Novels and Other Writings: The Day of the Locust...

The Day of the Locust is a 1939 novel about Hollywood and its corrupting touch, about the American dream turned into a sun-drenched California nightmare. 

Nathaniel West's Hollywood is not the glamorous "home of the stars" but a seedy world of little people, some hopeful, some desparing, all twisted by their own desires. 

From the ironically romantic artist narrator to a macho movie cowboy, a middle-aged innocent from America's heartland, and the hard-as-nails call girl, the would-be-star whom they all lust after.

An unforgettable 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. 

This novel stands as a classic indictment of all that is most extravagant and uncontrolled in American life.

American novelist Nathanael West was born in New York City, the son of a prosperous building contractor. He began his college education at Tufts University but transferred to Brown University, from which he graduated in 1924. After graduation, West went to Europe and lived in Paris for a few years, where he wrote the short novel The Dream Life of Balso Snell (1931), an avant-garde work that reflected his concern with the emptiness of contemporary life.

West's modest legacy of completed works reached its peak of recognition during the period when later Jewish American writers were discovering black humor. 

Among novels that chronicle the wasteland despair and grotesque comedy of the time between the wars, West's Miss Lonelyhearts (1933) and The Day of the Locust (1939) stand out as remarkable examples.