Product Description
This is nonfiction commentary. Purchase includes a free trial membership in the publisher's book club where you can select from more than a million books without charge. Chapters: Novels by Nathanael West, Plays by Nathanael West, Screenplays by Nathanael West, Short Stories by Nathanael West, Suspicion, Five Came Back, the Day of the Locust, the Imposter, Miss Lonelyhearts, Stranger on the Third Floor, Western Union Boy, a Cool Million, the Dream Life of Balso Snell, I Stole a Million, Men Against the Sky, Let's Make Music, the Spirit of Culver, Even Stephen, Good Hunting. Source: Wikipedia. Free updates online. Not illustrated. Excerpt: Suspicion (1941) is a romantic psychological thriller directed by Alfred Hitchcock, and starring Cary Grant and Joan Fontaine as a married couple. It also stars Cedric Hardwicke, Nigel Bruce, Dame May Whitty, Isabel Jeans and Heather Angel. It is based on Francis Iles' 1932 novel Before the Fact. Handsome, irresponsible cad Johnnie Aysgarth (Cary Grant) sweeps dowdy Lina McLaidlaw (Joan Fontaine) off her feet and charms her into running away and marrying him, despite the strong disapproval of her wealthy father, General McLaidlaw (Cedric Hardwicke). After their honeymoon, they set up housekeeping in extravagant fashion, though she soon learns that Johnnie is broke and was hoping to live off her father's generosity. She persuades him to get a job and he goes to work for his cousin, estate agent Captain Melbeck (Leo G. Carroll). Gradually, Lina learns that Johnnie has continued to gamble on the horses, despite his promise to quit, and that he has sold family heirloom chairs given to them as a wedding present to help pay for things. She repeatedly catches him in lies and discovers that he has been caught embezzling and fired from his job, though Melbeck assures her he will not prosecute if the money is repaid. Johnnie's good-natured, if scatterbrained, friend Beaky (Nigel Bruce) tries to reassur...More: http://booksllc.net/?id=74984 ... Read more

Product Description
West's novels are a deliberate assault on the common man's notion of reality; for violence is not only his subject matter, but also his technique... In no writer is there so absolute a sense of misery of being human, though he also believes that such misery is a more proper occasion for laughter than tears... ... Read more

Customer Reviews (2)

Revolting
Miss Lonelyhearts is recommended in The Top Ten, The Top Ten: Writers Pick Their Favorite Books, which is the only reason I got it.Please be forewarned that Miss Lonelyhearts includes all sorts of disgusting things, including favorable discussions of two gang rapes, killing a lamb by smashing its head with a rock, and a vivid description of a granite obelisk in a park swelling up and ejaculating.I wouldn't recommend it to anybody.

"Christ: the Miss Lonelyhearts of Miss Lonelyhearts."
"Miss Lonelyhearts" is the 26-year-old son of a Baptist preacher, working in New York in 1933 as the writer of a gossip column. A sensitive person, he reads thirty or so traumatic letters from readers every day, ranging from women with too many children and abusive husbands, to people who have no idea where their next meal will come from, and he must offer some sort of hope to each one. Shrike, a features editor, is his antithesis, a nihilist who mocks Miss Lonelyhearts's Christian faith, every other philosophy which might offer hope, and Miss Lonelyhearts's every attempt to escape from the sadness of his life. Sex and alcohol do not help, and Miss Lonelyhearts gradually descends into obsessive behavior, hypochondria, and religious fanaticism while still trying to help his readers, several of whom he meets in person.

Though the novel is often described as having dark humor, its emotional power is so overwhelming that few people will find much to laugh about here. Shrike, whose name is both satiric and symbolic (shrikes are birds which impale their prey on thorns), is bent on destroying Miss Lonelyhearts and what he represents (the search for hope), and at a party Shrike has all the guests read aloud and mock the letters from Miss Lonelyhearts's desk--about paralyzed children, a teenager without a nose, suicidal mothers, and exhausted caregivers.

Tautly constructed with overlapping motifs and symbols, the novel is firmly rooted in the Depression and the edge-of-disaster lives of ordinary Americans. As Miss Lonelyhearts becomes drawn into his readers' heart-rending problems, he tries to become a rock, emotionally and symbolically, and as he examines the sadness around him, he also begins to think that God has sent him to perform the kinds of miracles that God performs. West's satiric attitude toward religion here and the use of Miss Lonelyhearts as a Christ-figure, filled with agony and passion, also suggest some sort of satiric Christian martyrdom, but the ending, when it comes, is both shocking and unexpected.

Extremely emotional and filled with cynicism and despair, the novel is the consummate example of Depression literature, firmly establishing the attitudes and philosophies that prevailed as people tried to deal with events so overwhelming that no philosophy, other than nihilism, could fully explain them. West's focus on themes and philosophies and the symbols which illuminate them prevents this brilliant but often heart-rending novel from descending into melodrama and pathos.Mary Whipple
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