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The Day of the Locust Hardcover – December 1, 1997

by Nathaniel West (Author)

63 customer reviews

ISBN-13: 978-0899663029 ISBN-10: 0899663028

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Tod Hackett is a brilliant young artist - and a man in danger of losing his heart. Brought to an LA studio as a set-designer, he is soon caught up in a fantasy world where the cult of celebrity rules. But when he becomes besotted by the beautiful Faye, an aspiring actress and occasional call-girl, his dream rapidly becomes a nightmare. For, with little in the way of looks and no money to buy her time, Tod's desperate passion can only lead to frustration, disillusionment and rage.

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Product Details

Hardcover
Publisher: Buccaneer Books (December 1, 1997)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 0899663028
ISBN-13: 978-0899663029
Product Dimensions: 0.8 x 5.8 x 8.7 inches
Shipping Weight: 4 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
Average Customer Review: 3.6 out of 5 stars See all reviews (63 customer reviews)
Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #393,711 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Editorial Reviews

Review

Novel by Nathanael West about the savagery lurking beneath the Hollywood dream. Published in 1939, it is one of the most striking examples of the "Hollywood novel" in American fiction. Tod Hackett, a set designer, becomes involved in the lives of several individuals who have been warped by their proximity to the artificial world of Hollywood. Hackett's completion of his painting "The Burning of Los Angeles" coincides with the explosion of the other characters' unfulfilled dreams in a conflagration of riot and murder. --The Merriam-Webster Encyclopedia of Literature

About the Author

Nathanael West (1903-1940) - original name Nathan Weinstein (until 1926) American writer who died in a car crash at thirty-seven. Nathanael West published four novels.

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› Visit Amazon's Nathanael West Page

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Customer Reviews

(63)

3.6 out of 5 stars

5 star		28
4 star		7
3 star		12
2 star		8
1 star		8

See all 63 customer reviews

I did not enjoy the read as I found West's style difficult to follow.

Palisades Reader

His description of his characters pain is so vivid that it touches you inside.

P. Jourdenais

The number of typos, wrong line breaks and grammatical errors are countless.

Jill A. Bossert

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

83 of 84 people found the following review helpful

A literary Molotov cocktail

By A.J. on July 27, 2001

Format: Mass Market Paperback

"The Day of the Locust" is about the strange, disparate people that invariably get drawn to Los Angeles in the 1930's, a time when studios put out assembly-line low-budget movies and employed revolving crews of extras, writers, and various technicians. The novel seems influenced by Sherwood Anderson's "Winesburg, Ohio" in its portrayal of "grotesques," emotionally or behaviorally defective people on the fringe of society, but its tone is much more vibrant and frenetic; if "Winesburg, Ohio" is a petting zoo, "The Day of the Locust" is a three-ring circus.
At the center of the action is an artist and scene designer named Tod Hackett. He observes southern California with a sort of concerned detachment; he sees it as a wasteland of incongruous, tacky architecture and rootless people who come here to die. His discontent is manifested in his extracurricular plan to paint a canvas called "The Burning of Los Angeles."
Even though Tod may be considered the main character, he's the least interesting member of the cast; he's like the "straight man" in a comedy team. He's in love with an aspiring actress and occasional prostitute named Faye Greener who likes to use men. She has managed to hook a shy, lonely unemployed hotel bookkeeper named Homer Simpson (!) who moved to L.A. from Iowa for his health. Homer has compulsively fidgety hands and occasionally even exhibits the simplemindedness of his bald, mustard-colored cartoon namesake. Faye is also attracted to a lanky cowboy named Earle Shoop who works in a Sunset Boulevard saddlery store, does occasional movie work, and doesn't seem to know he's a caricature.Read more ›

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17 of 17 people found the following review helpful

West's finest novel

By Jason Richard on April 28, 2000

Format: Hardcover

I've read all of West's other novels - The Dream Life of Balso Snell, A Cool Million, Miss Lonelyhearts - and all three seemed to miss something that is hard for me to explain. A little two-dimensional, a little hollow. Neither the characters nor the novels themselves seemed to be totally fleshed out. But The Day of the Locust is different. And ultimately I think it is on this novel that West's reputation will either rise or fall.
This book will really live with you long after you've read it. I can easily bring to mind that spectacular cockfight (a fine bit of descriptive writing), Faye's teasing, Harry Greener, the midget, the scene in the nightclub when the cross-dresser sings, and that final horrific scene when the riot breaks out in LA. You can skip West's other novels and you won't be very deprived, but The Day of the Locust is not to be missed.

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15 of 15 people found the following review helpful

Faye done away.

By Jabberwocky on June 12, 2006

Format: Mass Market Paperback

Locust does a great job of showing the ugly side of the shiny veneer of Hollywood. The book deals with lust, desire, hope, disappointment, failure, rage, and death. To avoid being misleading, I should say that the movie business is not the front and center story here. The interpersonal relationships between a woman and her father and her suitors is the main plotline. Hollywood acts as a backdrop.

Faye is a failed actress who only gets work as an extra, and Homer and Todd are just two of the men who are drunk with desire for her.

This alternates with The Sound and the Fury for my favorite book. I've read it 3 times, which is as much as I've read any book.

...Locust is a quick read and never boring. Check out the movie too.

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8 of 8 people found the following review helpful

Hollywood = Dante's Inferno ????

By pisces on April 12, 2006

Format: Mass Market Paperback

....To read Nathaniel West's description, it would seem so.

Every character in this novel of 1930s Hollywood is a greedy scoundrel. Every character is out for him/herself. Everyone's a sinner, and it's absolutely delicious.

I love novels with very eccentric, flamboyant characters. The kind of characters who perform on a dime. Faye, the main female character shakes, dances, gyrates, sings....for any audience, no audience etc..

Storywise, you never know what's real and what's make-believe....which is a metaphor for Hollywood itself.

The plot is Tod Hackett, an illustrator from the Mid-West coming out to Hollywood to work in pictures. The characters he meets, and the variety of personality traits, ticks, neurosis, dysfunctions are astounding. This is a novel of fringe, downscale, periphery Hollywood. The losers behind the scenes. Well, here's to the losers, because they move the plot and this has to be one of the most page-turning classic novels I've ever read.

All throughout the novel you get the sense something big is going to go down.....and the characters' own extreme traits drive this. I love it when a writer gets mileage, not from actual plot turns and twists, but solely from personality traits. The story feels like it's just moving along on it's own, as opposed to being heavily contrived.

I thought this novel was extremely interesting, thought-provoking, and suspenseful, as you never really know if the characters and scenes are play-acted, or for real. The reader is really left guessing. Is a fight, a real fight, when the participants just laugh the whole thing off at the end? Do these fringe characters really have all these personality ticks? Or, are these just affectations, at the ready for their next audition?Read more ›

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Most Recent Customer Reviews

Very Abridged

I'm not sure of the point in abridging a novella to begin with, but some of the best bits are missing from this audio book. I would not recommend purchasing this. I wish I hadn't.

Published 3 months ago by Molly Graham

Boring book

The book arrived on time and in good condition but it
was a very boring book to read.
Save your money and don't buyit.

Published 4 months ago by Edwin A. Peckens

Great Book, Poor Edition

The Day of the Locust is well worth the read. However, if you can find another edition of the book, I would recommend purchasing that version. Read more

Published 6 months ago by Ben Fletcher

My bad

I know this is supposed to be the best novel written in the 20th century, but I thought it an ugly book, its characters unlikable, and I had to struggle to finish it. Read more

Published 7 months ago by Beverly A. Sykes

Extremely Unprofessional Printing

The version of the book that Amazon is selling is horrible. It looks like it was printed on a computer in somebody's basement or at Kinko's. It looks and feels very unprofessional. Read more

Published 13 months ago by Dan

The Best of a Scant Body of Work

The Day of the Locust was Nathaniel West's swan song, though he didn't know it. He would die about a year and a half after its publication in a car crash that also claimed the life... Read more

Published 14 months ago by M. Buzalka

A Classic Tale of Hollywood

I read Nathaniel West's THE DAY OF THE LOCUST many years ago and purchased it again to go back to the early tales of Hollywood and the struggles of its denizens in the depression... Read more

Published 14 months ago by Michael P. Richards

Horrible edition ...

Please avoid this horrible edition. Badly formatted with at least a hundred spelling errors. It looks like it's been printed from a home computer. Read more

Published 17 months ago by C. Beale

Great book, terrible edition

The Day of the Locust is one of the great American novels and I would recommend it to anyone interested in Hollywood in the '30s and in good writing. Read more

Published 18 months ago by Jill A. Bossert

Shoddy, unprofessional copy - don't buy it

I bought this to teach to high school seniors instead of the New Directions edition, which also contains Miss Lonelyhearts. Read more

Published 19 months ago by J in New York