This book is often called the best book ever written about Hollywood.  It is the story of set designer Tod Hackett & a cast of lowlifes living on the fringe of the movie business, all of them drawn to the same wannabe starlet.

The characters are uniformly unsympathetic & it is nearly impossible to care what happens to them. Perhaps the book was more shocking when we knew less about the movie business & the personal lives of entertainers, but this tale of the dross behind the Silver Screen leaves one unmoved today.

(Reviewed:)

Grade: (C-) Orrin C. Judd

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Book-related and General Links:
    -Nathanael West (1903-1940)
    -ESSAY: Let This Be a Lesson to You: The Snakebit Life of Nathanael West (Gerald Howard, NY Times Book Review)
    -ESSAY: A Wasteland of Contradictions:  The California Dreams of Nathanael West (Jim Tejani, Literary Traveler)
    -REVIEW: of NATHANAEL WEST: NOVELS AND OTHER WRITINGS True West: During the 1930s, a master of the short novel hallucinated a grotesque, erotic America we can recognize as our own (Virginia Heffernan)
    -F.W. Dupee: Doing West REVIEW: of Nathanael West: The Art of His Life by Jay Martin (NY Review of Books)
    -REVIEW: Nathanael West: Novels and Other Writings edited by Sacvan Bercovitch (Martin Filler, NY Review of Books)
    -REVIEW: Novels and Other Writings by Nathaneal West (Algis Valiunas, Commentary)
 

If you liked The Day of the Locust, try:

Roszak, Theodore
    -Flicker

Salamon, Julie
    -The Devil's Candy : The Bonfire of the Vanities Goes to Hollywood

Viertel, Peter
    -White Hunter, Black Heart

Wagner, Bruce
    -Force Majeure

I disagree completely with your review. Day of the Locust is a terrific novel. Nat West is one of our greatest writers. I couldn't put the book down. i don't think you know what you're talking about. Well, there's hope for you after all--you did give Miss Lonelyhearts a positive review.

Nat West lives on. Try the Fantes next: John (no longer with us) and his son Dan, who is.

- K.A.

- Feb-13-2004, 08:57

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