This one’s hard to explain. Why would anyone, anywhere, keep copies of these bleak and unpleasant stories? I’ve read these two works three different times, once in in the Seventies, once in the Nineties and just now again in the Teens. I have to say that every time I’ve read them I’ve been disappointed. And yet I’ve kept my copy for forty-five years.
Both stories are mostly about ugly thoughts, ugly feelings and the ugly and depressing events in the lives of losers. As David Yaffe put it, writing in the Partisan Review, West’s stories show “a sweeping rejection of political causes, religious faith, artistic redemption and romantic love.” As for the American Dream, West sees it as a kind of irremediable sickness, its promise corrupted by rigged economics and spiritual poverty. It ain’t pretty and there’s no way out. This message was never really popular with the book-buying public.
Among critics, though, West found many distinguished admirers. Early on, Dorothy Parker, Malcolm Crowley, and Edmund Wilson were all big fans. And thirty years after it was first published, the prominent critic Stanley Edgar Hymen said that Miss Lonelyhearts was one of the three best American novels of the first half of the twentieth century, the other two being The Sun Also Rises and The Great Gatsby. Matt Groening, creator of The Simpsons, is also a fan. He named one his own children Nathanael; and one of the most well-known characters in the world of television, Homer Simpson, bears the same name as the hapless hotel accountant in The Day of the Locust.
One component of my appreciation of and loyalty to Nathanael West has always been a certain snob appeal, a feeling that only really special people can appreciate his work and that I‘m one of them. Most people are afraid to face a truly radical critique of the ridiculousness and venality of our society, but not me. Most people don’t understand these books, but me and Dorothy Parker and Matt Groening–we get it. The critical thing about one’s collection of books is that it is a reflection of one’s personality; and if the collection contains only those books that the masses like, well, that’s a lot like having no personality at all. Can’t have that.
(But personality, like all possessions, is a burden.)
At the same time, West’s characters are vivid (vivid, that is, in their obscurity, banality, and cruelty) and many scenes are memorable. In The Day of the Locust I remember especially the endless, dreary party at Homer Simpson’s house, the re-enacted battle of Waterloo on the studio back lot, and the riotous crowd at the movie premiere, a scene full of real violence and at the same time empty of real meaning. And does anyone wonder what her supporters found to admire in the speeches of Sarah Palin? Listen to Tod Hacket, the protagonist of The Day of the Locust as he describes a similar speaker:
…The message he brought was one that an illiterate anchorite might have given to decadent Rome. It was a crazy jumble of dietary rules, economics and Biblical threats. He claimed to have seen the Tiger of Wrath stalking the walls of the citadel and the Jackal of Lust skulking in the shrubbery, and he connected these omens with “thirty dollars every Thursday” and meat eating.
Tod didn’t laugh at the man’s rhetoric. He knew it was unimportant. What mattered was his messianic rage and the emotional response of his hearers. They sprang to their feet, shaking their fists and shouting. On the altar someone began to beat a bass drum and soon the entire congregation was singing “Onward Christian Soldiers.”
I could go on, but let’s lighten up. Here’s Dorothy Parker’s take on life:
Oh, life is a glorious cycle of song, a medley of extemporanea, And love is a thing that can never go wrong, and I am Marie of Romania.