“The Day of the Locust by Nathanael West, 1939
The book follows a young man named Tod Hackett who thinks of himself as a painter and artist, but who works in Hollywood as a costume designer and background painter. He falls in love with Faye Greener, an aspiring starlet who lives nearby. Between his work in the studio and his introduction to Faye's friends, he is soon interacting with numerous Hollywood hangers-on, including a cowboy, Earle Shoop, who lives in the hills above the studios and works as an extra in cowboy movies, his Mexican friend, Miguel, who keeps fighting cocks, and Homer Simpson, a hapless businessman whom Faye is taking advantage of. The book ends with a riot at a movie premiere.
All of the characters are outcasts who have come to Hollywood in search of a fulfillment of some dream or wish. The whole point of the book is that most wishes don't come true.
The book is a series of introductions to the minor characters and it all ends in a fight/riot: thus the locust. West's use of the locust in his title, then, calls up images of destruction and a land stripped bare of anything green and living. The images of destruction are seen as: Tod Hackett's painting entitled "The Burning of Los Angeles," his violent fantasies about Faye, the bloody result of the cockfights, and the riot at the ending....”
ctmock wrote this review Monday, October 3, 2011.
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