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For the film based on the book, see The Day of the Locust (film).

The Day of the Locust

Author	Nathanael West
Language	English
Genre	Novel
Publisher	Random House
Publication date	May 16, 1939
Publication place	United States
Media type	Print (Hardcover, Paperback)
Pages	238 pp
ISBN	978-0-451-52348-8
OCLC	22865781

The Day of the Locust is a 1939 novel by American author Nathanael West, set in Hollywood, California, during the Great Depression. However,there are no signs of the Great Depression in the text. Most of the characters exist at the fringes of the Hollywood film industry, but Hollywood is merely the backdrop for the revelation by the novel's protagonist. The novel follows a young artist from the Yale School of Fine Arts named Tod Hackett who travels to California in search of inspiration for a new picture titled "The Burning of Los Angeles," which Tod is set to paint. While the cast of characters Tod befriends are a conglomerate of stereotypes, his greater discovery is a part of society whose "eyes filled with hatred," and "had come to California to die." This undercurrent of society captures the despair of Americans who worked, and slaved, and saved their entire lives only to realize, too late, that the American dream was illusive compared to their imaginations. Their anger boils into rage, and the craze over the latest Hollywood premier erupts violently into mob rule and absolute chaos.

In the introduction to The Day of the Locust, Richard Gehman writes, the novel was "more ambitious" than Miss Lonelyhearts, and "showed marked progress in West's thinking and in his approach toward maturity as a writer." Gehman calls the novel "episodic in structure, but panoramic in form." In many instances, the novel displays a cinematic effect in which scenes gather speed and zoom in on characters before fading to the next scene. Characters like Abe Kusich, the dwarf, Claude Estee, the successful screen writer and wannabe Southern Colonel, and Earle Shoop, the fake California cowboy, all have difficulty transitioning their personas from the characters they play to who they are. As a result, there is a clear sense of acting that spills beyond the confines of Hollywood studios, into the streets of Los Angeles.

West never could figure out why his works received such erratic praise and scorn by journalists and critics. West corresponded with F. Scott Fitzgerald and Jack Conway through letters, and William Carlos Williams published West's work in his magazine: Contact. Novelists of his era praised Nathanael West's writing, but notoriety and critical acclaim for his works lagged behind his peers in terms of readers and book sales. The novel only sold about 1480 copies following its first publishing. Critics began to situate West within the canon in the 1950's, more than a decade after a fatal car crash claimed the author's life. In 1998, the Modern Library ranked The Day of the Locust seventy-third on its list of the 100 best English-language novels of the 20th century. Time magazine included the novel in its list of 100 best English-language novels from 1923 to 2005. Noted critic Harold Bloom included it in his list of canonical works in the book The Western Canon. The novel was adapted into the critically acclaimed film The Day of the Locust (1975), directed by John Schlesinger.

Plot summary

Tod is hired by a Hollywood studio "to learn set and costume designing." 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 who lives in the hills above the studios and works as an extra in cowboy movies, his Mexican friend who keeps fighting cocks, and Homer Simpson, a lonely businessman exploited by Faye. The book ends with a riot at a movie premiere.

Themes

The characters are outcasts, who have come to Hollywood to fulfill a dream or wish: "The importance of the wish in West's work was first noted by W. H. Auden, who declared (in one of the interludes in The Dyer's Hand) that West's novels were essentially "parables about a Kingdom of Hell whose ruler is not so much a Father of Lies as a Father of Wishes". In this respect, James Light, in his book "Violence, Dreams, and Dostoevsky: The Art of Nathanael West", suggests that The Day of the Locust falls in with a motif in West's fiction; the exposure of hopeful narratives in modern American culture as frauds.

As some critics point out, West's novel was a radical challenge to modernist literature. Modernists set themselves up in opposition to mass culture; West depicts it and makes it an integral part of the novel. West's use of grotesque imagery and situations establishes the novel as a work of Juvenalian satire. His critique of Hollywood and the mentality of "the masses", depicts an America sick with vanity and the harbor of a malignant sense of perversity.

Biblical allusions

The original title of the novel was The Cheated. The title of West's work may be a biblical allusion to the Old Testament. Susan Sanderson writes:

The most famous literary or historical reference to locusts is in the Book of Exodus in the Bible, in which God sends a plague of locusts to the pharaoh of Egypt as retribution for refusing to free the enslaved Jews. Millions of locusts swarm over the lush fields of Egypt, destroying its food supplies. Destructive locusts also appear in the New Testament in the symbolic and apocalyptic book of Revelation. West's use of "locust" in his title evokes images of destruction and a land stripped bare of anything green and living. The novel is filled with images of destruction: Tod Hackett's painting entitled "The Burning of Los Angeles," his violent fantasies about Faye and the bloody result of the cockfight. A close examination of West's characters and his selective use of natural images, which include representations of violence and impotence — and which are therefore contrary to popular images linking nature and fertility — reveals that the locust in the title is Tod.

Symbols and metaphors

The novel opens with protagonist Tod Hackett sketching studio back lot scenes from a major Hollywood production. In the scene, a short fat man barks orders through a megaphone to actors playing the role of Napoleon's elite cavalry at the Battle of Waterloo. Waterloo marked the beginning of the end for Napoleon. The chaos of this scene foreshadows the beginning of the end for middle-class Americans in the novel, and the violence that ensues.

James F. Light suggests that West's use of mob violence in the novel is an expression of anxiety about the rise of fascism in Europe. Light compares anxiety in the novel to personal anxieties Jews, like Nathanael West, experienced as marginalized individuals living in America. The artist Tod Hackett’s vision of art, a painting titled “The Burning of Los Angeles,” devolves into a nightmare of terror. It depicts angry citizens razing Los Angeles and spreading, uncontrollably, across the American landscape. In the 1930s, theorists, politicians, and military leaders feared large crowds or mass formations would produce unpredictable and dangerous results.

Regionalism and historical context

The Day of the Locust is often referred to as a Hollywood novel, but Nathanael West also wrote in a regional mode. Regionalism became a popular style of writing during the Depression era, and this novel relates to regionalism (art) and regionalism (politics). President Franklin D. Roosevelt supported programs that advanced nationalism, and the popularity of regionalism gained national significance. The American Guide series reflects regional writing, and is a product of the Federal Writers' Project. The Federal Writers' Project was a New Deal program, subordinate to the Public Works Administration, that employed white collar workers as writers.

Characters

Major Characters

• Tod Hackett - an ivy league trained artist who comes to California to find inspiration for his painting, and experiences a violent re-visioning of the painting in a literal sink or swim moment that nearly claims his life during the mob scene outside Mr. Kahn's Pleasure Dome. Tod is hired by the movie studio to learn set and costume design.
• Homer Simpson - a former night-manager at a hotel in Iowa who comes to California, at the recommendation of his doctor, to restore his health. Soft mannered, Homer has a lethargic complexity and simple mindedness about him. His hands have an uncontrollable and detached nature to them.
• Faye Greener - an aspiring Hollywood actress who realizes that she has the face and body for Hollywood, but lacks a voice fit for the big screen now that the era of the silent film has ended.

Secondary Characters

• Abe Kusich - a midget gangster who enjoys cock fighting, but proclaims a special connection or bond to the animals.
• Claude Estee - a successful screen writer who aspires to be a Southern Colonel. He introduces Tod to Hollywood social society and Mrs. Jenning.
• Earle Shoop - a fake California cowboy who makes a scant salary working at a western wear and novelty shop. He lives in the hills above Los Angeles. Earle and Faye share a short romantic affair.
• Miguel - a Mexican-American who plays a native-American Indian, and Earle's sidekick at the store. Miguel enjoys cock fighting. Faye sleeps with Miguel to make Earle jealous.
• Mrs. Jenning - runs a callhouse (a place that arranges for escorts to meet off premise) and pornographic film parlor. She uses frame stories to pull the teaser routine on unsuspecting customers.
• Henry Greener - the fading vaudevillian, and current door-to-door salesman with a heart condition, is Faye's father. Henry is destitute, and when he dies, Faye turns to Homer for a place to stay.
• Adore Loomis - a precocious child actor who teases Homer until he snaps. Homer's stomping Adore to death coincides with the eruption of mob violence outside the blockbuster debut.

West's characters are intentionally shallow, stereotyped, and "derive from all the B-grade genre films of the period" (Simon, 523). They are what Light calls "grotesques". Tod Hackett's first name is a derivative of the German word for death, and his last name refers to a common epithet for Hollywood screenwriters and artists, who were pejoratively called "hacks." In the first chapter of the novel, the narrative voice announces: "Yes, despite his appearance, Tod was really a very complicated young man with a whole set of personalities, one inside the other like a nest of Chinese boxes."

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Adaptations

The Day of the Locust was released by Paramount Pictures in 1975. The film was directed by John Schlesinger and starred William Atherton as Tod Hackett, Donald Sutherland as Homer Simpson, Burgess Meredith as Harry Greener, and Karen Black as Faye Greener.

Punchdrunk's 2013 immersive stage production entitled The Drowned Man: A Hollywood Fable is based partly on The Day of the Locust and partly on a stage play, Woyzeck, written by Georg Büchner.

In popular culture

• Bob Dylan recorded a song called "Day of the Locusts" for his 1970 album New Morning.
• The 1970s Pop Chronicles audio documentary includes an excerpt dramatically read by Thom Beck in Show 44, "Revolt of the Fat Angel: Some samples of the Los Angeles sound."
• The 1982 song "Call of the West" by the Los Angeles new wave band Wall of Voodoo—which "follows some Middle American sad sack as he chases a vague and hopeless dream in California"—has been described as being "as close as pop music has gotten to capturing the bitter chaos of the final chapter of Nathanael West's The Day of the Locust".
• It has been assumed that The Simpsons (1989) creator Matt Groening named his most famous character, Homer Simpson, after his own father, but in several interviews given in 1990, Groening reportedly stated that he named the character after the Homer in this novel, although neither explanation is considered definitive.
• The novel is mentioned in the comic book series Y: The Last Man (2002–2008), whose main character describes it as "the greatest novel of all time".
• The 2009 song "Peeled Apples" from the Journal for Plague Lovers album by the Welsh band Manic Street Preachers includes the line referencing one of the novel's characters: "a dwarf takes his cockerel out on a cockfight."
• British theatre company Punchdrunk's 2013 performance piece The Drowned Man borrows heavily from The Day of the Locust, incorporating several of the novel's characters and themes into the overarching narrative.
• In the 2013 novella "Wakulla Springs" by Andy Duncan and Ellen Klages, set in rural Florida in the 1940s and 50s, one of the main characters is seen reading The Day of the Locust.

Works cited

• Simon, Richard Keller (1993). "Between Capra and Adorno: West's Day of the Locust and the Movies of the 1930s". Modern Language Quarterly. 54 (4): p. 524. doi:10.1215/00267929-54-4-513. {{cite journal}}: |pages= has extra text (help)

Sources

• The Day of the Locust By Nathanael West: free books, online
• The Day of the Locust By Nathanael West Cliffs Notes
• SparkNotes: The Day of the Locust: Plot Overview
• Times Higher Education: "Grotesque Relations: Modernist Domestic Fiction and the US Welfare State"
• Nathaneal West Explores LA

References

Category:1939 novels Category:American novels adapted into films Category:American satirical novels Category:Hollywood novels Category:Modernist novels Category:Novels about artists Category:Novels by Nathanael West Usfmicah (talk) 22:15, 26 May 2015 (UTC)