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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.".… (more)
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Just this quote, on people retiring in California:
“Once there, they discover that sunshine isn’t enough. 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 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 that they could watch the passengers being consumed in a ‘holocaust of flame’, as the newspapers put it. But the planes never crash.
Their boredom becomes more and more terrible. They realise that they’ve been tricked and burn with resentment. 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. The sun is a joke. Oranges can’t titillate their jaded palates. Nothing can ever be violent enough to make taut their slack minds and bodies.”
Nathanael West focuses on how women drive men to ruin, desperation, violence and ultimately, the burning of Los Angeles both figuratively and metaphorically.
Not much has changed. Not to be read while happy, which is why I read it during an atrocious complacent and ennui filled trip to the star-studded falsity I grew up in.
One difference between the film and the book is the character of set designer/painter Tod Hackett. Schlesinger doesn't convey his violent thoughts in the film. Tod seems relatively benign and well-meaning in the film, a Yale man slumming it in Hollywood. But in the book he reveals himself to be more in his element than one might imagine; he fantasizes and raping and beating his neighbor, aspiring actress Fay Greener, who is 17 years old. Tod seems much more emotionally unstable. Slowly, Tod fills the walls of his apartment with apocalyptic sketches and studies in the film, but the book reveals that he's planning a large painting called "The Burning of Los Angeles." Those dark red drawings, with dead faces make more sense. The book emphasizes that these are all people who have come to Los Angeles to die.
The book also creates a more nuanced portrait of Homer Simpson, although Donald Sutherland's portrayal in the film is perfect. Homer is the only sympathetic character -- and then he brings about a tragedy. Homer probably has some form of autism; he definitely suffers from Obsessive Compulsive Disorder. At one point, Tod asks him to stop doing the same thing with his hands and Homer answers, "I have to do it three times." He is so profoundly disturbed that you sense impending doom from the first time you meet him.
The end of the book is horrific, but much is left to the reader's imagination. Thus, to me it was more effective than the violent and chaotic ending to Schlesinger's film. "Day of the Locust" is one of those books that I wish I could read for the first time again. It's disturbing and weirdly resonant with Los Angeles today. And I recommend reading the book before watching the film if you haven't seen it already.
Showing the hazards of celebrity with its crushed hopes and the fans who will form a mob to get near fame, this is a brilliantly written story, almost a noir with its femme fatale who leaves misery behind her. This would have been a 5 star for me if it weren't for a very graphic cockfight scene.
The book is more notable for its scenes than for its overall story. I especially enjoyed the Battle of Waterloo that the artist witnesses on a back lot. All the while, the artist is working on his masterpiece, a painting called "The Burning of Los Angeles". West seems to find it a distinct possibility, and not from wildfires, but almost 75 years after this novel was written, not much has really changed. The little people are still little.
Plot in a Nutshell
Less plot and more a study of a group of characters as told by Tod Hackett, a relatively recent arrival to Depression era Hollywood. Through his interactions with the would be stars, in reality minor extras with limited opportunity we see a spotlight shone on the promise of the American dream.
Thoughts
On paper the Golden Age of Hollywood is in full swing and the Depression sweeping the rest of America seems quieter here. However hiding not very far below the surface is a Hollywood where dreams don’t stand up to scrutiny and dreamers come to die. So far so depressing right? It gets worse…
West compellingly paints a picture of cynical, self serving characters – at first glance they all seem slightly overdone and almost caricatured versions of our current worst thoughts about Hollywood. It took me a little while to remind myself that this was not a modern day satirical take on Hollywood but rather an ‘of the age’ satirical take on Hollywood. The more we get to know them however we see each has zero ability for them to emotionally connect with each other – each interaction is underpinned by a strong sense of ‘what’s in it for me’. If West wanted to paint a soulless environment and relationships he succeeded. And that’s before was addressing the fact that main character is open to discussing his fantasies of raping the woman he is infatuated with.
On the subject of strong female characters; Faye is a real disappointment. The lust the male characters have for her permeates the book and should have the reader feeling much more sympathetic. She is after all still a teenager predominantly spending time with much older men. She is however decidedly unsympathetic and her manipulations of her would be suitors meant I could not connect with her at all. As a metaphor for Hollywood itself she was well written, as a character you could empathise with less so
The Day of the Locust is the book everyone knows about (Though I think Miss Lonelyhearts is the better writing.)
If the American Dream is fortune and fame and having
"Locust" is a story of Hollywood where everybody wants to be a star. We meet starlets and child actors and fading vaudevillians who believe in nothing any more, not even themselves. It is very much not pretty about money and sex and "art" and power and you know West knows whereof he speaks.
But watching these grotesques and monsters flailing away at each other like scorpions in a bottle isn't much fun. The California sun burns and bakes but does not in the end illuminate.
A book to admire if perhaps in the end a book not easy to love. If he had lived a few years longer . . . who knows what he might have written?
*Spoiler*
I think the reason why for me this is a slightly better novella is because of the way it ends..with a misunderstanding that leads to a public fury. At that point, it really doesn't matter if anyone "gets the girl."
pg. 79 "Tod examined him eagerly. He didn't mean to be rude but at first glance this man seemed an exact model for the kind of person who comes to California to die, perfect in every detail down to his fever eyes and unruly hands.
"My name is Homer Simpson," the man gasped...
pg. 103 "Only those who still have hope can benefit from tears. When they finish, they feel better. But to those without hope, like Homer, whose anguish is basic and permanent, no good comes from crying. Nothing changes for them. They usually know this but still can't help crying.
Homer was lucky. He cried himself to sleep."
There is not much to be found here in terms of a plot and you have to conclude that this is mainly a character study. I kept wondering if in about a hundred years we will think the same way about the novel Less Than Zero as we now do about this one.
It's a hard one to read with today's standards and sensibilities but it's also worth it if only to see how far we've come. If you are curious about Hollywood in the 30s and you like a total immersion in the days when the place started to gain its stride then this book is highly recommended. If you're looking for a good read then perhaps a different book fits the bill.