The Day of the Locust
Encyclopedia
The Day of the Locust is a 1939
novel by American author Nathanael West
, set in Hollywood, California during the Great Depression
, its overarching themes deal with the alienation and desperation of a broad group of odd individuals who exist at the fringes of the Hollywood movie industry.
In 1998, the Modern Library
ranked The Day of the Locust #73 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, and noted critic Harold Bloom
included it in his list of canonical works in the book The Western Canon
. Susan Sanderson writes:
in Europe. Light also suggests that West may have written into the novel a more personal anxiety about his marginalized role as a Jew in America.
"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, Light suggests that Day falls in with a general project that pervades West's fiction: namely, exposing certain hopeful narratives that pervade 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.
Furthermore, West's usage of grotesque imagery, and situations, firmly establishes this novel as a work of Juvenalian satire. His fierce critique of Hollywood, and the mentality of the masses, depicts an America that is both sick with vanity, while also harboring a malignant sense of perversity.
. And 'The Burning of Los Angeles', a picture he was soon to paint, definitely proved he had talent."
Over the course of the novel, we are introduced to several minor characters, each corresponding to a given Hollywood trope. There is Harry Greener, the fading vaudevillian
; his daughter, Faye, a starlet; Claude Estee the successful screen writer; Homer Simpson the hopelessly clumsy "everyman
"; Abe Kusich, a gangster;
Earle Shoop the cowboy; Miguel, Shoop's Mexican sidekick; Adore Loomis, a precocious child actor, and Loomis's doting stage mother.
, based on the novel was made, starring William Atherton
as Tod Hackett, Donald Sutherland
as Homer Simpson, Burgess Meredith
as Harry Greener, Karen Black
as Faye Greener, Geraldine Page
as evangelist "Big Mama", Jackie Earle Haley
as Adore Loomis, and Gloria LeRoy
as Mrs. Loomis.
The Pop Chronicles
documentary includes an excerpt dramatically read by Thom Beck
.
It has been assumed that The Simpsons
creator Matt Groening
named his most famous character, Homer Simpson
, after his own father. However, 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 Manic Street Preachers song "Peeled Apples" features a line that references Day of the Locust. The line reads "A dwarf takes his cockerel out on a cockfight".
1939 in literature
The year 1939 in literature involved some significant events and new books.-Events:*December 25 - A Christmas Carol is read before a radio audience for the first time....
novel by American author Nathanael West
Nathanael West
Nathanael West was a US author, screenwriter and satirist.- Early life :...
, set in Hollywood, California during the Great Depression
Great Depression
The Great Depression was a severe worldwide economic depression in the decade preceding World War II. The timing of the Great Depression varied across nations, but in most countries it started in about 1929 and lasted until the late 1930s or early 1940s...
, its overarching themes deal with the alienation and desperation of a broad group of odd individuals who exist at the fringes of the Hollywood movie industry.
In 1998, the Modern Library
Modern Library
The Modern Library is a publishing company. Founded in 1917 by Albert Boni and Horace Liveright as an imprint of their publishing company Boni & Liveright, it was purchased in 1925 by Bennett Cerf and Donald Klopfer...
ranked The Day of the Locust #73 on its list of the 100 best English-language novels of the 20th century. Time
Time (magazine)
Time is an American news magazine. A European edition is published from London. Time Europe covers the Middle East, Africa and, since 2003, Latin America. An Asian edition is based in Hong Kong...
magazine included the novel in its list of 100 best English-language novels from 1923 to 2005, and noted critic Harold Bloom
Harold Bloom
Harold Bloom is an American writer and literary critic, and is Sterling Professor of Humanities at Yale University. He is known for his defense of 19th-century Romantic poets, his unique and controversial theories of poetic influence, and his prodigious literary output, particularly for a literary...
included it in his list of canonical works in the book The Western Canon
Plot summary
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 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 hapless businessman whom Faye is taking advantage of. The book ends with a riot at a movie premiere.Biblical allusions
The original title of the novel was The Cheated. The title of West's work is likely a biblical allusion to certain passages in the Old TestamentOld Testament
The Old Testament, of which Christians hold different views, is a Christian term for the religious writings of ancient Israel held sacred and inspired by Christians which overlaps with the 24-book canon of the Masoretic Text of Judaism...
. Susan Sanderson writes:
Symbols and metaphors
James F. Light has suggested that West's use of mob violence in the novel was an expression of a generalized anxiety about the rise of fascismFascism
Fascism is a radical authoritarian nationalist political ideology. Fascists seek to rejuvenate their nation based on commitment to the national community as an organic entity, in which individuals are bound together in national identity by suprapersonal connections of ancestry, culture, and blood...
in Europe. Light also suggests that West may have written into the novel a more personal anxiety about his marginalized role as a Jew in America.
Themes
All of the characters are outcasts who have come to Hollywood in search of a fulfillment of some 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
The Dyer's Hand
The Dyer's Hand and other essays is a prose book by W. H. Auden, published in 1962.The book contains a selection of essays, reviews, and collections of aphorisms and notes written by Auden from the early 1950s through 1962. Many items were not previously published; others appeared in revised form...
) 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, Light suggests that Day falls in with a general project that pervades West's fiction: namely, exposing certain hopeful narratives that pervade modern American culture as frauds.
As some critics point out, West's novel was a radical challenge to modernist literature
Modernist literature
Modernist literature is sub-genre of Modernism, a predominantly European movement beginning in the early 20th century that was characterized by a self-conscious break with traditional aesthetic forms...
. Modernists set themselves up in opposition to mass culture; West depicts it and makes it an integral part of the novel.
Furthermore, West's usage of grotesque imagery, and situations, firmly establishes this novel as a work of Juvenalian satire. His fierce critique of Hollywood, and the mentality of the masses, depicts an America that is both sick with vanity, while also harboring a malignant sense of perversity.
Characters
For the most part, West's characters are intentionally shallow and iconic, and "…derive from all the B-grade genre films of the period…" (Simon, 523) West's characters are Hollywood stereotypes, what Light calls "grotesques". The novel's protagonist, Tod Hackett (whose first name likely derives from the German word for death and whose last name refers to a common epithet for Hollywood screenwriters and artists, who were pejoratively called "hacks"), is a set painter who aspires to artistic greatness. 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 boxesChinese boxes
Chinese boxes are a set of boxes of graduated size, each fitting inside the next larger box.A traditional style in Chinese design, nested boxes have proved a popular packaging option in the West for novelty or display reasons....
. And 'The Burning of Los Angeles', a picture he was soon to paint, definitely proved he had talent."
Over the course of the novel, we are introduced to several minor characters, each corresponding to a given Hollywood trope. There is Harry Greener, the fading vaudevillian
Vaudeville
Vaudeville was a theatrical genre of variety entertainment in the United States and Canada from the early 1880s until the early 1930s. Each performance was made up of a series of separate, unrelated acts grouped together on a common bill...
; his daughter, Faye, a starlet; Claude Estee the successful screen writer; Homer Simpson the hopelessly clumsy "everyman
Everyman
In literature and drama, the term everyman has come to mean an ordinary individual, with whom the audience or reader is supposed to be able to identify easily, and who is often placed in extraordinary circumstances...
"; Abe Kusich, a gangster;
Earle Shoop the cowboy; Miguel, Shoop's Mexican sidekick; Adore Loomis, a precocious child actor, and Loomis's doting stage mother.
Film
In 1975, a film of the same nameThe Day of the Locust (film)
The Day of the Locust is a 1975 American drama film directed by John Schlesinger. The screenplay by Waldo Salt is based on the 1939 novel of the same title by Nathanael West...
, based on the novel was made, starring William Atherton
William Atherton
William Atherton , born William Atherton Knight II, is an American film, stage and television actor.-Early life:Atherton was born in Orange, Connecticut, the son of Roby and Robert Atherton Knight...
as Tod Hackett, Donald Sutherland
Donald Sutherland
Donald McNichol Sutherland, OC is a Canadian actor with a film career spanning nearly 50 years. Some of Sutherland's more notable movie roles included offbeat warriors in such war movies as The Dirty Dozen, , MASH , and Kelly's Heroes , as well as in such popular films as Klute, Invasion of the...
as Homer Simpson, Burgess Meredith
Burgess Meredith
Oliver Burgess Meredith , known professionally as Burgess Meredith, was an American actor in theatre, film, and television, who also worked as a director...
as Harry Greener, Karen Black
Karen Black
Karen Black is an American actress, screenwriter, singer, and songwriter. She is noted for appearing in such films as Easy Rider, Five Easy Pieces, The Great Gatsby, Rhinoceros, The Day of the Locust, Nashville, Airport 1975, and Alfred Hitchcock's final film, Family Plot...
as Faye Greener, Geraldine Page
Geraldine Page
Geraldine Sue Page was an American actress. Although she starred in at least two dozen feature films, she is primarily known for her celebrated work in the American theater...
as evangelist "Big Mama", Jackie Earle Haley
Jackie Earle Haley
Jackie Earle Haley is an American film actor. Establishing himself from child actor to adult Academy Award-nominee, he is perhaps best known for his roles as Moocher in Breaking Away, Kelly Leak in The Bad News Bears, pedophile Ronnie McGorvey in Little Children, the vigilante Rorschach in...
as Adore Loomis, and Gloria LeRoy
Gloria LeRoy
Gloria LeRoy is an American character actress best remembered for having played voluptuous Mildred "Boom-Boom" Turner in classic 1970s sitcom All in the Family, as well as Bobbi Jo Loomis, wife of army-airforce buddy "Duke" Loomis in the earlier All in the Family episode "The Threat"...
as Mrs. Loomis.
Pop culture
The book is mentioned in Y the Last Man, whose main character describes it as "the greatest novel of all time".The Pop Chronicles
Pop Chronicles
The Pop Chronicles are two radio documentary series which together "may constitute the most complete audio history of 1940s-60s popular music." Both were produced by John Gilliland.-The Pop Chronicles of the 50s and 60s:...
documentary includes an excerpt dramatically read by Thom Beck
Thom Beck
Thom Beck was a founding member of The Credibility Gap while at KRLA 1110 radio, where he also narrated part of the Pop Chronicles. He is deceased.-Links:* * [ The Credibility Gap] from allmusic-References:...
.
It has been assumed that The Simpsons
The Simpsons
The Simpsons is an American animated sitcom created by Matt Groening for the Fox Broadcasting Company. The series is a satirical parody of a middle class American lifestyle epitomized by its family of the same name, which consists of Homer, Marge, Bart, Lisa and Maggie...
creator Matt Groening
Matt Groening
Matthew Abram "Matt" Groening is an American cartoonist, screenwriter, and producer. He is the creator of the comic strip Life in Hell as well as two successful television series, The Simpsons and Futurama....
named his most famous character, Homer Simpson
Homer Simpson
Homer Jay Simpson is a fictional character in the animated television series The Simpsons and the patriarch of the eponymous family. He is voiced by Dan Castellaneta and first appeared on television, along with the rest of his family, in The Tracey Ullman Show short "Good Night" on April 19, 1987...
, after his own father. However, 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 Manic Street Preachers song "Peeled Apples" features a line that references Day of the Locust. The line reads "A dwarf takes his cockerel out on a cockfight".