The Day of the Locust
Nathanael West
The Day of the Locust
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Tod Hackett, a young painter hired to design sets, lives among the strays of Depression-era Hollywood: a would-be starlet, her clownish father, a cowboy extra, a dwarf and a lonely bookkeeper from Iowa, while he plans a painting called 'The Burning of Los Angeles' (1939).
Contains spoilers for the entire book
- Themes
- Atmosphere
About the book
Published in 1939, The Day of the Locust follows Tod Hackett, a young painter who has come to Hollywood to design sets and costumes for a film studio. He falls for Faye Greener, an aspiring actress, and drifts among the hangers-on at the edge of the film business, among them the timid former bookkeeper Homer Simpson and the combative dwarf Abe Kusich. Nathanael West portrays Depression-era Los Angeles as a city of imitation and disappointed dreams, full of people who came to California for sunshine and excitement and found boredom instead. Tod works on a painting he calls “The Burning of Los Angeles”, and the novel’s dark comedy builds towards violence. West died in a car accident the year after it appeared.
Characters
Tod Hackett — Protagonist
A young artist working in Hollywood, increasingly absorbed by the desperation beneath its spectacle.
Faye Greener — Aspiring actress
A determined young performer whose dreams of stardom draw several men into her orbit.
Homer Simpson — New arrival
A shy former hotel worker whose move to California leaves him vulnerable to loneliness and desire.
Harry Greener — Faye's father
An aging vaudeville performer who uses theatrical routines to sell polish door to door.
Earle Shoop — Cowboy
A laconic young man whose precarious life on Hollywood's margins brings him close to Faye.
Abe Kusich — Tod's acquaintance
A belligerent small-statured man whose bravado conceals his insecure position in the city.
About the author
Nathanael West (1903–1940) was an American novelist, born Nathan Wallenstein Weinstein in New York City to Jewish immigrant parents from Lithuania. After Brown University and a few months in Paris, he worked as a night manager of New York hotels, where he let struggling writer friends stay for free. His short, darkly comic novels, The Dream Life of Balso Snell (1931), Miss Lonelyhearts (1933), about a newspaper agony columnist overwhelmed by his readers’ suffering, and A Cool Million (1934), sold poorly in his lifetime. He moved to Hollywood to write screenplays for minor studios, an experience that fed into The Day of the Locust (1939). In 1940 he married Eileen McKenney, and that December the two were killed in a car crash in California, the day after the death of his friend F. Scott Fitzgerald. His reputation grew steadily after his death.