitations are getting in the way of her starry ambitions, so thus she becomes the assembly line hump on the casting couch, she believes it's a small price to pay for the price of fame. All three of them will come crashing together as the story reaches it's cynical and terrifying conclusion. The Day Of The Locust failed at the box office, mid seventies audiences were clearly not ready for this unsavoury and stark look at the flip side of the industry we all follow with relish. Many of the characters featured in the piece are believed to be based on real life Hollywood figures, now here in this modern age the public embrace such titillation with glee, back then they clearly wasn't ready for it. Looking for some great streaming picks? Check out some of the IMDb editors' favorites movies and shows to round out your Watchlist. Visit our What to Watch page. Sign In. Keep track of everything you watch; tell your friends. Full Cast and Crew. Release Dates. Official Sites. Company Credits. Technical Specs. Plot Summary. Plot Keywords. Parents Guide. External Sites. User Reviews. User Ratings. External Reviews. Metacritic Reviews. Photo Gallery. Trailers and Videos. Crazy Credits. Alternate Versions. Rate This. An art director in the s falls in love and attempts to make a young woman an actress despite Hollywood who wants nothing to do with her because of her problems with an estranged man and her alcoholic father. His goal is to find inspiration for the picture he is getting ready to begin, a work titled "The Burning of Los Angeles. Tod falls in love with Faye Greener, an aspiring starlet who lives nearby but Faye only loves men that are good looking or have wealth. Tod is simply a "good-hearted man," the kind Faye likes. Tod wants to "throw himself [at her], no matter what the cost. Every time he imagines raping her, reality interrupts his fantasy before he can complete the act. Scenes are interrupted prior to their climax frequently throughout the novel. A patron jokes that it is "the old teaser routine," when a film viewing at Mrs. Jenning's parlor ends unexpectedly due to technical difficulties. Between his work at the studio and his introduction to Faye's friends, Tod interacts with numerous Hollywood hangers-on. Characters like Abe Kusich, the dwarf; Claude Estee, the successful screenwriter; and Earle Shoop, the fake California cowboy, all of whom have difficulty changing their personas from the characters they play to who they are. As a result, there is a clear sense of acting that spills beyond the confines of Hollywood studios, into the streets of Los Angeles. Shortly after moving into a neighborhood in the valley, Tod befriends , a simple-minded bookkeeper from Iowa who moved to California for health reasons. Homer Simpson's "unruly hands" operate independently from his body, and their movements are often mechanical. Young neighbor Adore Loomis finds Homer and torments him until Homer lashes out against the boy. The novel's climactic riot ensues and the chaos over the latest Hollywood premiere turns violent outside Mr. Khan 's Pleasure Dome. Tod vividly revises "The Burning of Los Angeles" in his mind, while being pushed around in the waves of the riot. The final scene plays out, uninterrupted. The conclusion of the novel can be read as a moment of enlightenment and mental clarity for the artist, or a complete "mental breakdown" and Tod's "incorporation into the mechanized, modern world of Los Angeles. The characters are outcasts, who have come to Hollywood to fulfill a dream or wish: "The importance of the wish in West's work was first noted by W. Auden , who declared in one of the interludes in The Dyer's Hand that West's novels were essentially "parables about a Kingdom of Hell whose ruler is not so much a Father of Lies as a Father of Wishes". As some critics point out, West's novel was a radical challenge to modernist literature. Some modernists set themselves up in opposition to mass culture; West depicts it and makes it an integral part of the novel. His critique of Hollywood and the mentality of "the masses" depicts an America sick with vanity and the harbor of a malignant sense of perversity. The original title of the novel was The Cheated. Susan Sanderson writes:. The most famous literary or historical reference to locusts is in the Book of Exodus in the Bible, in which God sends a plague of locusts to the pharaoh of Egypt as retribution for refusing to free the enslaved Jews. Richard Dysart Claude Estee. Bo Hopkins Earle Shoop. Pepe Serna Miguel. Lelia Goldoni Mary Dove. Billy Barty Abe Kusich. John Schlesinger Director. Nathanael West Writer Novel. Waldo Salt Writer Screenplay. Jerome Hellman Producer. Sheldon Schrager Associate Producer. John Barry Original Music. Robert O. Ragland Original Music. Conrad L. Hall Cinematographer. Jim Clark Film Editor. June 12, Full Review…. January 26, Full Review…. January 1, Full Review…. December 4, Full Review…. August 3, Rating: 2. View All Critic Reviews Apr 23, Wow, what an ugly film. Presumably, this cynical tale of Hollywood wannabes was green-lit following the success of "Chinatown. Donald Sutherland gives a remarkable performance as repressed neurotic Homer Simpson now why does that name sound familiar? Burgess Meredith? Wonderful, but wasted in a minor part. As if the other depravities weren't enough, there's even a repulsive cockfighting scene needlessly thrown into the mix. Meanwhile, the surreal climax is like an entirely different movie shades of "The Wall"? Interesting to see the often villainous Atherton as an innocent, William Castle in a cameo as a fictional director and the pubescent Jackie Earle Haley as an insufferable child-star brat. Eric B Super Reviewer. Apr 18, Profoundly sad view of the lower rungs of Hollywood life in the 30's. Disturbing and unsettling. The climatic sequence is both horrifying and mesmerizing. Nov 12, Allegorical film that depicts the moral decay of 's Hollywood. Donald Sutherland gave an unusual performance as Homer Simpson. The epic, horrifying climax is the true highlight of the picture, one of the best sequences of cinema ever filmed. Ivan D Super Reviewer. Mar 17, An often surreal but always intriguing morality tale. This film has it's sights set mostly on "Hollywood", with a few "pop shots" at organized religion which if you think about it is not so different from Hollywood. Sure the characters are "over the top" and "steretypical", a virtual cornucopia of Hollywood has beens and hopefuls. But that's kind of the point. It's meant to be a sort of snap-shot of 's's Hollywood and all that it entailed. The acting is solid with the casting spot on. The cinematography is brilliant, ranging from glorious to bleak but always captivating. The last minutes are genius! Robert C Super Reviewer. See all Audience reviews. There are no approved quotes yet for this movie. Best Horror Movies. Day of the Locust movie review () | Roger Ebert

Movie Info. In s Los Angeles, Hollywood shines like a beacon to all the helpless people scattered across the city. In one crumbling apartment block, a blond bombshell Karen Black aspires to be an actress, an artist William Atherton looks for legitimacy, and a child actor performs a gross homage to Mae West. Cockfights and poverty prevail out of the glow of show business. Introverted accountant Homer Simpson Donald Sutherland watches as society collapses under greed and ambition. John Schlesinger. Jerome Hellman. Jun 6, Donald Sutherland Homer Simpson. William Atherton Tod Hackett. Karen Black Faye Greener. Burgess Meredith Harry Greener. Big Sister. Richard Dysart Claude Estee. Bo Hopkins Earle Shoop. Pepe Serna Miguel. Lelia Goldoni Mary Dove. Billy Barty Abe Kusich. John Schlesinger Director. Nathanael West Writer Novel. Waldo Salt Writer Screenplay. Jerome Hellman Producer. Sheldon Schrager Associate Producer. John Barry Original Music. Robert O. Ragland Original Music. Conrad L. Hall Cinematographer. Jim Clark Film Editor. June 12, Full Review…. January 26, Full Review…. January 1, Full Review…. December 4, Full Review…. August 3, Rating: 2. View All Critic Reviews Apr 23, Wow, what an ugly film. Presumably, this cynical tale of Hollywood wannabes was green-lit following the success of "Chinatown. Donald Sutherland gives a remarkable performance as repressed neurotic Homer Simpson now why does that name sound familiar? Burgess Meredith? Wonderful, but wasted in a minor part. As if the other depravities weren't enough, there's even a repulsive cockfighting scene needlessly thrown into the mix. Meanwhile, the surreal climax is like an entirely different movie shades of "The Wall"? Interesting to see the often villainous Atherton as an innocent, William Castle in a cameo as a fictional director and the pubescent Jackie Earle Haley as an insufferable child- star brat. Eric B Super Reviewer. Apr 18, Profoundly sad view of the lower rungs of Hollywood life in the 30's. Disturbing and unsettling. The climatic sequence is both horrifying and mesmerizing. Nov 12, Allegorical film that depicts the moral decay of 's Hollywood. Donald Sutherland gave an unusual performance as Homer Simpson. The epic, horrifying climax is the true highlight of the picture, one of the best sequences of cinema ever filmed. Ivan D Super Reviewer. Mar 17, An often surreal but always intriguing morality tale. This film has it's sights set mostly on "Hollywood", with a few "pop shots" at organized religion which if you think about it is not so different from Hollywood. Sure the characters are "over the top" and "steretypical", a virtual cornucopia of Hollywood has beens and hopefuls. But that's kind of the point. It's meant to be a sort of snap-shot of 's's Hollywood and all that it entailed. The acting is solid with the casting spot on. The cinematography is brilliant, ranging from glorious to bleak but always captivating. The last minutes are genius! Robert C Super Reviewer. See all Audience reviews. There are no approved quotes yet for this movie. Best Horror Movies. Worst Superhero Movies. Best Netflix Series and Shows. Go back. More trailers. No Score Yet. The Masked Singer. The Amazing Race. The Goldbergs. The Conners. The Con. American Ninja Warrior. Tyler Perry's Sistas. The Good Lord Bird. The Haunting of Bly Manor. Lovecraft Country. Homer and Faye seek Tod out after several weeks, convincing him to attend a cockfight Miguel and Earle are holding in Homer's garage. Tod brings along his screenwriter friend, Claude Estee. The dwarf bookie, Abe Kusich, also attends. After the violent cockfight, Claude, Abe, Earle, and Miguel sit in Homer's living room, drinking and lusting after Faye, who is barely dressed in unbuttoned silk pajamas. Tod and Homer remain removed from the party. Homer tries to talk to Tod about his feelings for Faye, but Tod no longer has patience to listen to admirers of Faye pine away, and becomes annoyed with Homer's slow explanations and clumsy attempts at friendship. The evening ends in excessive sexual desire and violence, as Claude and Tod save Abe from nearly being killed in a fight with Earle and Miguel. The next day, Tod finds Homer in a nearly catatonic state. Faye has moved out and Homer has decided to return to Iowa. Tod leaves Homer alone for a few hours and goes downtown, where he gets trapped up in a large crowd waiting outside Kahn's theater for several movie stars to arrive at a premiere. Tod sees Homer walking near the crowd, still unresponsive and now carrying two suitcases. Tod watches as Homer sits on a bench near the crowd and Adore, a boy who lives in Homer's neighborhood, torments Homer from behind a tree, finally throwing a rock that hits Homer in the face. Homer gets up and chases the boy, stomping on Adore's back after the boy trips and falls. Tod tries to pull Homer off, but before he can succeed, the crowd has jumped on Homer. The crowd riots and Tod is caught in the violent, sexual frenzy. To escape the reality of the mob's violence, Tod immerses himself in thoughts of his painting, "The Burning of Los Angeles," and the riot he plans to depict in it. Tod can no longer see Homer. Tod is eventually rescued by a policeman and driven away from the mob. The final image of the novel shows Tod sitting in the car, unable to determine whether the siren sound he hears is coming from the police vehicle or from his own mouth. He laughs and screams along with the siren from his seat in the back of the car. Election Day is November 3rd! Make sure your voice is heard. Key Facts. Important Quotations Explained. The Day of the Locust (film) - Wikipedia

Check out some of the IMDb editors' favorites movies and shows to round out your Watchlist. Visit our What to Watch page. Sign In. Keep track of everything you watch; tell your friends. Full Cast and Crew. Release Dates. Official Sites. Company Credits. Technical Specs. Plot Summary. Plot Keywords. Parents Guide. External Sites. User Reviews. User Ratings. External Reviews. Metacritic Reviews. Photo Gallery. Trailers and Videos. Crazy Credits. Alternate Versions. Rate This. An art director in the s falls in love and attempts to make a young woman an actress despite Hollywood who wants nothing to do with her because of her problems with an estranged man and her alcoholic father. Director: John Schlesinger. Writers: Nathanael West novel , Waldo Salt screenplay. Available on Amazon. Added to Watchlist. Movies watched in July New Hollywood to watch. A Day in the Movie. Use the HTML below. You must be a registered user to use the IMDb rating plugin. User Polls Favorite biographical documentary? Nominated for 2 Oscars. Edit Cast Cast overview, first billed only: Donald Sutherland Homer Karen Black Faye Burgess Meredith Harry William Atherton Tod Geraldine Page Big Sister Richard Dysart Claude Estee as Richard A. Dysart Bo Hopkins Earle Shoop Pepe Serna Miguel Lelia Goldoni Mary Dove Billy Barty Abe Jackie Earle Haley Odlesh Norman Leavitt Tod never does one damned thing in this book except chase Faye and wander around. Yet which of these two books has been made into a movie? Not the solid, excellent What Makes Sammy Run? In a weird sort of way, The Day of the Locust feels to me like a precursor to the viciously cuttingly unfunny humor of A Confederacy of Dunces. Both are utterly of a place, can't be told against the backdrop of any other place, and are pitilessly clear of vision. Both are the best-remembered works by their early-dead authors. And each is, taken on its own merits, marvelous parts in search of a gestalt to animate into more than some wonderful, memorable set-pieces embedded in perfunctory plotlike matrices. View all 6 comments. I am recommending this book to you because you should read it. It is set in America, as you can see from this quote: Their boredom becomes more and more terrible. Ha ha, gotcha! This is set in Depression-era Hollywood! And it is pretty fantastic. And, as you can see, still disarmingly relevant. And it ends with a proper Hollywood action finale. And there is a character named Homer Simpson. And he is heavy, slow, sweet, and oh-so-low. And there is another man, an artist named Todd HACKett, who has sold himself out to menial, soulless painters labor for the pitchers. And, and, he and Homer are in love with the same dame, who is what it appears that many an aspiring actress in Hollywood becomes: a prostitute. Also, a manipulative cooze. And Todd has creepy rape fantasies which he associates with love-feelings because he doesn't know how to deal with Homer being a proxy cuckold failure who mirrors his own self-doubts and shattering failures at dry-humping the American Dream. And Homer truly loves the gal, and Todd truly wants to win her like a balloon at the fair, even if he has to steal her like candy from an orphan with TB and a peg leg. And people try real hard to make it in the biiiiig ciiiiity, but just end up trampling one another trying to catch wind of someone else's greatness. And, and, and Stop reading this and go read that. Teeny violins all around. View all 20 comments. The novel follows a young artist from the Yale School of Fine Arts named Tod Hackett, who has been hired by a Hollywood studio to do scene design and painting. In , the Modern Library ranked The Day of the Locust seventy-third on its list of the best English-language novels of the 20th century. Tod Hackett is the novel's protagonist. He moves from the east coast to Hollywood, California in search of inspiration for his next painting. The novel is set in the 's during the Great Depression. Tod falls in love with Faye Greener, an aspiring starlet who lives nearby but Faye only loves men who are good looking or have money. Tod is simply a "good-hearted man," the kind Faye likes. He imagines that loving her would compare to jumping from a skyscraper and screaming to the ground. Tod wants to "throw himself [at her], no matter what the cost. Every time he imagines raping her, reality interrupts his fantasy before he can complete the act. Scenes are interrupted prior to their climax frequently throughout the novel. I am not sure what I was expecting, but what I got was so much better than I could have imagined! I saw some comparisons between this book and the works of F Scott Fitzgerald. This felt like the brother or at least cousin of The Great Gatsby. If you are a fan of Gatsby, I don't think you can go wrong giving this one a try. What was so captivating about this book was the farther you get in 5 stars A very quick, very good book about the dark side of early Hollywood. What was so captivating about this book was the farther you get into it, the more messed up it gets - like watching an accident in progress. I cannot believe that pedestrian was caught in the middle. Maybe you should put your cigarette out. Early Hollywood may have been glitz and glamor. But, there were plenty of locusts to plague the "good" people flocking to the West Coast. Worth a read for both the classic status and the engrossing story! Fun fact: confirmed that this book is where he got the name for Homer Simpson. View 2 comments. Dec 31, Vit Babenco rated it it was amazing. She was smiling, a subtle half-smile uncontaminated by thought. She looked just born, everything moist and fresh, volatile and perfumed. View all 3 comments. Nov 30, Steven Godin rated it it was amazing Shelves: favourites , america-canada , fiction. With the added bonus of containing one of my favourite ever endings, this was an absorbing read hard to forget. View 1 comment. Mar 27, Paul Bryant rated it liked it Shelves: novels. Stage manager: Not Anytime Annie? Who could forget her? Stage manager: Okay, those three girls on the left. Chorus girl : Diane Lorrimer, Park Avenue. Fellow chorine in stage whisper: And is her homework tough! Manhattan babies don't sleep tight until the dawn: Good night, baby, Good night, milkman's on his way The Day of the Locust is set in Hollywood, not Broadway, but the rapacious slobbering over and trading in young female flesh is the exact same. Quite shocking it is, too, for the modern reader — the leading lady in this teensy acidulous bedlam of a novel is all of 17 years old and a wannabe movie actress and like almost everyone else in this book is stony broke and so just naturally contemplates joining a call girl service, and does so too. Which drives the leading gentleman of this story not a little demented. Makes him frantically figure if he could afford her for a couple of nights, but realises he couldn't. View all 13 comments. Oct 30, Lars Jerlach rated it it was amazing. West has chosen Hollywood and its amalgamation of wannabe movie stars, hangers-on, generic cowboys, agents and prostitutes as the scenario for his novel. His ostentatious tinseltown is a place where dreams are rarely fulfilled, but rather where they come to die an often slow and painful death. We only peripherally hear about the real Hollywood stars, as the leading men and women in West's universe are the indisputable losers and pursuivants in the carnival of fools that are often as hollow as the glittering world they inhabit. The bawdy chaos that litters their comings and goings seems hilarious at first, but when it merely abates to be reignited and replayed over and over again, the unbearable notion of everlasting despair rapidly begins to penetrate the ultra thin time-worn veneer. West offers up a weakened imitation of a Hollywood masquerade drained through the proximity to the make believe of the silver screen and its sycophantic admiration for its own artificiality, and though his characters on the surface seem too ridiculous to be true; an Arizonan cowboy, a cockfighting Mexican, a book keeping angry dwarf and a wannabe teenage starlet, and that their often overlapping trials seem too outlandish, their absurd tribulations nevertheless envelop the reader in a distorted kaleidoscopic universe that refuses to let go. I found it remarkable how poignant this novel is and how well it resonates in a contemporary society where the many still look for acceptance by the few at the top of an exclusive hierarchy that so successfully has learned to master its own grotesqueness through a process of alienation and abandonment. It was genuinely amazing how the novel's combination of despaired escapism and hollow contemporariness continues to spellbind nearly eight decades after it was originally published. The poetic and elucidatory language is routinely inventive and the predominately absurd characters are all brilliantly captured and described. Their ludicrously exaggerated and often gaudy, alcohol infused collective behavior on their way to inexorable oblivion makes their miserable dissimulation a compelling and thought-provoking read. View all 4 comments. Aug 29, Kemper rated it really liked it Shelves: , plain-old-fiction , famous- books. A grim little tale of a pack of losers leading sad and desperate lives in L. Tod is an artist with a job at one of the movie studios, and he's in lust with Faye, a wannabe actress with no talent and a sick father, who has made it clear that she has no interest in Tod, but that doesn't stop her from teasing him. Homer Simpson Bear in mind that this was written before Matt Groening was even born. Throw in a Hollywood producer, a handsome cowboy who just leans against a building all day, a guy who runs cock fights, and a very small bookie, and you've got a crowd of misfits who will make almost anyone feel better about their own lives. This has some incredible writing with short spot-on depictions of hopelessness and quiet despair. Just to make this an even happier read, the introduction tells how the author, West, was friends with F. Scott Fitzgerald and was killed in a car accident while rushing to F. Scott's funeral. This is the book that just keeps on giving. Unfortunately, what it's giving is depression. The worst thing about the book isn't even the author's fault. Having a character named Homer Simpson makes it hard to read something as serious fiction, especially a book like this. Every time I saw the name, I started grinning, even as as the story is describing his sad and shabby little life. All that was missing was an alcoholic named Barney. View all 7 comments. If you threw yourself on her, it would be like throwing yourself from the parapet of a skyscraper. You would do it with a scream. Your teeth would be driven into your skull like nails into a pine board and your back would be broken. Shallow, cold hearted and worst of all an opportunistic user. He had nothing to offer her, neither money nor looks, and she could only love a handsome man and would only let a wealthy man love her. Nothing could hurt her. She was like a cork. No matter how rough the sea got, she would go dancing over the same waves that sank iron ships and tore away piers of reinforced concrete. He pictured her riding a tremendous sea. Through a slit in the blue serge sky poked a grained moon that looked like an enormous bone button. A bit like stumbling to the fridge in a sweaty daze, searching for a block of ice to put on the back of your neck. Hurrah to that! Just something to be aware of as it was unexpected! I have to say, it has one of the most unusual and climatic endings I have ever read. I was literally holding my breath and felt squashed, quite literally. Read it and you will see what I mean! Nov 20, Darwin8u rated it it was amazing Shelves: aere-perennius , modern-library , mccaffery , This is where the world ends This is where the world ends This is where the world ends In a poisoned meringue of L. This book has amazing characters, incredible scenes, and breaks my heart with every page. It set the scene for every David Lynch movie grotesque and the soundtrack for every Pixies song your head can bend itself around. Also, the best cock fight scene in all of literature. Dec 20, Brad rated it it was ok Shelves: about-violence , hopes-dashed-like-an-egg-on-cement. Book The last book in my goodreads Reading Challenge Just before I started reading The Day of the Locust , I read something that compared Nathanael West favourably to Hemingway and Fitzgerald , suggesting that his proper place was amongst the literary elite of his day. I kept a watchful eye open for anything that hinted at a quality on par with Papa or Scott, but once the book started to take shape, I found myself trying, instead, to find a comparison that could accurately describe how it Book I kept a watchful eye open for anything that hinted at a quality on par with Papa or Scott, but once the book started to take shape, I found myself trying, instead, to find a comparison that could accurately describe how it felt to be reading The Day of the Locust. Imagine a clean and sober Jack Kerouac writing a novel about insane circus freaks who've escaped a mental institution, while attempting to retell The Sun Also Rises with cock fights instead of bull fights and all the hamfistedness of the resulting metaphors , and channelling and morphing Fitzgerald's love of party-life decadence into party-life decrepitude, with a whole lot of abuse, a little bit of OCD and never-ending soap-box rants, and you've got a good picture of how The Day of the Locust feels to read. It's not bad, but it's not good either, and I bet it would make a much better film than a novel. The most interesting part of the book, for me, is its evocation of violence. In Faye, the book contains the only genuinely abusive female character I can remember reading, and it is frightening to watch the way she harms Homer Simpson yep, that's really his name both physically and emotionally. But her violence is inherited, inbred, an ineluctable part of her humanity, and just another manifestation of violence in a book full of violence. In fact, every act in the book is an act of violence. Love is violence, weakness is violence, quiet is violence, stoicism is violence, art is violence, caring is violence, kindness is violence, desire is violence, everything is violence. I feel like all that violence could have been dealt with more effectively -- and been more meaningful -- in a short story. A story culminating in the stomping a literal jumping up and down on the victim's back of the little boy, Adore, by Homer insane, at the time, and beyond any kind of responsible control without all the crap to get us there and minus the over-the-top riot would have been an exceptional achievement rather than the meandering mess that West left us with. Nathanael West does not belong in the pantheon of great American writers. Scott Fitzgerald belongs in the same league as those writers either. But West's interesting all the same, and if you are interested in reading about one man's vision of violence during the Great Depression in the United States, The Day of the Locust will work for you. Or you could just read something by a drunk and stoned Jack Kerouac and really enjoy yourself. But to those without hope, like Homer, whose anguish is basic and permanent, no good comes from crying. They usually know this, but still can't help crying. Long considered a classic among Hollywood novels, you will find The Day of the Locust has less to do with Tinseltown's inside track than it does our Boulevard of Broken Dreams. Those are the two approaches to the metaphorical r Only those who still have hope can benefit from tears. Those are the two approaches to the metaphorical realm of the movie business - within the corridors of power or without - and since there's much more pathos available outside the gate? A lot of authors tend to linger there. Well, that and the hackneyed old instruction to write what you know Nathanael West was an East Coast scribe who failed to find his rung on the literary ladder and wound up, as so many did in the s, California- bound to hack a bit as a screenwriter for the studios. This novel was written between script assignments and published a year before he died - in a car accident at the somewhat tender age of thirty-six. Though to call anything about Nathanael West tender is to lead the lot of you astray. He was a coarse dude. And angry. And disgusted with pretty much the whole human race. Which can sell the book to you or throw you off, and you're just going to have to follow that instinct. We're dealing with three relative strangers here, ships crashing in the night. Tod Hackett works in the art department of a motion picture studio and lives in an apartment off Vine. He is enamored of a neighbor, one Faye Greener; an actress who refuses to accept him as a suitor. This rejection has altered the tone of his fantasy life a smidge - leaving it a little darker, a little quicker, and a lot more, oh, he admits this freely, rape-oriented. Faye, for her part, "could only love a handsome man and would only let a wealthy man love her. Homer Simpson. Homer's new in town, and a rube, and thoroughly neurotic. It takes no genius to recognize the use that might be made. Damn, you might say, how a classic? Make some sense of this! He left the road and climbed across the spine of the hill to look down the other side. From there he could see a ten-acre field of cockleburs spotted with clumps of sunflowers and wild gum. In the center of the field was a gigantic pile of sets, flats and props. While he watched, a ten-ton truck added another load to it. This was the final dumping ground And the dump grew continually, for there wasn't a dream afloat somewhere which wouldn't sooner or later turn upon it, having first been made photographic by plaster, canvas, lath and paint. Many boats sink and never reach the Sargasso, but no dream ever entirely disappears. Somewhere it troubles some unfortunate person and some day, when that person has been sufficiently troubled by it, it will be reproduced on the lot. The rest turns on your instinct. Recommended to Bettie by: Isca Silurum. Shelves: published , us-california , sleazy , autumn , art-forms , teh-demon-booze , games-people-play , north-americas , radio-4 , gangsters. He falls in love with Faye, an aspiring actress and gets sucked into the toxic periphery of Hollywood. A caustic satire on the flipside of the s dream factory. It's both well written and enjoyable. I'd never heard of this book until it appeared on my recommendations shelf and I've been trying to figure out why, especially as I then found two copies on the shelf at work. Not to mention how very impressive it was. I guess there's only so much room for from the thirties to have lasting worldwide appeal through to It was never on any syllabus I ever read that's for sure. Perhaps it should be. Depression era Hollywood certainly seem It's both well written and enjoyable. Depression era Hollywood certainly seems less horrifying and, well, depressing than other books about the same time in other parts of America. That's not to say that this wasn't horrifying, because it was. Not least because everything written by Nathanael West in this novel could quite easily be written about the 21st century and especially that awful area of the world known as Hollywood. The sense of foreboding or dread that you feel from the start of the novel may not be on a similar plane to The Talented Mr. Ripley for example but it's there all the same. The climax on the other hand is much more powerful that almost anything else I've read and really quite unexpected in it's content. Until this point I was merely enjoying it but the effect it has on the overall reaction to the novel is incredible. One thing I should point out to people reading a back cover blurb and thinking it sounds like a s version of a Bret Easton Ellis novel, this is not about the industry or about shallow, rich people, it is so much more than that. It is a novel about the effect of Hollywood and fame on the everyday reality of normal working class people. The quality literary equivalent of watching idiots line up to embarrass themselves on tv auditioning for The X Factor or Big Brother and taken to its logical extreme. EDIT: I've just had the pleasure of watching John Schlesinger's underseen movie adaptation and a few quibbles aside it is more than a match for West's novel. Boy oh boy, this is one weird and sordid little book. Like The Great Gatsby , which had been published 14 years before, it shows the seamy underbelly of a glittering American city. Here the setting is Hollywood, where Tod Hackett is a set and costume designer. Tod is not the only one obsessed with Faye, though Boy oh boy, this is one weird and sordid little book. Tod is not the only one obsessed with Faye, though; her other suitors include Homer Simpson so hard to take him seriously because of that name! There are some fairly disturbing elements here. I have no idea what the title refers to, though it sounds like it might be a biblical reference. Depressing, crushing realization that the American dream isn't all it's cracked up to be, and that Hollywood glitz and glamour is just going to screw you up sooner or later. This is the Golden Age of Hollywood, full of beautiful actresses, movies, hopes and passion. Tod Hackett gets caught up in this world when he finds himself in an LA studio, working as a set designer. As well as Tod, there's a whole bunch of unfortunate characters pulled into this spotlighted charade, most notably - Faye a wa Depressing, crushing realization that the American dream isn't all it's cracked up to be, and that Hollywood glitz and glamour is just going to screw you up sooner or later. As well as Tod, there's a whole bunch of unfortunate characters pulled into this spotlighted charade, most notably - Faye a wannabe actress , and Homer Simpson a sexually clueless Iowan with uncontrollable hands. Perfect for those who like F. Scott Fitzgerald , but want something even more tragic and depressing than Gatsby. May 06, Laura Leaney rated it really liked it. I re-read this for a recent book club and found myself appreciating it much more than I did back in college. Since the book didn't change, I'd have to say that perhaps the wisdom of more years has deepened my understanding of the complexity and nuance regarding absurdity in the human character. I once thought the book was dry and overly cynical. No longer. In a city full of strangeness, the people inhabiting West's Hollywood novel seem sharp and current. On the back cover of my ancient copy, the I re-read this for a recent book club and found myself appreciating it much more than I did back in college. On the back cover of my ancient copy, the blurb says that the novel is about "the American dream turned into a sun-drenched California nightmare [. An unforgettable world portrayal of a world that mocks the real and rewards the sham, turns its back on love to plunge into empty sex, and breeds a savage violence that is its own undoing. Nearly all the characters are caricatures, grotesques whose souls are nakedly grasping. Dwarves, raw-foodists, actresses. The book's protagonist, Tod Hackett is the lens through which the reader encounters the show and his dry wit made me laugh albeit bitterly. His perception of the B-list actress Faye Greener is so fabulous that I have to share it. As he looks at her photograph he thinks that Her invitation wasn't to pleasure, but to struggle, hard and sharp, closer to murder than to love. You couldn't expect to rise again. You wouldn't even have time to sweat or close your eyes. This kind of writing is like an inside joke, isn't it? A Hollywood archetype. Most of the book is like this and I'm sure not everyone would get pleasure out of reading it. I emerged from the reading shaking my head to clear it a little of the image of Tod Hackett trying to gain traction in the movement of a massed crowd in front of a theater. He kept trying to pull himself upright, hitting and pushing people so that he would not be carried backwards, but "as the two forces ground against each other, he was turned again and again, like a grain between millstones. View all 9 comments. I had to be mindful of the time in which it was written. It took me awhile to figure out that he was talking about the death that the artificial film industry foisted on the world, and the seemingly bottomless appetite we have for it. But, alas, he is human and is infatuated with Faye, a wannabe actress who is beguiling and beautiful and treacherous to the extreme. Her visage and actions drive Tod and a whole cadre of hangers-on to distraction and obsession. One surprise is that the most fleshed out adulator goes by the name of Homer Simpson. That was hard to get out of my head. Like most, he hailed from the deep Midwest Iowa and was willing to support Faye who gladly took his money but spurned his every amorous ambition. West, surprisingly, writes objectively and without guile or irony. The book finishes with a flourish, as an unruly crowd of film star idolaters, anxious at a premier, burst into a violent frenzy of a riot and their worst instincts explode — an apt metaphor for what popular culture is capable of when unmoored by normal life. His attention to detail is amazing, every article of clothing by the many characters detailed. Oddly, I wonder if my paperback is counterfeit. The pages were thick paper, stiffened and slightly yellowed with age. He found Harry in his box, waiting to be wheeled out for for exhibition in the adjoining chapel. The casket was open and the old man looked quite snug. Drawn up to a little below his shoulders and folded back to show its fancy lining was an ivory satin coverlet. Under his head was a tiny lace cushion. He was wearing a Tuxedo, or at least had on a black bow tie with his stiff shirt and wing collar. His face had been newly shaved, his eyebrows shaped and plucked and his lips and cheeks rouged. He looked like the interlocutor in a minstrel show. He knew it was unimportant. What mattered were his messianic rage and the emotional response of his hearers. They sprang to their feet, shaking their fists and shouting. The relation of star to fan illustrates its sick mendacity to both parties p. His generosity was still more irritating. It was also helpless and unselfish that it made her feel mean and cruel, no matter how hard she tried to be kind. And it was so bulky that she was unable to ignore it. She had to resent it. The sound was like an ax chopping pine, a heavy, hollow, chunking noise. It was repeated rhythmically but without accent. There was no progress in it. Each chunk was exactly like the one that proceeded. It would never reach a climax. Some little gesture, either too pleasing or too offensive, would start it moving and then nothing but machine guns would stop it. Individually the purpose of its members might simply be to get a souvenir, but collectively it would grab and rend. They have slaved and slaved for nothing. I found this to be far greater than , in story and writing. West is so economic, but sharp in his writing. There are a weird assortment of misfit characters in this: a dwarf, a cowboy, a theatric old man He also noticed that Harry, like many actors, had very little back or top to his head. It was almost all face, like a mask, with deep furrows between the eyes, across the forehead and on either side of the nose and mouth, plowed there by years of broad grinnin 80th book of It was almost all face, like a mask, with deep furrows between the eyes, across the forehead and on either side of the nose and mouth, plowed there by years of broad grinning and heavy frowning and even Homer Simpson. The fact that one of the character is called Homer Simpson was quite distracting. I've never really watched , so Googled if the yellow Homer had anything to do with West's. I learnt several odd things that I'll share, not that it has anything to do with this novel. Skip to the next paragraph if you don't care about what I have to say about The Simpsons. Without further ado: the creator's of The Simpsons named the characters after his actual family members. His father was called Homer, his mother was called Marge and his sister was called Lisa. Bart, is simply "brat" muddled up. The surname though, some debate. Some people say it might well have come from this novel, others say that the Simpsons is a play on the "simpletons. Jonathan Lethem said of this novel, "A sun-blazed Polaroid of its moment. LA - the outskirts of Hollywood, the rundown wannabe movie stars. Though published in , this novel reminded me of something from the decade previous, with 20s-esque themes of disenchantment and disillusion Between the sun, the lizard and the house, he was fairly well occupied. But whether he was happy or not it is hard to say. Probably he was neither, just as a plant is neither. He had memories to disturb him and a plant hasn't, but after the first bad night his memories were quiet. An interesting read, lovely writing, and a powerful ending. To close my review, the awfully powerful paragraph on California, wistful of broken dreams, in California or not. Where else could they go but California, the land of sunshine and oranges? They get tired of oranges, even of avocado pears and passion fruit. Nothing happens. They don't know what to do with their time. They haven't the mental equipment for leisure, the money nor the physical equipment for pleasure. Did they slave so long just to go to an occasional Iowa picnic? What else is there? They watch the waves come in at Venice. There wasn't any ocean where most of them came from, but after you've seen one wave, you've seen them all. The same is true of the airplanes at Glendale. If only a plane would crash once in a while so tat they could watch the passengers being consumed in a 'holocaust of flame,' as the newspapers put it. But the planes never crash. I had a hard time deciding to finish the book after the first mention of Tod Hackett's thoughts about the courage to rape a teenager but I forget. You're not supposed to like the characters in this story. Tod is the protagonist, the straight man in this black comedy. Tod is self-aware and slick but still a naive outsider, in many ways. Like the lost inhabitants in Los Angeles, he is not that different compared to his midwest foil, Homer Simpson. The highlights of this novel are in the parade of I had a hard time deciding to finish the book after the first mention of Tod Hackett's thoughts about the courage to rape a teenager but I forget. The highlights of this novel are in the parade of minor characters. Maybelle Loomis and her son Adore are, perhaps, the most startling discoveries to the 21st century reader because raw foodies and stage moms have been around since I think that actually might have been my favourite part. The first party also has a hilarious scene where Joan the tennis champ tries hard to be scandalous and provocative by interrupting a group of men talking shop to ask if they're conversing about smut. I do not like Tod. Mainly because I'm subjected to his rape fantasies of a 17 year old. Tod not only tries to kiss Faye, the teenager in question, at her father's funeral but he also asks her point-blank "sleep with me" when they are dancing at a transgender night club. I can't get behind Tod because I wonder why I am supposed to care about his character. Yes, despite his appearance, he was really a very complicated young man with a whole set of personalities, one inside the other like a nest of Chinese boxes. And "The Burning of Los Angeles," a picture he was soon the paint, definitely proved he had talent. Yet I decided to finish the story because I started to think, what if the narrator dislikes Tod as much as me? Rereading the beginning paragraphs, I started to imagine that the narrator initially fools the reader to sympathize with Tod. I read the rest of the story with this perspective and felt limited omniscient narration worked really well. In many exchanges with other characters, we see Tod's true feelings and they are generally selfish and dark. It's interesting, in this sense. For me, this book made me think about whether you should finish something you don't enjoy the experience of reading in order to learn something new.

The Day of the Locust by Nathanael West

Yes, that's it, I feel sad. This is a classic of Hollywood literature, I can even sort of see that, but it's as bleak as they come and it's all told, very little shown, at very crucial points. If this is a novel, I'm at a loss to see how; it's some biting character studies glued together by accidents of geography. To me it reads more like a treatment that had to be abandoned, was too dear to West's heart-shaped ice cube, and instead got its B12 shots, 50, volts, and liiiiiived. So Tod Death in German, get it? HACKett movie hanger-on, usu. I suspect, from some of Faye's father's mannerisms, that he and Faye got up to the badger game a time or two. What in the name of common sense is the appeal?! She's hard as nails, not terribly bright, and unbelievably self-centered. It's the only thing in the whole world that I want. I used to be a bookkeeper in a hotel, but I agree that this person exists in her legions at every doorway to stardom, but Faye doesn't rise above that generic feel at any turn. What is it, why are these men so hot-to-trot for this trollop? Homer Simpson, apparently the lovable loser who gave cartoonist Matt Groening the name for his quarter-century old cartoon oaf, is the most realistic and fully drawn character in the piece. Homer tries and misses, tries and misses again, tries He's never, ever the fun guy or the sweet guy, he's the useful but horrendously annoying guy with the car and the cards. Only those who still have hope can benefit from tears. When they finish, they feel better. But to those without hope, whose anguish is basic and permanent, no good comes from crying. Nothing changes for them. His passion for the cipher Faye comes to its absolutely clearly telegraphed and inevitable conclusion, Tod twitters and flails ineffectually to interfere with it, and in the end it drives both Tod and Homer into the climactic ending of the book: Their boredom becomes more and more terrible. Every day of their lives they read the newspapers and went to the movies. Both fed them on lynchings, murder, sex crimes, explosions, wrecks, love nests, fires, miracles, revolutions, war. This daily diet made sophisticates of them. This is West's cri de coueur and shout to the gods that Prometheus is back to make trouble again. A year later he was dead. There is no smallest question that West can craft some lovely sentences and some incisive character sketches. He can hang all them on a plot of sorts and make your readerly curiousity bump itch so bad you have to scratch it with his tyrannosaurus-armed stories, even at the risk of running afoul of the brute's severing teeth. But here, in this book, the alchemy that elevates Miss Lonelyhearts to the cold and glittering glory of Everest's heights settles instead into the weirder, less pristine shape of Kilimanjaro: Feet in the humid heat, midsection arid and weirdly populated with things not seen elsewhere, and then the transcendent snowy glory of the ending. Some years back, my real-life book circle read What Makes Sammy Run? Sammy Glick, he of the title, is a character I can't forget and find myself thinking about. Sammy's is a story of hustle and flow, make and do and create Tod never does one damned thing in this book except chase Faye and wander around. Yet which of these two books has been made into a movie? Not the solid, excellent What Makes Sammy Run? In a weird sort of way, The Day of the Locust feels to me like a precursor to the viciously cuttingly unfunny humor of A Confederacy of Dunces. Both are utterly of a place, can't be told against the backdrop of any other place, and are pitilessly clear of vision. Both are the best-remembered works by their early-dead authors. And each is, taken on its own merits, marvelous parts in search of a gestalt to animate into more than some wonderful, memorable set- pieces embedded in perfunctory plotlike matrices. View all 6 comments. I am recommending this book to you because you should read it. It is set in America, as you can see from this quote: Their boredom becomes more and more terrible. Ha ha, gotcha! This is set in Depression-era Hollywood! And it is pretty fantastic. And, as you can see, still disarmingly relevant. And it ends with a proper Hollywood action finale. And there is a character named Homer Simpson. And he is heavy, slow, sweet, and oh-so-low. And there is another man, an artist named Todd HACKett, who has sold himself out to menial, soulless painters labor for the pitchers. And, and, he and Homer are in love with the same dame, who is what it appears that many an aspiring actress in Hollywood becomes: a prostitute. Also, a manipulative cooze. And Todd has creepy rape fantasies which he associates with love-feelings because he doesn't know how to deal with Homer being a proxy cuckold failure who mirrors his own self-doubts and shattering failures at dry-humping the American Dream. And Homer truly loves the gal, and Todd truly wants to win her like a balloon at the fair, even if he has to steal her like candy from an orphan with TB and a peg leg. And people try real hard to make it in the biiiiig ciiiiity, but just end up trampling one another trying to catch wind of someone else's greatness. And, and, and Stop reading this and go read that. Teeny violins all around. View all 20 comments. The novel follows a young artist from the Yale School of Fine Arts named Tod Hackett, who has been hired by a Hollywood studio to do scene design and painting. In , the Modern Library ranked The Day of the Locust seventy-third on its list of the best English-language novels of the 20th century. Tod Hackett is the novel's protagonist. He moves from the east coast to Hollywood, California in search of inspiration for his next painting. The novel is set in the 's during the Great Depression. Tod falls in love with Faye Greener, an aspiring starlet who lives nearby but Faye only loves men who are good looking or have money. Tod is simply a "good-hearted man," the kind Faye likes. He imagines that loving her would compare to jumping from a skyscraper and screaming to the ground. Tod wants to "throw himself [at her], no matter what the cost. Every time he imagines raping her, reality interrupts his fantasy before he can complete the act. Scenes are interrupted prior to their climax frequently throughout the novel. I am not sure what I was expecting, but what I got was so much better than I could have imagined! I saw some comparisons between this book and the works of F Scott Fitzgerald. This felt like the brother or at least cousin of The Great Gatsby. If you are a fan of Gatsby, I don't think you can go wrong giving this one a try. What was so captivating about this book was the farther you get in 5 stars A very quick, very good book about the dark side of early Hollywood. What was so captivating about this book was the farther you get into it, the more messed up it gets - like watching an accident in progress. I cannot believe that pedestrian was caught in the middle. Maybe you should put your cigarette out. Early Hollywood may have been glitz and glamor. But, there were plenty of locusts to plague the "good" people flocking to the West Coast. Worth a read for both the classic status and the engrossing story! Fun fact: Matt Groening confirmed that this book is where he got the name for Homer Simpson. View 2 comments. Dec 31, Vit Babenco rated it it was amazing. She was smiling, a subtle half-smile uncontaminated by thought. She looked just born, everything moist and fresh, volatile and perfumed. View all 3 comments. Nov 30, Steven Godin rated it it was amazing Shelves: favourites , america-canada , fiction. With the added bonus of containing one of my favourite ever endings, this was an absorbing read hard to forget. View 1 comment. Mar 27, Paul Bryant rated it liked it Shelves: novels. Stage manager: Not Anytime Annie? Who could forget her? Stage manager: Okay, those three girls on the left. Chorus girl : Diane Lorrimer, Park Avenue. Fellow chorine in stage whisper: And is her homework tough! Manhattan babies don't sleep tight until the dawn: Good night, baby, Good night, milkman's on his way The Day of the Locust is set in Hollywood, not Broadway, but the rapacious slobbering over and trading in young female flesh is the exact same. Quite shocking it is, too, for the modern reader — the leading lady in this teensy acidulous bedlam of a novel is all of 17 years old and a wannabe movie actress and like almost everyone else in this book is stony broke and so just naturally contemplates joining a call girl service, and does so too. Which drives the leading gentleman of this story not a little demented. Makes him frantically figure if he could afford her for a couple of nights, but realises he couldn't. View all 13 comments. Oct 30, Lars Jerlach rated it it was amazing. West has chosen Hollywood and its amalgamation of wannabe movie stars, hangers-on, generic cowboys, agents and prostitutes as the scenario for his novel. His ostentatious tinseltown is a place where dreams are rarely fulfilled, but rather where they come to die an often slow and painful death. We only peripherally hear about the real Hollywood stars, as the leading men and women in West's universe are the indisputable losers and pursuivants in the carnival of fools that are often as hollow as the glittering world they inhabit. The bawdy chaos that litters their comings and goings seems hilarious at first, but when it merely abates to be reignited and replayed over and over again, the unbearable notion of everlasting despair rapidly begins to penetrate the ultra thin time-worn veneer. West offers up a weakened imitation of a Hollywood masquerade drained through the proximity to the make believe of the silver screen and its sycophantic admiration for its own artificiality, and though his characters on the surface seem too ridiculous to be true; an Arizonan cowboy, a cockfighting Mexican, a book keeping angry dwarf and a wannabe teenage starlet, and that their often overlapping trials seem too outlandish, their absurd tribulations nevertheless envelop the reader in a distorted kaleidoscopic universe that refuses to let go. I found it remarkable how poignant this novel is and how well it resonates in a contemporary society where the many still look for acceptance by the few at the top of an exclusive hierarchy that so successfully has learned to master its own grotesqueness through a process of alienation and abandonment. It was genuinely amazing how the novel's combination of despaired escapism and hollow contemporariness continues to spellbind nearly eight decades after it was originally published. The poetic and elucidatory language is routinely inventive and the predominately absurd characters are all brilliantly captured and described. Their ludicrously exaggerated and often gaudy, alcohol infused collective behavior on their way to inexorable oblivion makes their miserable dissimulation a compelling and thought-provoking read. View all 4 comments. Aug 29, Kemper rated it really liked it Shelves: , plain-old-fiction , famous-books. A grim little tale of a pack of losers leading sad and desperate lives in L. Tod is an artist with a job at one of the movie studios, and he's in lust with Faye, a wannabe actress with no talent and a sick father, who has made it clear that she has no interest in Tod, but that doesn't stop her from teasing him. Homer Simpson Bear in mind that this was written before Matt Groening was even born. Throw in a Hollywood producer, a handsome cowboy who just leans against a building all day, a guy who runs cock fights, and a very small bookie, and you've got a crowd of misfits who will make almost anyone feel better about their own lives. This has some incredible writing with short spot-on depictions of hopelessness and quiet despair. Just to make this an even happier read, the introduction tells how the author, West, was friends with F. Scott Fitzgerald and was killed in a car accident while rushing to F. Scott's funeral. This is the book that just keeps on giving. Unfortunately, what it's giving is depression. The worst thing about the book isn't even the author's fault. Having a character named Homer Simpson makes it hard to read something as serious fiction, especially a book like this. Every time I saw the name, I started grinning, even as as the story is describing his sad and shabby little life. All that was missing was an alcoholic named Barney. View all 7 comments. If you threw yourself on her, it would be like throwing yourself from the parapet of a skyscraper. You would do it with a scream. Your teeth would be driven into your skull like nails into a pine board and your back would be broken. Shallow, cold hearted and worst of all an opportunistic user. He had nothing to offer her, neither money nor looks, and she could only love a handsome man and would only let a wealthy man love her. Nothing could hurt her. She was like a cork. No matter how rough the sea got, she would go dancing over the same waves that sank iron ships and tore away piers of reinforced concrete. He pictured her riding a tremendous sea. Through a slit in the blue serge sky poked a grained moon that looked like an enormous bone button. A bit like stumbling to the fridge in a sweaty daze, searching for a block of ice to put on the back of your neck. Hurrah to that! Just something to be aware of as it was unexpected! I have to say, it has one of the most unusual and climatic endings I have ever read. I was literally holding my breath and felt squashed, quite literally. Read it and you will see what I mean! Nov 20, Darwin8u rated it it was amazing Shelves: aere-perennius , modern-library , mccaffery , This is where the world ends This is where the world ends This is where the world ends In a poisoned meringue of L. This book has amazing characters, incredible scenes, and breaks my heart with every page. It set the scene for every David Lynch movie grotesque and the soundtrack for every Pixies song your head can bend itself around. Also, the best cock fight scene in all of literature. Dec 20, Brad rated it it was ok Shelves: about-violence , hopes-dashed-like-an-egg-on-cement. Book The last book in my goodreads Reading Challenge Just before I started reading The Day of the Locust , I read something that compared Nathanael West favourably to Hemingway and Fitzgerald , suggesting that his proper place was amongst the literary elite of his day. I kept a watchful eye open for anything that hinted at a quality on par with Papa or Scott, but once the book started to take shape, I found myself trying, instead, to find a comparison that could accurately describe how it Book I kept a watchful eye open for anything that hinted at a quality on par with Papa or Scott, but once the book started to take shape, I found myself trying, instead, to find a comparison that could accurately describe how it felt to be reading The Day of the Locust. Imagine a clean and sober Jack Kerouac writing a novel about insane circus freaks who've escaped a mental institution, while attempting to retell The Sun Also Rises with cock fights instead of bull fights and all the hamfistedness of the resulting metaphors , and channelling and morphing Fitzgerald's love of party-life decadence into party-life decrepitude, with a whole lot of abuse, a little bit of OCD and never-ending soap-box rants, and you've got a good picture of how The Day of the Locust feels to read. It's not bad, but it's not good either, and I bet it would make a much better film than a novel. The most interesting part of the book, for me, is its evocation of violence. In Faye, the book contains the only genuinely abusive female character I can remember reading, and it is frightening to watch the way she harms Homer Simpson yep, that's really his name both physically and emotionally. But her violence is inherited, inbred, an ineluctable part of her humanity, and just another manifestation of violence in a book full of violence. In fact, every act in the book is an act of violence. Love is violence, weakness is violence, quiet is violence, stoicism is violence, art is violence, caring is violence, kindness is violence, desire is violence, everything is violence. I feel like all that violence could have been dealt with more effectively -- and been more meaningful -- in a short story. A story culminating in the stomping a literal jumping up and down on the victim's back of the little boy, Adore, by Homer insane, at the time, and beyond any kind of responsible control without all the crap to get us there and minus the over-the-top riot would have been an exceptional achievement rather than the meandering mess that West left us with. Nathanael West does not belong in the pantheon of great American writers. Scott Fitzgerald belongs in the same league as those writers either. But West's interesting all the same, and if you are interested in reading about one man's vision of violence during the Great Depression in the United States, The Day of the Locust will work for you. Or you could just read something by a drunk and stoned Jack Kerouac and really enjoy yourself. But to those without hope, like Homer, whose anguish is basic and permanent, no good comes from crying. They usually know this, but still can't help crying. Long considered a classic among Hollywood novels, you will find The Day of the Locust has less to do with Tinseltown's inside track than it does our Boulevard of Broken Dreams. Those are the two approaches to the metaphorical r Only those who still have hope can benefit from tears. Those are the two approaches to the metaphorical realm of the movie business - within the corridors of power or without - and since there's much more pathos available outside the gate? A lot of authors tend to linger there. Well, that and the hackneyed old instruction to write what you know Nathanael West was an East Coast scribe who failed to find his rung on the literary ladder and wound up, as so many did in the s, California-bound to hack a bit as a screenwriter for the studios. This novel was written between script assignments and published a year before he died - in a car accident at the somewhat tender age of thirty-six. Though to call anything about Nathanael West tender is to lead the lot of you astray. He was a coarse dude. And angry. And disgusted with pretty much the whole human race. Which can sell the book to you or throw you off, and you're just going to have to follow that instinct. We're dealing with three relative strangers here, ships crashing in the night. Tod Hackett works in the art department of a motion picture studio and lives in an apartment off Vine. He is enamored of a neighbor, one Faye Greener; an actress who refuses to accept him as a suitor. This rejection has altered the tone of his fantasy life a smidge - leaving it a little darker, a little quicker, and a lot more, oh, he admits this freely, rape-oriented. Faye, for her part, "could only love a handsome man and would only let a wealthy man love her. Homer Simpson. Homer's new in town, and a rube, and thoroughly neurotic. It takes no genius to recognize the use that might be made. Damn, you might say, how a classic? Make some sense of this! He left the road and climbed across the spine of the hill to look down the other side. From there he could see a ten-acre field of cockleburs spotted with clumps of sunflowers and wild gum. In the center of the field was a gigantic pile of sets, flats and props. While he watched, a ten-ton truck added another load to it. This was the final dumping ground And the dump grew continually, for there wasn't a dream afloat somewhere which wouldn't sooner or later turn upon it, having first been made photographic by plaster, canvas, lath and paint. Many boats sink and never reach the Sargasso, but no dream ever entirely disappears. Somewhere it troubles some unfortunate person and some day, when that person has been sufficiently troubled by it, it will be reproduced on the lot. The rest turns on your instinct. Recommended to Bettie by: Isca Silurum. Shelves: published , us-california , sleazy , autumn , art-forms , teh-demon-booze , games-people-play , north-americas , radio-4 , gangsters. He falls in love with Faye, an aspiring actress and gets sucked into the toxic periphery of Hollywood. A caustic satire on the flipside of the s dream factory. It's both well written and enjoyable. I'd never heard of this book until it appeared on my recommendations shelf and I've been trying to figure out why, especially as I then found two copies on the shelf at work. Not to mention how very impressive it was. I guess there's only so much room for American literature from the thirties to have lasting worldwide appeal through to It was never on any syllabus I ever read that's for sure. Perhaps it should be. Depression era Hollywood certainly seem It's both well written and enjoyable. When the novel opens, Tod has been in Hollywood for only three months and still marvels at the people and architecture of the city, both of which involve blatant and constant artifice and masquerading. Tod is most interested in the section of the population that does not seem to be masquerading—the imported, lower middle-class Midwestern immigrants who stand around the city and stare at the masqueraders. In his head, Tod has labeled these people the ones who "have come to California to die" and has decided to paint them in his upcoming masterpiece, an apocalyptic scene he has titled "The Burning of Los Angeles. In his short time in Los Angeles, Tod has acquired an odd assortment of friends, including Abe Kusich, a belligerent dwarf bookie; Faye Greener, an untalented extra who wants to be a film star; and her father, Harry Greener, a former vaudeville clown who never found work in Hollywood but keeps up his clown act all day, even though his only job now is selling homemade silver polish door-to-door. Abe helped Tod find his current apartment, which Tod only decided to take upon seeing Faye Greener, who lives downstairs. Tod desires Faye, but she has unsentimentally told him that they must remain polite friends, as Tod has no money and is not particularly good-looking. Tod hopes that his chances with Faye have improved now that Faye's father Harry has fallen ill and Tod visits with the man nightly. Harry fell ill at the house of Homer Simpson, to whom he was trying to sell silver polish. Homer has recently moved to Hollywood from Iowa on doctor's orders after a bout with pneumonia. Homer is not working, living on money he has saved and trying to forget the uncomfortable memory of his first and only near- sexual encounter, which occurred with a female tenant at the Iowa hotel where he once worked as a bookkeeper. Ignoring his instinct not to make himself vulnerable to excitement, Homer begins courting Faye. Tod, sensing that Homer is somewhat like the type of people he wants to paint in "The Burning of Los Angeles," befriends Homer out of curiosity. Homer and Tod are not Faye's only admirers; Tod accompanies Faye out to a campsite in the hills where her sometime-boyfriend Earle and his companion Miguel live. The three men all lust after Faye, who enjoys being desired. The evening ends when Earle clubs the flirtatious Miguel on the head and Tod futilely chases after Faye in the woods, intending to rape her. Not long after this evening, Faye's father dies and Faye moves in with Homer as a "business" arrangement. As IMDb celebrates its 30th birthday, we have six shows to get you ready for those pivotal years of your life Get some streaming picks. Title: The Day of the Locust Life's flotsam and jetsam turn up at late 's Hollywoodland's door, once more, in this insightful tale of wannabes and desperadoes. Tod Hackett, artist, has inspirations to become noticed until he meets Faye Greener, blonde bombshell, and is immediately smitten. She has other ideas. She has Homer Simpson, victim, in her sights and cruelty and loneliness takes new meaning as all three are slowly sucked into the Hollywood system of sycophants, diggers and parasites, sucking the life from others as the life, and soul, is slowly sucked from them. The Day of The Locust is an adaptation of the highly powerful novel from Nathanael West, it focuses on the seamy underbelly of Hollywood in the s. Pot boiling with pacey precision, director John Schlesinger crafts what is still to this day one of the hidden pieces of art from the s. We are witness to an assortment of odd characters on the outskirts Hollywood and it's big shiny star, fringe characters driven on by less than stellar ideals. Faye realises that her limitations are getting in the way of her starry ambitions, so thus she becomes the assembly line hump on the casting couch, she believes it's a small price to pay for the price of fame. All three of them will come crashing together as the story reaches it's cynical and terrifying conclusion. The Day Of The Locust failed at the box office, mid seventies audiences were clearly not ready for this unsavoury and stark look at the flip side of the industry we all follow with relish. Many of the characters featured in the piece are believed to be based on real life Hollywood figures, now here in this modern age the public embrace such titillation with glee, back then they clearly wasn't ready for it. Looking for some great streaming picks? Check out some of the IMDb editors' favorites movies and shows to round out your Watchlist. Visit our What to Watch page. Sign In. Keep track of everything you watch; tell your friends. Full Cast and Crew. Release Dates. Official Sites. Company Credits. Technical Specs. Plot Summary. Plot Keywords. Parents Guide. External Sites. User Reviews. User Ratings. External Reviews.

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